Creative Support for Organizations-Round 3

Kirstin Cronn-Mills: Cronn-Mills writes and teaches in southern Minnesota. She is the author of four young adult novels and three young adult nonfiction volumes. Cronn-Mills has received both state and national accolades for her work, including the Stonewall Award from the American Library Association in 2014 and three Minnesota Book Awards finalist nominations. For her day job, Cronn-Mills teaches at South Central College. She holds a PhD from Iowa State University in rhetoric and professional communication. She received an Arts Board grant in 2012 and a Prairie Lakes Regional Arts Council grant in 2018.; Cynthia Demers: Demers is employed as a visual and graphic arts instructor for junior and senior high schoolers. Demers has also worked as a community education director for twenty-three years. She has written grant proposals for school age childcare, poetry, and visual arts with Native American speakers, summer theater, childcare resources, and field trips to art careers and art colleges. She developed Art Day with area art teachers for six schools averaging 180 art students and 12 artists. She has volunteered to review grant applications for Southwest Minnesota Arts Council. Living in Lac qui Parle and formerly Lake of the Woods counties, she brings a rural perspective to her work.; Nikol Dowls: Imani Ni'Kol is a queer African American multidisciplinary artrepreneur born in Minneapolis. She combines her love of spoken word poetry, photography, body movement, writing, and painting. She uses her artistry as a means of self-expression, to identify with hidden qualities of her character, to teach, cultivate community conversations, and to express her interpretation of the world around her. Her goal is to open an unexplored world, a place of curious self-expression, but also a world of new relationships, new chances for new beginnings, and most importantly new stories. She hopes to change her community, to elevate her activism worldwide, and to mentor and teach others through creative expression, integrity, life coaching, and radical sensuality.; Cherie Hamilton: Hamilton holds a MFA in creative writing, fiction, and writing for children and young adults from the University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana. She has a MA in art education and a BA in fiber arts from Western Washington University, Fairhaven College and the University of Minnesota, College of Design. She works as a teacher at the college level as well as teaching art and writing to youth. Hamilton encourages writers to tell their stories and give voice to their experiences.; Jean Louis: Louis has been an active supporter of the arts, writing grant proposals for the Youth Chorale of Central Minnesota, the Paynesville Area School District, and the Paynesville Area Community Theater. In addition, she has accompanied several summer musicals and served as music director and vocal coach for various productions. A member of the Fine Arts Council, she helps organize an annual talent showcase to raise funds for the upkeep and improvement of the sound system and auditorium in the performing arts auditorium of the local high school.; Alissa Morson: Morson currently works for Minnesota State University, Mankato, where she manages international marketing and recruitment efforts for international students. She has worked in many areas of higher education in the past six years and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Armenia. She graduated from Carleton College with a BA in geology in 2011, and SIT Graduate Institute with a MA in international education in 2017. Morson cochaired the Mankato Area International Festival in 2018-2019 and volunteers with the Mankato YWCA and YMCA.; Benedict Olk: Olk is a freelance dancer based in Minneapolis interested in embodied devotion and practice. He has performed the work of Lucinda Childs, Merce Cunningham, Moriah Evans, Anna Rogovoy, and Christopher Williams, and teaches Cunningham technique. He holds his MA in new performative practices from Stockholm University of the Arts, and currently works on the annual fund team at the Walker Art Center.; Ronald Salazar: Salazar was the executive director of Studio Academy, a arts charter high school in Rochester; principal of Folwell School for the Performing Arts, a preK - 9th grade school in Minneapolis; and presently is the principal of an art magnet preK-5th grade at Osseo Public Schools. He has experience with budgets, planning, staffing, evaluating, and has been a reader for candidates to the Bush Foundation Leadership Fellowship. He is involved at the local, district, and state central committee level of a state wide organization.