Leadership team and founding members
Nikki Juen
Co-Director
Nikki Juen is an artist, designer and educator interested in the spaces where these practices overlap. As a founding faculty member of the MFA in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts her research focuses on the body as media as well as the contemplative mind in higher education. She is a lecturer and critic in the Division of Experimental and Foundation Studies at Rhode Island School of Design. Her classes, workshops and mentorships explore the development of the individual through the cultural roles of art and design in society. With over two decades of experience as a mentor and advisor, she helps non-profits, institutions and individuals develop attentive and holistic understanding of their intention, function and efficacy. Juen recently spoke to 200 designers in Chicago on International Women’s Day as part of the American Institute of Graphic Arts initiative, Women in Design: Leading with Intent and Integrity.
Andrea Lauer
Co-Director + Founding Team Member
Andrea Lauer is an award-winning costume designer and artist as well as the founder of Risen From The Thread. She is also a 2017 MIT Director's Fellow. She has technical expertise in sensors, electronics and material science, that she uses for wearable product design and experiential art installations. Recent credits include Broadway’s Bring It On, American Idiot (Broadway and touring productions), Brooklynite, What’s It’s All About, Murder for Two, STREB’s: Forces and the London Cultural Olympics, in addition to several other theatrical, dance, and opera productions in New York City and Internationally. Also working as a stylist for various artists, commercials, and publications, her work can be seen in Rolling Stone, Vogue, Interview, OUT Magazine, The 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, The Tony Awards, red carpet events, and music videos.
Sarah Sandman
Co-Director + Founding Team Member
Sarah Sandman is an Brooklyn-based artist and designer creating experiences that amplify messages of social change. Sandman holds an MFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. Sandman’s other work includes the Gift Cycle, in which she helped neighboring U.S. communities exchange gifts of art during a cross country cycling journey. Sandman created and facilitated Hostos Hands Up, a collaboration between Hostos Community College's Black Studies program and Media Design program to design protest signs for the NYC Millions March. Their work was displayed at Smack Mellon's Respond exhibit and is currently on display at the Museum of the City of New York.
Joey Foster Ellis
Producer and Creative Strategist + Founding Team Member
Joey Foster Ellis (Jumpsuit Producer) is an artist and TED Fellow living in Kathmandu. He has received several site-specific commissions, including Greenpeace, Bank of America, Chevron and Manulife and his work has been featured in such publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time and Newsweek. Ellis was selected by The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum as one of 40 Under 40, a major exhibition highlighting the work of forty artists born since 1972.
Kyra Gaunt
Creative Strategist + Founding Team Member
Kyra D. Gaunt is a TED Fellow and singer-songwriter versed in classical music, jazz and R&B songwriting, an adjunct associate professor of ethnomusicology, cultural anthropology and sociology and as a social media expert. Gaunt is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Baruch College and Hunter College at the City University of New York. She as a black feminist ethnomusicologist specializing in the study and performance of musical blackness and digital ethnography on YouTube. Her next book is a digital ethnography of black girls’ twerking and music-related videos on YouTube. This digital work expands on her previous scholarshipThe Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop, which won the Alan Merriam Prize for the most outstanding English-speaking monograph awarded by the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) in 2007.
Deputies
In January 2019, Brick x Brick, awarded deputyships to four young activists that have shown tireless dedication to the Brick x Brick movement.
Yesica Balderrama
Deputy
Yesica Balderrama is a content creator and writer born in Mexico and raised in Queens, NY. She speaks four languages and aspires to keep learning more. Her favorite things include cat videos, cameras, bookstores, and live music shows. Her work has been featured on WNYC, the Third Coast International Audio Festival, and PEN’s World Voices Festival.
Tazia Deveaux
Deputy
Born in Brooklyn but raised in East Harlem, Tazia DeVeaux is a graduate from Hostos Community College who is on the verge of enrolling to FIT to study Advertisement Design. Motivated by her environment and family’s support, her goal is to change how people see art in her community. She is also a visual art specialist at New York Edge teaching photography to middle schoolers in the Bronx, NY. Tazia has been the voice of Brick x Brick during performances at the White House and New York Public Library for PEN America’s “Art Speaks” event.
