Unfettering Artists' Productivity and Impact
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Trainers & Coaches

Amy Smith is a dance and theater artist, educator, and facilitator. She works to dismantle oppressive structures in non-profit organizations and other groups so that artists and low income folks can achieve collective liberation. She does this through financial well-being workshops, one-on-one work with clients giving financial advice and doing tax preparation, consulting with arts organizations, co-facilitating anti-racism sessions with co-facilitators of color, and as a dance and theater educator. Amy co-founded, co-directed, and performed with Headlong, a dance theater non-profit that transformed into a community arts organization over 25 years. She left Headlong in 2019 to pursue her freelance work. She leads financial well-being workshops through Creative Capital, Assets for Artists, and in many other settings. She holds a BA from Wesleyan University and has been greatly affected by her learning as part of artEquity’s National Facilitator Training and other anti-oppression trainings. Anthem Salgado is a Business Coach and Marketing Specialist whose experience spans 20 years across industries and has included clients representing leadership in arts and events, health and wellness, creative and professional services, finance and technology. ART OF HUSTLE® has been running for nine years now and today ranks as the #1 search result for the keyword, “marketing,” for Yelp in San Francisco, having earned 60+ five-star reviews. Apollo Emeka is the Lead Consultant at Apollo Strategy Group with expertise in organizational alignment and leadership development. He developed the STEP Alignment Assessment that helps organizations of all sizes align their Spirit, Team, Environment, and Product to achieve and sustain success. He has experience designing strategic solutions for organizations big and small. Apollo helps each client align their daily activities with their overall strategy by translating strategy into action. He uses the power of curiosity to challenge assumptions, spur innovation, and explore creative solutions with each client. He believes that the best solutions are not prescribed, they are discovered through collaboration and inquiry. This makes each solution unique. Apollo is a US Special Forces Green Beret, a former FBI Intelligence Analyst, an entrepreneur, and is earning his doctorate in policy planning, and development at the University of Southern California. Casey Summar is an attorney and national consultant working with organizations and artists on organizational strategy, planning, and board development. She serves as Of Counsel with the Law Firm for Non-Profits and is an adjunct Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University. Prior to relocating to Southern California, Casey founded the Tennessee Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts in 2005 which grew to become the Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville, an arts service organization dedicated to ensuring a thriving arts community, for which she served as Executive Director for over a decade. In that role, she advised the boards and staff of over 400 nonprofits at all stages of organizational lifecycle from formation to operations to transition. Casey was recognized for this work as the 2016 Nonprofit CEO of the Year for Middle Tennessee. Casey serves on the boards of the national Craft Emergency Relief Fund (CERF+), the Carpinteria Arts Center, and the Lois & Walter Capps Project. Casey received her J.D. with honors from Vanderbilt University Law School and graduated magna cum laude from Belmont University with a B.F.A in Photography. Casey is based in Carpinteria, CA. Christina Empedocles, once a full-time art-maker and now a Certified Financial Planner, focuses her practice in part on guiding people in creative industries. She helps artists better manage their finances, with an eye toward sustaining their art practices and their independent lives over the long-term. Learn more at insightpersonalfinance.com. I'm Christopher Rivas, I’m a world-traveler and intrepid storyteller. Human narratives are my single greatest passion. I'm a two-time Moth winner, actor, social activist, teacher, and speaker. As a speaker, I work with organizations all over the world using the power of storytelling to craft messages that matter, that are memorable, that are relatable, that are human. As a storyteller, I've developed and facilitated storytelling workshops for The WWE, UNHCR, Hollywood Heart Foundation, LAUSD, LAMP on Skid Row, Safe Place For Youth, The Museum Of Broken Relationships, The Skirball Cultural Center, Unplug Meditation Studio, Soul Hum, UCLA, CalArts, Agape International Spiritual Center, and more. I've transformed anxiety into excitement for hundreds of people with my performance and public-speaking coaching. I'm also the proud founder of Lifestyledezine, a community dedicated to exploring and realizing the power of compassionate storytelling. Speaking engagements include: guest lecturer at NYU, UCLA and CalArts, Entrepreneurs Organization, Peace and Love Film Festival (Örebro, Sweden), DAH Teatro (Serbia, Belgrade), Unplug Meditation Studio, Soul Hum, Los Angeles GreenFest. https://www.christopherrivasstorytelling.com/ Claire Van Holland is a 50% left brain, right brain split and is equally creative as she is analytical. She has an extensive career