It has been a big couple of months here at Teaching Artists Guild! Today we have the distinct honor and privilege to introduce our new National Advisory Committee. Before this larger group of teaching artists and arts education professionals joined us, we were advised by a smaller, local committee in the San Francisco Bay Area, including Jessica Mele of San Francisco’s Performing Arts Workshop, Miko Lee of Youth in Arts in San Rafael, and Ami Molinelli of MUST/SFJazz. They did a great job! Together we realized there was a need to serve a broad range of teaching artists: not just locally but nationally, and that there was a gap in the field we could uniquely fill in support of artists who teach. In 2013, armed with this understanding, TAG began to dream up a team of supporters to join them from across the US. These fine individuals are champions of the Teaching Artist. They join us to help further the cause of artists working in education and in communities. Together, they have over 200 years of experience as teaching artists, not to mention some other complimentary advocacy and leadership skills!
TAG’s National Advisory Committee members join us from such diverse states as New York, Washington, Florida, Texas, Illinois, California, as well as a Canadian delegate.  Their backgrounds range artistic areas of expertise and include theater, music, media arts, visual arts, and creative writing. Together, we are going to change the world.
No really.
Here they are! We’ll be highlighting various members here in this blog over the next few months, and developing some Teaching Artists Hang-Outs (as well as some in-depth webinars) live online, wherein you’ll be able to pick the brains of this group as we work to further develop and honor this unique hybrid profession.
National Advisory Committee
Glenna Avila (Los Angeles, CA)
Eric Booth (Hudson River Valley, NY)
Lindsey Buller Maliekel (New York, NY)
Lara Davis (Seattle, WA)
Kai Fierle-Hedrick (New York, NY)
Jon Hinojosa (San Antonio, TX)
Lynn Johnson (San Francisco Bay Area, CA)
Nas Khan (Toronto, Canada)
Tina LaPadula (Seattle, WA)
Miko Lee (San Francisco Bay Area, CA)
Jessica Mele (San Francisco Bay Area, CA)
Ami Molinelli (San Francisco Bay Area, CA)
Betsy Mullins (Miami, FL)
Louise Music (San Francisco Bay Area, CA)
Nick Rabkin (Chicago, IL)
Amy Rasmussen (Chicago, IL)
Nicole Ripley (Chicago, IL)
Sandy Seufert (Los Angeles, CA)
Yael Silk, Ed.M. (Pittsburgh, PA)
Jean E. Taylor (New York, NY)
Sheila Womble (Miami, FL)
Learn more and read the bios of our National Advisory Committee members.