SARAH CALDERÓN is a U.S. Cultural Policy Fellow at Stanford University and the former Executive Director of Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY), a statewide initiative designed to strengthen the economic stability of artists. At CRNY, she oversaw guaranteed income and employment programs that reached 2,700 artists across New York State. Before that, she served as Managing Director of ArtPlace America, where she led organizational strategy, operations, and grantmaking focused on higher education and community development. From 2008 to 2015, she served as Executive Director of the Casita Maria Center for Culture and the Arts in the Bronx, guiding its move into a new 90,000-square-foot facility and expanding partnerships across the city. Earlier roles include founding Stickball Printmedia Arts in East Harlem, directing arts data initiatives at the NYC Department of Education, and managing education research projects at MPR Associates. She holds degrees from the University of Michigan and an M.Ed. from Harvard University.

ANA CHIRENO is Vice President at the MiRam Group, where she specializes in issue-based advocacy, coalition-building, and stakeholder engagement across sectors. She brings extensive experience at the intersection of community organizing and public affairs, with a career focused on supporting immigrant communities and strengthening civic participation. Ana previously served in the New York City Comptroller’s Community Affairs Unit, working closely with senior leadership to advance borough-wide initiatives and coordinate responses to constituent needs. Her experience also includes volunteer work with Make the Road New York, where she supported campaigns focused on immigrant justice, economic dignity, and community power-building. These roles have shaped her understanding of how local institutions mobilize constituencies and navigate public systems. She is recognized for her ability to connect grassroots, industry, and government perspectives in service of more equitable public policy outcomes.

CHAIR

LUCIA CUBA is a Peruvian designer, textile artist, and scholar whose fashion practices intersect social justice, design, and art, viewing wearable forms as performative and political devices. Her projects include BASELAT, a database expanding Latin American fashion studies; Exercises on Health, exploring fashion’s connection to health; and Articulo 6, addressing forced sterilizations in Peru and its link to the eugenics movement. Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, the New York Museum of Arts and Design, and the Museo Amparo. She has received the Han Nefkens Award in Fashion (2014), a United States Artists Fellowship in Design (2019), and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center Residency Fellowship (2022). Cuba holds an MFA in Fashion Design and Society from The New School University and a BSc in Social Psychology from Cayetano Heredia University in Peru. She is an Assistant Professor of Fashion Design and Social Justice and the Donna Karan Director of the MFA Fashion Design and Society at Parsons, The New School.

TREASURER

ALI DAVIS has over 20 years of experience in non-profit organizations and New York City government. Most recently, she served as COO at Friends of the High Line, which manages its complex namesake park on behalf of New York City. She also has several years of experience in real estate policy, working with property owners, developers, and managers as a VP and Chief of Staff at the Real Estate Board of New York. She has also worked in fundraising for the New York Public Library and held roles at various communications and arts organizations. Ali’s government experience includes serving as Senior Advisor in the Mayor’s Office specializing in arts and culture, parks, libraries, and various public space initiatives; managing lower Manhattan capital and programmatic redevelopment projects for the City; and overseeing Manhattan government and community affairs for NYCEDC. She has sat on several boards, including the Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn Bridge Park, The Alliance for Flushing Meadows Corona Park, and various public authorities, and has a degree in English Literature from Harvard University. In her free time, Ali enjoys traveling, cooking, and reading all the books.

PIERRE LOSSON, Associate Director of the Social Mobility Lab at The City College of New York (CUNY), has extensive experience in cultural policy, Latin American studies, and heritage restitution. Before joining City College in 2023, he served as Director of Institutional Engagement at Americas Society in New York, following positions in French cultural centers in Mexico City and Lima, where he lived for ten years. Losson studied international relations at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques of Strasbourg (France), holds an MA in arts administration from the University of Lyon, an MA in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from Florida International University, and a PhD in political science from The Graduate Center, CUNY, examining cultural heritage repatriation claims in Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. In fall 2020, he was a fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University and has taught at Hunter College, Lehman College, and Yeshiva University. His research on cultural policy in Latin America culminated in The Return of Cultural Heritage to Latin America (Routledge, 2022), with a Spanish translation published by Fondo de Cultura Económica in 2024. He has contributed articles to academic journals and to outlets such as Le Monde and Hyperallergic.

STEFAAN G. VERHULST is Co-Founder of The GovLab (NYC) and The DataTank (Brussels), and is Research Professor at the Tandon School of Engineering at New York University. He serves in several global advisory roles, including Chair of the Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF and Editor-in-Chief of the Cambridge University Press journal Data & Policy. Over the past years, he has initiated and led numerous projects on open data, data collaboratives, AI localism, collective intelligence, and the emerging profession of strategic data stewardship. Previously, he spent over a decade as Chief of Research at the Markle Foundation and held academic appointments at Oxford University, the London School of Economics, and the University of Glasgow. His publications and public engagements have shaped international policy debates on how governments and civil society use data to address complex social challenges. He is widely recognized as a leading thinker in digital governance and systemic innovation.