building financial projections, budgets & analyses for corporate media. In 2011, she and her husband Aaron co-founded a furniture & home goods business, M.F.E.O., out of a shared love for interiors and beautiful design. After learning the operational challenges of being a small business owner, she applied her corporate finance & operational expertise to help streamline M.F.E.O. It was from this that the idea for her 2nd business, the CV Ledger, was born. Today Claire works closely with other creative based business owners, managing their numbers through accounting, bookkeeping and strategic consulting, helping them make more informed decisions using their analytics. Corrina Peipon is an independent art worker with a plural practice that encompasses artmaking, business, curatorial work, teaching, and writing. She founded her consulting practice in 2018 to help artists and art workers navigate the opportunities and challenges they face in their careers. Corrina holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from the San Francisco Art Institute and a Master of Fine Art from ArtCenter College of Design. She has held curatorial posts at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Hammer Museum and has served as director at Honor Fraser Gallery and The Pit: Exhibitions & Editions. Her artwork has been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe, and her writing has appeared in publications ranging from artist-issued chapbooks to scholarly museum catalogues. Debra Broz is an artist, small business owner and arts advocate. She discovered her love for the arts while growing up in rural central Missouri. After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Maryville University - St. Louis she moved to Austin, Texas where she worked as an artist and ceramics restorer and began her involvement with non-profit arts. From 2007-2013 she was Gallery and Studio Director at Pump Project Art Complex and Co-Director of a local non-profit art publication. In late 2013 Debra moved to Los Angeles where she continues to work as an artist and run her ceramics restoration business, Science of Art Restoration. She stays involved with the non-profit community through working with organizations like the Community Arts Partnership at CalArts and at the Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI). At CCI, she has facilitated multiple sessions of the Business of Art workshop series, and has created, facilitated and taught tailored iterations of the Business of Art curriculum for CalArts, the School of Arts and Enterprise and Career Transitions for Dancers. She is also managing the update to CCI’s publication, The Business of Art. In 2018, she joined artist-run space and curatorial collective Monte Vista Projects, where she is Co-Director, and in 2019 she began curating small shows in her studio closet under the name Nonsense Projects. Debra’s artwork has been featured in Frankie magazine, This Is Colossal, Ceramics Monthly, American Craft and the Huffington Post. Emily Churchill, EA, is a senior preparer at M & M Tax Pros, Inc., formally known as Actor'sTaxPrep, Inc. (http://actorstaxprep.com/). Ms Churchill is an experienced tax preparer, having been with Actors Tax Prep Inc, going on 10 tax seasons. She holds the prestigious designation of Enrolled Agent, which is awarded by the Internal Revenue Service to experienced practitioners. As a working actor, Emily is also highly knowledgeable of the entertainment industry and with the many avenues an artist's life can take. Her clients range from real estate agents to culinary professionals to editors in film and television. Evan Kleekamp is a writer and researcher living in Los Angeles, where they founded NOR Research Studio. In 2019, they were a finalist for the Andy Warhol Foundation’s Arts Writers Grant. Specializing in grant, residency, and admissions applications, Evan has helped their clients receive fully funded positions in academic art programs, obtain internationally recognized fellowships, and secure organizational and individual grants. Greg Victoroff is the founding partner of the Los Angeles law firm of Greg Victoroff & Associates. Since 1979 Mr. Victoroff has handled intellectual property and business litigation matters, trials and appeals in state and federal courts, copyright, trademark, and intellectual property contracts and insurance issues in the film, fine art, and music industries. Since 1988 he has been an arbitrator and mediator resolving complex entertainment and IP disputes. He has received a Martindale-Hubbell rating of “AV Preeminent,” the highest possible rating in both legal ability and ethical standards. He was named 2014, 2013 Top Rated Lawyer in Intellectual Property by American Lawyer Media. Mr. Victoroff’s institutional clients have included Concord Music Group, Mark Burnett Productions, Epson, Plaza de Cultura y Artes, the Italian-American Opera Foundation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem as Trustees of the Estate of Albert Einstein, The Graphic Artist’s Guild, Tacony, Balcony Press, Soft Air USA, Bellwork Press, Intervisual Books, The Erotic Museum, sculptors Carole Feuerman, Tony Delap, musicians Bruno Mars, Chuck Mangione, Phranc, Al McKay and Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art, Timothy Yarger Fine Art and Ikon Fine Art art galleries, among others. Mr. Victoroff has served as an expert witness in trademark, copyright and idea theft cases and