about me

the binary is imaginary

How I Became Who I Am

Why This Work?

Who I Am

I am an interdisciplinary artist, performer and sound artist with a background in community organizing and organizational strategy. I work to mold and lead groups and leaders through a radical visioning process to strategically plan for a future that is inclusive and reflective of all peoples. My work typically centers the stories of marginalized communities living on Turtle Island.

I have worked for 10 years in different capacities as an artistic collaborator on dozens of performance projects with various artistic collectives spanning Chicago, Phoenix, San Diego, and Los Angeles. Most recently I have served as the General Manager of the third oldest LGBTQIA+ theater in the country, Diversionary Theater in San Diego.

I identify as queer, non-binary and multi-racial, born with a safety net of economic and familial security that has allowed me to pursue my passions at the intersections of artistry, strategic social change, advancement of marginalized communities, and spirituality and alternative healing.

I am a band mate, a love, a sibling, a youngest child, a silver lining advocate, a reiki practitioner in training, and descendent of both colonized and colonizer ancestors.

Currently I reside on the land traditionally stewarded by the Kumeyaay people.

How I Work

Immerse in the issue
Alchemize toxicity
Reflect from a heart space
Research and innovate

After graduating from a small liberal arts college where I studied General Theatre and English Writing with a focus in Poetry, I moved permanently to the city of Chicago, interning in theater education with Chicago Shakespeare Theater and the Goodman Theatre.

From there I branched out to working artistically with a multitude of community- and social-justice-minded individuals on social change projects with a theatrical bent until I was invited to contribute more deeply as a company member with For Youth Inquiry, Playmakers Laboratory, and Erasing the Distance, a regular collaborator with 2nd Story, and a stage manager with Manual Cinema and Sojourn Theatre Company.

Along the way I co-founded FEMelanin Collective with a group of fellow self-identified femmes of color. We worked horizontally to produce performance pieces and plays in ways that felt to us like a reclamation of our personal power. Our primary devised and participatory theatre for young audiences play amplified community-based approaches to coping with and dismantling oppression. Made for melanated young gxrls of culture, Epic Tales from the Land of Melanin became a featured play at the American Alliance for Theatre Education (2017), Free Street Theatre (2018) and the LTC Sin Fronteras Festival (2019). While FEMelanin Collective no longer exists, some of my most valuable lessons in collaboration, leadership, friendship, and solidarity come from that chapter.

Forming this company and working in explicit affinity groups, experimenting with non-hierarchical structures of leadership, playing with narrative power and ways of using it to forward social and political change - these are highlights from my artistic and collaborative skill-building that form the basis of who I show up as in a room today.

Simultaneously, I worked with powerhouse, women-of-color-owned consulting groups The Right Source LLC and Morten Group LLC that taught me the value of examining and using my own privilege and power, and strategic ways to break apart and rebuild organizational systems and structures that were simply not working or worked in favor of white supremacy culture.

There are so many narratives we see in mainstream media - but so many more we don't see. First, it's a passion of mine to collaborate with fellow marginalized artists and organizations who want to see positive change in the world by increasing the visibility of underrepresented stories.

Making space for more diverse stories to be witnessed globally increases our ability to empathize. Our collective imagination for the brightest possible future - one in which everyone has the space and resources to thrive - exponentiates.

Diversity opens our hearts to the lived experiences of those who might live under radically different circumstances from us and encourages us to make space for those we don't consider now to be a part of our plan for the future.

I believe that in order to see the world we want, we must build it. We do this at both collective and individual levels - in personal practice and artistic practice.

I have learned that when we make to transform, we become transformed. When we make together, we transform together, we build new ways of being.

Values Lineage

I embraced the value of collaboration first and foremost from my parents - a cis white military man and a cis CHamoru woman, who met as RAs committed to bridging divides at SDSU. Their commitment to working through the challenges of racial, gender and political differences has proven to me time and again that there is always a way forward, and usually, that way is love.

I look to mentors who have experienced the most discrimination, the heaviest hardship - survivors of sexual assault, dark-skinned women, and queer and trans people who have reflected the most steadfast strength - that of resilience paired with compassion.

I remain a student of innovative black leaders like adrienne maree brown, Prentis Hemphill, Resmaa Menakem, Tema Okun and Octavia E. Butler. My artistic practice is rooted in an emergent strategy and abolitionist values - a radical naturalist (grasping things at the root).

I believe that no person is disposable. I wonder if each person we meet has a role to play in our own transformation and healing. I dream of ways we work collectively to transform as a people. I believe that our art can hold it all and that we are not alone.