Ori Z Soltes, Board of Directors

Ori Z Soltes is a professor teaching across a range of disciplines for Georgetown University’s Center for the Study of Jewish Civilization. A pre-eminent scholar of Jewish art, culture, and history, he is the former Director the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum. As co-founding Director of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project he has spent twenty years focused on the issue of Nazi-plundered art. Soltes has authored or edited 25 books and scores of articles and exhibition catalogue essays. Recent volumes include Our Sacred Signs: How Jewish, Christian and Muslim Art Draw from the Same Source; The Ashen Rainbow: Essays on the Arts and the Holocaust; Mysticism in Judaism. Christianity and Islam: Searching for Oneness; and Tradition and Transformation: Three Millennia of Jewish art and Architecture.

Cecilia Mencia, Board of Directors

Cecilia Mencia is a Washington, D.C. based journalist, and founder of DCTRENDING, an online magazine at the intersection of the arts, culture and social change in the nation’s capital. Her many years in digital media, print, television and radio include working for USA Today, The Learning Channel, WJA-TV7, WMAR/Baltimore, Blindfold Magazine, and more. As a freelance documentary producer, she covered Latin American politics prevalent in the mid-1980’s and early 90’s. She volunteers at KIND (Kids in Need of Defense) as a Spanish translator to help unaccompanied children and minors gain legal counsel and to immigrate safely.

Kristine Grow, Board of Directors

Kristine Grow is a senior communications expert with more than 25 years of experience in defining and defending corporate reputations. Throughout her career, she has led an array of communications initiatives involving media relations, internal communications, crisis communications, executive visibility, community relations, public affairs and digital media. Today she is Senior Vice President of Communications for AHIP in Washington, D.C. She has a life-long love for the written word, and for poetry in particular. She has published two chapbooks of poetry, led several workshops for adults, and participated in numerous spoken word events. A native of Philadelphia, she relocated to northern Virginia with her family in 2011.

Chris Kain, Board of Directors

Chris Kain is the founder and editor of the non profit news site, The DC Line. Prior he was Managing Editor for the Current Newspapers from 1991-2017. Chris received his BA in Journalism and Political Science from American University, where he was also editor in chief of the student paper, the AU Eagle. He’s a regular attendee at all types of cultural events, particularly theater.

Kristina Miggiani, Board of Directors

Kristina Miggiani is a Maltese lawyer and poet, working in the area of financial integrity at the International Monetary Fund. She is a graduate of the University of Malta and Harvard Law School. She has been writing poetry since she was 10 years old and in her youth won national poetry competitions in Malta and recently won a story slam competition in DC.

Hope Greenleaf, Board of Directors

Hope completed her Bachelors Degree in Music Education at Millersville University in 2011, and taught choir and general music for the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. from 2011 to 2014. Hope obtained two teaching certifications and has experience performing in a variety of ensembles and solo clarinet recitals, as well as producing many student performances. She has extensive training and experience working with children of all ages and abilities. Hope’s passion for music and love for children led her to found Tunes 4 Tots® in 2014, of which she remains the CEO. In 2020 Hope was accepted into the Female Founder Collective. Hope is a passionate advocate for arts education and is dedicated to the pursuit of lifelong learning in the arts.

Gregory Fairbanks, Board of Directors

Greg Fairbanks has been a Washington, DC resident since 2003 and lives in the neighborhood of Bloomingdale with his wife, three children, one dog, and two turtles.  He works as a managing director and tax lawyer for a major accounting firm by day, and moonlights as a volunteer with the Boy Scouts of America. He is also a national leader in his firm’s LGBTQ+ business resource group. Greg’s middle son is a past participant in Day Eight’s Writing Camp and he is committed to assisting with expansion of Day Eight’s educational programs to ensure that under-resourced families and youth can benefit from those programs.

Gregory Luce, Board of Directors

Gregory Luce is the author of the chapbooks Signs of Small Grace (Pudding House Publications) and Drinking Weather (Finishing Line Press), and the collection Memory and Desire (Sweatshoppe Publications). His poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals, and in the anthologies Living in Storms (Eastern Washington University Press) and Bigger Than They Appear (Accents Publishing). He lives in Washington, D.C. where he works for the National Geographic Society. He is the 2014 winner of the Larry Neal Writers Award, awarded by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Joshua Dadeboe, Accountant – ex officio Board of Directors

Joshua Dadeboe is an accountant working and living in Washington, D.C. He joined the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) as an auditor in 2011. Prior to joining USAC, he worked in public accounting for two and half years after earning his undergraduate degree in Accounting from Robert Morris University (PA).