is certified by the State Bar of California as an MCLE provider. He frequently lectures on intellectual property law matters for Bar Associations, law schools, art and music schools across the country, including UCLA’s Anderson School of Business, Yale Entertainment and Sports Law Association, American Bar Association, American Law Institute, State Bar of California, American Association of Museums, The Art Institute of California – Hollywood, The University of The Arts, Honolulu Academy of Art Center, Claremont College, California. Institute of the Arts, Hollywood Film Festival, Otis/Parsons College of Art and of Design, California State Northridge, Art Center College of Design, Ringling School of Art and Design, Chaffee College, College of the Desert, Screen Actors Guild, The Graphic Artist’s Guild, The Center for Cultural Innovation, Los Angeles International Contemporary Art Fair and Art Expo New York. Mr. Victoroff has served as a legal consultant to documentary films including “I Ain’t In It For My Health”, about Levon Helm, former vocalist and drummer for The Band, “Bombing LA”, about Los Angeles graffiti, “Kamikaze Hearts”, about the San Francisco and Los Angeles adult movie business, and NBC’s “Midnight Caller”. In addition to authoring numerous articles on copyright and entertainment law, he is the editor and co-author of “The Visual Artists Business and Legal Guide” (Prentice Hall 1995) and a contributor to “Art and Museum Law” (Carolina Academic Press 2002), “The Musicians Business and Legal Guide” (Prentice Hall 2001), “How To Make and Sell Your Own Recording” (Prentice Hall 1999), “A Music Business Primer” (Prentice Hall 2003) ,“Entertainment Publishing and the Arts Handbook” (Clark Boardman 1990) and the “Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines” (GAG 2001-2010)and Hastings Communications and Entertainment Law Journal. His entertainment law interviews have appeared in USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily Journal, Art and Business News, Long Beach Press-Telegram, People, Los Angeles Lawyer and Keyboard Player magazines. Mr. Victoroff is the past President of the Beverly Hills Bar Association Barristers and a founding member of its Committee for the Arts. For his pro bono volunteer legal services Greg has received awards from the American Bar Association, the Beverly Hills Bar Association, the Boy Scouts of America, the Urban League and former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. In 2008 he received the first Artistic License Award presented to an individual attorney from California Lawyers for the Arts. Mr. Victoroff received a B.A. in Theatre and teaching credential from Beloit College in 1976 and received his J.D. degree from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in 1979. In 1978 he transferred from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law to the UCLA School of Law to study copyright and entertainment law with the late Melville Nimmer and art law with Monroe Price. As a musician Mr. Victoroff has backed artists such as Santana, Huey Lewis and the News, Bobby McFerrin, Journey, Jefferson Starship and Graham Nash, Ernie Watts and Barbie Benton. He currently performs with the Los Angeles Lawyers Philharmonic Orchestra and his own jazz ensemble. Jeremiah Olayinka Ojo is the Founder and Managing Director of Ilèkùn Wa, an art business advisory firm facilitating & cultivating opportunities for visual artists of African descent to create, sustain and thrive. Over the last decade, Jeremiah has become a sought after arts and culture management consultant, working internationally in artist development, gallery management, and art fair operations. His collaborative work with minority emerging contemporary artists, art institutions, corporations, and collectors has carved a pathway of connectivity for creative professionals throughout Africa & its Diaspora. Jeremiah is also the Founder of Creative Milieu, LLC, a creative professional development enterprise that sources, trains and connects creatives through an integrated online-learning and staffing agency for the Creative Economy. Jeremiah holds a Bachelors in Public Policy from the Andrew Young School of Policy at Georgia State University and a Masters in Art Business at Claremont Graduate University Center for Business & Management of the Arts & Sotheby's Institute of Art. He currently serves on the advisory board of Black Art Futures Fund and is based in Brooklyn, NY. Jill James is CEO & Founder of Sif Industries, LLC, a consulting and coaching firm that puts women on the fast track from founder to CEO. She started her career in banking with J. P. Morgan and AXA Financial in New York, but got the start-up bug while at Chicago Booth for her MBA. She's had roles in product management, marketing, sales, and C-level leadership at six VC-backed start-ups, with four exits. She holds a BA with honors in Political Science and an MBA in Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Marketing from The University of Chicago. She is an advisor to Boutique Box and is on the board of the M{2E} program at the USC Annenberg School of Communications. Jill lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son. https://sifindustries.com/ Jon Tobin of Counsel for Creators (http://counselforcreators.com) is an attorney focused on helping creative professionals and businesses use the law to succeed. A graduate of the UCLA School of Law, he studied intellectual