Eddie Mendez
Deputy
Eddie Mendez is designer based in New York City obsessed with all things design, micro-cultures, photography, new sounds, dogs, and DIY indie publications.
Versace Pritchett
Deputy
Versace Pritchett is a vet tech and graduate of Mercy College. She is inspired to carry out her twin brother’s work as an activist.
Key Organizers and Contributors
Karyl Newman
LA Organizer: 2018, 2019, 2020
Karyl is a Mojave Desert dwelling artist, designer, placekeeper and organizer. She works annually sharing two fascinating historical sites as a curator and clean up coordinator to build community appreciation - a method she calls stories and stewardship. Llano del Rio is the location of a more than century old socialist colony where shares her research as 2016 Fellow at the Beinecke Library at Yale where she also received her MFA. Giant Rock, an enormous 7 storey boulder, served as the home of a prospector which was taken over by George Van Tassel for annual UFO conventions. She is working on digital touch screen exhibit collecting all the Rock’s stories, characters and events funded by California Humanities. She also collects items from illegal dump sites across the desert and writes about their origins for exhibits as the Waste Wunderkammer.
Katy Kirby
Producer and Documentarian
Katy Kirby is (in no particular order) a community builder, documentarian, digital marketer, music technology advocate, film nerd, swiss army knife and creative instigator. With fifteen years experience in the entertainment industry and over twelve years working in interactive and experiential marketing, she has worked behind the scenes with several nationally recognized brands and companies such as Live Nation, The Daily Show, Associated Press Television, Pepsi, General Motors, and Sony. As one of the most seasoned social media marketers in the music space, she’s spoken on panels at SXSW (Music), Americana Music Conference, A2iM, and Leadership Bluegrass concerning digital media trends and best practices and how they relate to music consumers and artists. A native New Yorker, Kirby recently relocated back to the New York City area from Nashville, where she continues to consult with music and digital start-up companies.@katsuzak
Edisa Weeks
Choreographer
Choreographer Edisa Weeks formed DELIRIOUS Dances in 2003 to empower people through the immediacy of dance. Weeks creates mixed media interactive work in intimate environments. Her work has been performed in a variety of venues including The Brooklyn Botanic Garden, chashama arts, The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Emory University, Works & Process at the Guggenheim Museum, Harlem Stage, The Kennedy Center, The Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts, The Mermaid Parade, The National Black Arts Festival, and Summerstages Dance Festival, as well as in storefront windows, senior centers, sidewalks and living rooms, including living rooms in Berlin, Germany, as part of Haus der Kulturen der Welts 50th anniversary celebration. Weeks teaches technique, improvisation and choreography at Queens College. She is developing Three Rites: Life, Liberty, Happiness, which integrates live music, dance, text and a visual installation to examine how America has promoted, protected, personified and pursued life, liberty and happiness. www.deliriousdances.com
Angel Chinn
Choreographer
Angel Chinn studied dance at Morgan State University and the University of Maryland Baltimore County where she received a BA in dance and performance. She performed around the DC metropolitan area with Shange Dance Productions from 2006-2009 and Baltimore Dance Project from 2007-2013. Angel is currently a teaching artist at Medgar Evers College Preparatory School and is the artistic director of NonaLee Dance Theatre. She has worked with choreographers Scott Rink, Lindsey Dietz Marchent, Kathleen Fisher, Mark Dendy, Candace Franklin, Nathan Trice, and Edisa Weeks. nonaleedt.org
Women's March 2017 Organizational Team
Heather Beck, Santana Benitez, Kristen Coleman, Kyra Gaunt, Nikki Juen, Kate Kennedy, Katy Kirby, Jenn Nielsen, Janet O'niel, Annie Simon, Nicole Skibola, Jeannette Subero, Kaye Voyce and Jann Whaley.