Diane Burbie (she/her) is Managing Principal of The ASPIRE Group, a consulting firm specializing in equity, diversity, and inclusion, conflict resolution, strategic planning, and leadership development. She is an experienced consultant and facilitator working with a myriad of audiences throughout the US and beyond. Diane engages extensively in the arts and culture arena that includes projects with the Geffen Playhouse, East-West Players, Art2Action, LA Phil, The Ford Theater, LA Opera, Long Beach Opera, CMP (IL), Ancram Opera House (NY), Cornerstone Theater and Getty. Her work supports national arts collectives such as Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists (CAATA), Opera America, and the Directors Guild of America (DGA). Diane works with governmental entities and funders for the arts in Los Angeles County and the cities of Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Glendale, Pasadena, and West Hollywood. Additionally, she is consultant to the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance. She served as Vice-Chair of the Pasadena Human Relations Commission. Diane holds BA from Stanford University in Psychology and African American Studies, MBA from the University of Southern California and certificates in Negotiation (Harvard University Law School) and Managing Multicultural Work Environments (California State University Fullerton).

Carolina San Juan (she/her) earned her doctoral degree in Culture and Performance from the UCLA Department of World Arts and Culture/Dance.  She offers more than 20 years experience teaching community-based Arts Education, Asian American Studies, and Women’s Studies at both CSUDH and UCLA. As an Arts and Diversity advocate she served two years as the East West Players Arts Education Director. She also developed programming as both an educator and administrator for the UCLA Academic Advancement Program (AAP), the nation’s largest university-based student diversity program. Carolina is currently the Interim Director of Arts Education for Center Theatre Group.

haejin bang’s (any/all/haej) cultural and community work is based within occupied Tongva land (“los angeles”) and Corea. born, raised, and rooted in central los angeles, they are committed to organizing and building around racial, class, disability, and gendered justice, bringing in their own experiences of being and growing up disabled+trans, unhoused, and working class to their creative work and cultural organizing. a culture bearer of both the 소리 (voice) and 북 (drumming) that make up 판소리/pansori, their transdisciplinary work continues move towards and build upon bodies of care -- committing to building and healing our relationships with our selves, each other, and the land. they were most recently a recipient of the culture bearer’s power building fellowship through the center for cultural power, a community artist fellow through the california arts council, and an emerge fellow with the longmore institute on disability – and now serves as the director of cultural arts and base building at the beverly-vermont community land trust in central los angeles. their work continues move towards and build upon inquiries: how can we create change in our communities through collective and cultural organizing, our connections to land/body, embodied listening – the sensitivity and understanding that these relationships invite and require?

Carol Gomez has been involved in violence against women, immigrant rights, human trafficking and social justice community organizing work for the past two decades in the US and in Malaysia. 

In 2002, she founded and directed Matahari: Eye of the Day, a national Boston-based organization committed to building solidarity and creating community solutions for social justice and human rights. Her expertise includes cross community dialogue facilitation, leadership & capacity building, community organizing, anti-oppression training facilitation, clinical therapy and counseling, advocacy, curriculum development and popular education and engagement on the rights and empowerment of immigrants and communities of color. 

Her trauma-informed and culturally specific intervention and prevention work with domestic and sexual violence survivors began in 1987 in her home country of Malaysia and continues consistently till the present time since her move to the United States. Her pioneering US-international work with human trafficking survivors began in 1998, when she coordinated a 3 year National Institute of Justice funded pilot-research project examining the incidences and factors governing the sex trafficking of women and girls into the US focusing on three major cities (New York, San Francisco and the twin cities of Minneapolis-St-Paul) and learning from the experiences of survivors who had originated and returned to Moscow, former Soviet Union. This work brought her into contact with over 70 survivors of commercial sexual exploitation and hundreds of collateral service providers and law enforcement officials who routinely interfaced and provided interventions with women and children who were exploited and trafficked. A report on this research was published in 2001. Subsequent articles were published on providing trauma-informed care and complex case coordination and advocacy.

Carol has been adjunct faculty at Boston College School of Social Work and guest lectures at campuses across Massachusetts and Los Angeles. When living in Boston, MA, she served on the Board of United for a Fair Economy, the Resist Foundation and was appointed to the Governor’s Council on Domestic and Sexual Violence.  

Since her move from Boston to Los Angeles in 2010, she has been practicing as a trauma-informed child and family therapist and serves as a restorative justice mediator. She has published and co-authored several reports and chapter articles on supporting survivors of violence and trauma and creating coordinated community responses in support of the healing journey of trauma survivors and their effected loved ones. From 2015 till 2022 she served as the Clinical Director of the Program for Torture Victims in Los Angeles where her program provides forensic evaluations and trauma informed therapy to over 300 asylum seekers each year. She is the owner and principle of Hearts and Minds Solidarity Counseling, LLC providing consulting, supervision and psychotherapy services.

Aside from her passion in healing work with people, she dabbles in choral singing, photography and art, dance and since moving to the West Coast has developed an appreciation for bird watching.

Donna Maeda (she/her) retired from academia after teaching for 20+ years at Occidental College, including in the Critical Theory & Social Justice department, and serving as Dean of the Institute for Global Citizenship at Macalester College. Much of her work in academia revolved around creating alternative spaces for BIPOC, 1st gen., and low-income students to build community, pursue new questions, and connect with communities beyond the campus. She is happy to have time to work with local community groups in LA that bring people together to tell collective stories and build what is needed for new futures. As a former college music major, she is especially excited to re-connect with the arts world by supporting TeAda’s transformational work around community storytelling and healing arts. Donna also serves on boards of a racial justice organization in Minneapolis and a community arts collective in El Monte.