property, business law and international law under the nation’s top-ranked practitioners. While at UCLA Law he served as one of two editors-in-chief of the UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs. Before studying law he worked for years as a designer and software developer, so he knows what it means to work in creative industries and how things actually get done. He deals with matters involving copyrights, trademarks, software, design, licensing, business, art law and contracts. Admitted to practice in California and before the federal court of the Central District of California. Judith Teitelman brings 36 years of experience helping grass roots, mid-sized and large organizations strengthen their management and resource generating capacities and effectively plan for the future. She is a strong proponent of initiatives designed to examine and challenge long-standing assumptions about nonprofit administration and is committed to helping organizations rethink "business as usual." Judith is also a mentor to artists working in all disciplines. A skilled, innovative designer and facilitator of meetings and retreats, she regularly works with Board and staff members to institute positive, effective change. Judith’s national consulting practice provides a full range of services tailored to meet the unique vision and particular needs of each organization and artist. As planning consultant, trainer, executive leadership coach and technical assistance specialist, Judith has worked with the National Endowment for the Arts, L.A. County Arts Commission, St. Louis Regional Arts Commission, Los Angeles’ and Nashville’s Centers for Nonprofit Management, Center for Cultural Innovation, Flintridge Foundation’s Nonprofit Leadership Program, Detroit’s College for Creative Studies, East West Players, PEN Center USA, and Riverside Art Museum, among many others. She is currently on faculty in the Theater School at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) co-teaching Entrepreneurship. More information can be found at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judith-teitelman-02ab6412/. In her parallel realm, Judith’s debut novel, "Guesthouse for Ganesha,” was published on 7 May, 2019. Karina Vahitova is a post-Soviet queer poet and movement artist from Kiev, Ukraine. She has previously worked with Opportunity Project (helping to develop healing art therapy programs for individuals with brain damage), Studio Formichetti, and Bullett Magazine. Before founding The Void Academy, she led and managed the global community building effort and performance art archive project at Marina Abramovic Institute. Additionally, she has been a writer-in-residence at a psychophysiology lab and worked as a rape crisis and domestic violence counselor. In 2017, she was a Lambda Literary fellow in poetry. Currently, she lives in Los Angeles. Pronouns: she/her. After years of sitting behind the desk, seeing other's ideas through, ensuring someone else's business was operational, Katrina Frye decided to use her expertise with the one community she is most passionate about - ARTISTS. While earning her bachelors degree in Visual Arts she quickly saw a lack of understanding and training on how an artist goes from the studio into the gallery. Katrina began to explore this gap of information and headed back to school to receive her masters in Arts Management from the Drucker School of Business. Now with ten years of arts management experience Katrina is uniquely positioned to share her findings through her company, Mischief Managed. In June 2016 Mischief Managed began by consulting art friends on how to get into their master programs, how to release an independent album, how to rebrand and price their freelance services, or how to establish contracts and templates for their home studios. From what began with friends is now a team enabling a multitude of artists, nationwide, to expand the reach of their work. Through one on one meetings to group workshops, Mischief Managed has become a business development company for artists - where art meets business. www.MischiefManaged.info Krista Smith has over 18 years of Arts Nonprofit Development and Strategic Planning experience. She has previously served as the Director of Development for the Queer Cultural Center and Frameline. Smith specializes in grant writing and grants management, strategic planning, and fundraising events production. She views the arts as a foundational element to creating social change and social equity and is thrilled to be putting her skills and experiences to use to work with Artists, Arts Organizations, and Artistic Entrepreneurs to increase their financial resources, create sustainable organizational strategies, and engage with their communities. Smith serves over two-dozen San Francisco Bay Area based artists and arts organizations including the Berkeley Music Group, the Center for Asian American Media, Frameline, Fresh Meat Productions, 3Girls Theatre, the Queer Cultural Center, and the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival. Smith is also known as Kentucky Fried Woman, a performance artist who has produced and performed in hundreds of queer cultural events over the past two-decades. Her writing has been published in several anthologies including Queer Appalachia, Glitter & Grit, Femmes of Power, and the Register of Kentucky History. Maceo Paisley is a multi-disciplinary artist, designer, and cultural producer