Stuart Anderson, Advisory Board member

The founder and director of Family & Friends of Incarcerated People (FFOIP), Stuart W. Anderson was born, raised, and matured in Washington, D.C. He is a proud father, and caring grandfather, and works with children, individuals, and organizations, to develop, manage, implement, and evaluate project activities and workshops for the children of incarcerated parents and other at-risk populations. His formal activist work began in 1993 at the Central facility of Lorton, motivated by a personal desire to continue his parental duties even from within the confines of prison. Stuart was educated thru the DC Public School system, and is a graduate of the University of the District of Columbia. In 1998 he received a second degree from UDC – a Business management degree, awarded with honors. In January, 2005 his work made the cover of the Washington Post Magazine – “A Father’s Conviction.” Since his release in 2008, Stuart has conducted lectures, seminars, workshops and forums designed to address mass incarceration and to benefit the children of incarcerated parents. He has been recipient of recognition and awards including from the Office on Returning Citizen Affairs for his work with those returning home from prison (2012), the Port In the Storm award from the Washington Peace Center (2013), the Distinguished Service Award from the Metropolitan Washington Public Health Association (2015), and the Legacy Forward Award from the Mayor’s Leadership Institute (2017). He is an organizer of the annual Rev. Dr., Martin Luther King Jr., Peace Walk and Parade in SE Washington, DC and the Ward 8 Committeeman of the DC Democratic State Committee.

Ethelbert Miller, Advisory Board member

E. Ethelbert Miller is a literary activist. He is the board chairperson of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), and Provisions Library for Social Change. He is a board member of The Writer’s Center and editor of Poet Lore magazine. Since 1974, he has been the director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University. Mr. Miller is the former chair of the Humanities Council of Washington, D.C. and a former core faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars at Bennington College. His recent publications include, How We Sleep On The Nights We Don’t Make Love (2004), and The 5th Inning (2009).

Grace Cavalieri, Advisory Board member

Grace Cavalieri is the poet laureate for the state of Maryland. Author of 26 books and chapbooks of poetry, the latest are What The Psychic Said (Goss Publishing 2020;) Showboat (Goss Publishing, 2019;), Other Voices, Other Lives (ASP, 2017;) and a Memoir; Life Upon The Wicked Stage (Nerw Academia/Scarity, 2015.) She has had 26 plays produced on American stages. Grace teaches poetry workshops throughout the country at numerous colleges. She produced and hosted “The Poet and the Poem,” weekly, on WPFW-FM (1977-1997) presenting 2,000 poets to the nation. She now presents this series to public radio from the Library of Congress via NPR satellite and Pacifica Radio celebrating 42 years on air in 2019. Grace has received 2013 George Garrett Award, the Pen-Fiction Award, the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Silver Medal, and awards from the National Commission on Working Women, the WV Commission on Women, the American Association of University Women, The DC Poet Laureate Award from Dolores Kendrick, the Paterson lifetime Achievement Award, and more. She won a Paterson Excellence Award for What I Would do for Love, and The Bordighera Poetry Prize for Water on the Sun. She received the inaugural Columbia Merit Award for “significant contributions to poetry.” Grace’s career in broadcasting began as founding core staff of WPFW-FM, moving to Associate Director Education/ Children’s programming PBS, in charge of the daytime schedule; then, Program Officer, National Endowment for the Humanities & Head of Children’s Media funding. She founded two poetry presses in Washington DC that are still thriving. She is presently poetry columnist for The Washington Independent Review of Books. Her Papers are in the George Washington University Gelman Library Special Collections. Her teaching career began with establishing writing programs at Antioch College’s east coast campuses, to Asst. Director St. Mary College of Maryland’s Annual Poetry Festival and Workshops (1977-2005,) among others. She writes full-time in Annapolis, Maryland where she had lived with her late husband, sculptor Kenneth Flynn (1930-2013.) They have four grown daughters.