Yelaine Rodriguez is an artist, educator, curator, and cultural organizer. She holds a BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons School of Design. With The Bronx as her backdrop, Rodriguez's combination of costume design and sculptures creates whimsical revealing imagery of the complexities of her experiences as a Dominican American raised in The South Bronx. Through her art, Rodriguez’s explores her dreams and realities, blending the lines between fashion and performance arts as a search of self-discovery.

Rodriguez expressed an early interest in the arts. As a sophomore in high school, she acquired a scholarship with the Parsons Scholars Program to attend Pre College Academy classes. She continued her undergraduate education in fashion design at Parsons School of Design, where she attained a scholarship to study photojournalism in Paris, and Fashion Design at Central St. Martins London and graduated with a BFA in Fashion Design.

Rodriguez’s dedication to her community has been the driving force behind the creation of La Lucha, an artist-based organization that brings Dominican and Haitian artist together. As the founder of La Lucha, Rodriguez curates with the purpose of educating future generation. www.yelainenyc.com

Sable Elyse Smith is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in New York. Her practice considers memory and trauma while enacting an undoing of language. She works from the archive of her own body creating new syntax for knowing and not knowing, thereby marking the difference between witnessing and watching. To see is unbearable. She has performed at the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, Eyebeam, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA. Her work has also been screened at Birkbeck Cinema in collaboration with the Serpentine Galleries, London, Artist Television Access, San Francisco, and MoMA Ps1, New York. Her writing has been published in Radical Teacher, Selfish, Studio Magazine and with Recess Art’s Critical Writing Fellowship. She is currently working on her first book. Smith has received grants & fellowships from Creative Capital, the Queens Museum, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Franklin Furnace Fund, and Art Matters. She is currently part-time faculty at Parsons The New School for Design and will be a visiting Faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University this Fall in the Sculpture and Extended Media department. sableelysesmith.com

Nadia Williams is Assistant Professor of Diversity & Inclusion at Parsons School of Design, and Director of the Parsons Scholars Program, which is a college access program that centers historically marginalized identities in art and design fields. She has taught pre-college and college design courses over the course of 14 years at Parsons and in numerous New York City public schools as a teaching artist. As a graduate of the Parsons BFA Fashion Design department, Nadia began her career designing in corporate environments, and later moved to Mexico, where she explored part of her cultural identity and her commitment to social justice through independent and collective design projects. In her current role, Nadia has the joy of working with young people who actively give her hope for the future. She collaborates on various social justice initiatives across The New School and across NYC, and is faculty advisor for the university-wide student organizations Sisters Art Salon (a collective of women artists of color) and The DREAM Team (which creates space for undocumented students within an immigrant justice framework). At the center of all of Nadia’s work is the belief that creative thinkers and makers as well as those who are tasked with devising creative solutions simply to survive are are positioned to make the most meaningful societal impacts. Nadia is a proud mother of a headstrong toddler, and feels fortunate to be surrounded by love and resilience in her family and personal and professional relationships.