who explores themes in society and identity through movement, language, and imagery. For the past decade Maceo has danced professionally, performed on national stages as a spoken word and performance artist. As Executive Director of the non-profit platform Citizens of Culture (http://citizensofculture.com), he uses art to help communities and organizations develop critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and resource inequality. Mari Riddle is the Executive Director of Grand Performances, and brings over 25 years’ experience in executive positions at nonprofits working in community economic development, performing arts, and adult literacy/education, most recently as Program Director of Community Partners. She has served as Executive Director of the Friends of the Levitt Pavilion – MacArthur Park, the Coalition for Women’s Economic Development, and TELACU Community Capital, where she was responsible for the strategic development, management and capitalization of a $6.5+ million CDFI that provided small business loans and business management workshops to small businesses operating in the low-to-moderate income communities of Los Angeles. Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen is a curator, consultant, facilitator, and project-based artist, born and based in San Francisco, with 15+ years experience in the performing and visual arts. Rhiannon is moved by "productive discomfort" and a champion for continuous incremental improvement. Her curatorial focus is on projects that push formal and contextual boundaries and poke at imperialist formats. Her cross-discipline personal work engages symbols, identity, communication, and the unseen. She uses transparent facilitation, responsiveness, inquiry, and concrete planning in her organizing and consulting work. Founder of A Simple Collective and Black & White Projects and Director of Emerging Arts Professionals SFBA, Rhiannon is passionate about equity, experimentation, and independence in the arts and offers constructive, flexible consulting services to contemporary artists, entrepreneurs and small institutions, and burgeoning collectors. Sarah Conley Odenkirk is founder of ArtConverge in Los Angeles, CA, where she practices fine art law and collaborates on bespoke business strategies for artistic and cultural innovators. Sarah is the author of A Surprisingly Interesting Book About Contracts for Artists and Other Creatives; and publisher of the comprehensive online and print database Resource Guide for Public Art in Private Development. She sits on the boards of Fulcrum Arts, and the Cedars-Sinai Art Council, and is pro-bono counsel to Fathomers, a creative research institute redefining the limits of artist-led projects. From 2013-2017 Sarah was the Associate Director of the Sotheby’s Institute of Art’s Art Business and Arts Management Masters degree programs at Claremont Graduate University, where she was instrumental in developing the curriculum, ran conferences on art law and community engagement topics; and was the Professor for Legal Foundations, Public Art, International Transactions, and Cultural Property and Restitution. Tasi Alabastro is an actor, online content creator, and multi-disciplinary digital artist whose work focuses on creating impact through visual storytelling. He was recently featured in the San Francisco Chronicle Datebook highlighting his efforts with local arts organizations as it pertains to virtual programming. His online content on Twitch and Youtube focuses on storytelling and interactive programming to engage his audience and deepen community relationships. In addition to having the honor of being published in CONTENT Magazine, and Tayo Magazine, he is also the recipient of the 2019 Leigh Weimer’s Emerging Artist Award and the 2018 SVCreates Emerging Artist Laureate. He is a proud member of the Red Ladder Theatre Company and is currently working with inmates in state prisons as part of the Arts-in-Corrections program, which hopes to re-engage participants with their creativity and imagination. To find ways to support the journey, reach out by visiting tasialabastro.com, tweeting @tasialabastro, or at twitch.tv/kreenpananas. Yesenia Sanchez is a professional coach and arts management consultant based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has over 10 years experience working with artists and arts organizations as an executive director, finance manager, administrative director, program director, coach and consultant. She ran one of the largest artist incubation programs in the country at Intersection for the Arts and is currently a founding member of C2Arts – Consultants and Coaches for the Arts. She received her coach training through the Coaching & Philanthropy Project, where she and 40 other nonprofit leaders nationally were put through coaching training programs to explore the value of the coaching model in supporting nonprofit environments and in underserved communities. Yesenia has served as a panelist and presenter for Theatre Bay Area, San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco Foundation & Grants for the Arts “Best Practices Series", and the National Performing Arts Convention. She is a trainer and featured author in the Center for Cultural Innovation’s "Business of Art: An Artist’s Guide to Profitable Self-Employment", authoring the chapter on financial literacy for artists. www.c2arts.com.

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