Search Results for: 97

Consuelo Tupper, Executive Director

Consuelo is an interdisciplinary artist and writer born and raised in Chile. After receiving her Bachelor in Fine Arts, she specialized in the areas of social practice and artistic education. Always looking for connections between visual literacy, critical thinking, and community development, Consuelo has spent the past fifteen years organizing and supporting projects that use Art as a tool for social change. In 2019, she came to the Bay Area under a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue her Master in Fine Arts at CCA, where she focused on issues around migration, storytelling, and epistemological justice. Her relationship with La Peña started as soon as she arrived to California, when she participated in several events that responded to the Chilean social uprising of 2019. Since then, La Peña has meant to her a place of congregation and belonging, which is why she is happy to now be serving as Executive Director.

Christina Azahar, Advancement Manager

Christina Azahar is a scholar, educator, and musician of Salvadoran descent with expertise in Latinx music, ethnic studies, gender and sexuality, and feminist theory. Born and raised on Muscogee land in Milledgeville, GA, she moved to the Bay Area in 2013 and holds a PhD in ethnomusicology from UC Berkeley. During her time at Cal she traveled throughout Latin America and received a Fulbright IIE grant to study in Chile for a year, where completed a dissertation examining the coalition-building and worldmaking capacities of feminist musical practices in Santiago and Valparaíso, including talleres de canto femenino cuequero, women’s cantautoría, and music festivals such as Coordinadora Femfest, Ruidosa Fest, and La Matria Fest. Christina also brings experience in cultural stewardship through internships with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and the Smithsonian Latino Center. She has been involved with La Peña since 2019 as an archive and events volunteer, and is thrilled to have the opportunity to cultivate networks of support for the vibrant arts practices and communities represented in this institution. 

Rocío Cancel, Programs Coordinator

Rocío Cancel, originally from Borikén (colonially known as Puerto Rico), is a cultural worker with a background in social justice driven arts organizing, street performance, and event production. As La Peña’s Programs Coordinator, she oversees our weekly roots arts classes and facilitates community space for local organizers and jams. They also coordinate our volunteer program and support in our event productions. Rocío is passionate about working within the intersections of arts, social activism, and community solidarity, and is very vocal about advocating for decolonization. On her free time she enjoys attending local performances, discussing decolonial struggles with her international peers, climbing, photography, reading, and finding their peace surrounded by nature.

Corey Raynor, Production Manager

Corey has been producing Latin music concerts and dance events for the last 10 years and is the founder of Dance San Francisco. Originally from Los Angeles, and of Korean and Jewish descent, he has lived in many places, but has been fortunate enough to call the Bay Area home since 1998. His varied passions and interests have led him into careers as an educator, performer, and audiovisual technician, and he is beyond excited to unify all of his experiences into one role as the Productions Manager for La Peña. His admiration for the community center began when he attended his first La Peña event in 2007 and lived around the corner with artists who would perform there. Later, he would teach dance classes at La Peña for adults with disabilities. It is a dream come true for him to be part of the team charged with upholding La Peña’s mission and standards into the future.

Mel Octaviano, Marketing & Community Outreach Associate

mel is a cuir filmmaker, artist, and educator from el valle de san fernando, CA. They received a Bachelor’s of Art degree from UC Berkeley in Gender studies and two minors each in Education and Journalism. While at UC Berkeley, mel dedicated their time to the Multicultural Community Center (MCC), first as a member of the Media and Outreach team and most recently as the Marketing and Media Manager. mel’s professional background is rooted in equitable and accessible media production. They use popular education as a tool to preserve, nurture, and amplify radical storytelling in diverse communities. mel dedicates their work to all the cuir trans babies living for free worlds and just futures. Their art curiously and courageously focuses on images of their childhood, foods that bring them joy, and memories that bring them close to their familiar homelands of Coatetelco, Morelos, Mexico. Since moving to the east bay area in 2015, La Peña Cultural Center instantly became a place of familiarity and warmth. The center reminded them of their hometown with all the lively music and art, food, and people. mel is grateful to be joining La Peña cultural center’s important work in preserving and celebrating cultural traditions in the Berkeley community and beyond.

Ana Fox-Hodess, Chair

Born and raised in the East Bay, Ana returned to Berkeley in 2015, following six years working, organizing, and studying in Santiago de Chile. Ana’s path to Chile and back runs through La Peña — her parents and grandparents were involved in early organizing at La Peña, and that family history as well as the family friends from La Peña who settled in Santiago after the dictatorship drew her there. While in Chile, Ana co-founded and ran a community mural workshop with a group of young Chileans, collaborating with local environmental groups, community centers, and family members of detenidos desaparecidos to amplify their struggles through street art. Since returning to the Bay Area, the community of La Peña has been an important nexus for Ana’s activism. She participates actively in the Asamblea Chilena NorCal, a community group formed in 2019 to support the popular uprising in Chile. Professionally, Ana is a media producer with experience in the arts and higher education. She is a former rank-and-file union activist and currently works as the communications and outreach coordinator at UC Berkeley’s Institute for Research on Labor Employment. Ana has expertise in community organizing, labor relations, project management, strategic communications, and media relations. She holds a BA in Latin American Studies and Visual Arts from Brown University, and an MFA in Media Arts from the Universidad de Chile.

Fernanda Bustamante, Secretary

Born in Oakland to Peruvian immigrant parents, Fernanda began her performance career at age three, when she started studying the violin. The first fifteen years of her musical education were largely classical, but once she was introduced to the vibrant and diverse latinx communities at La Peña, her education took a marked turn towards traditional and folkloric music and arts. Since then, Fernanda’s life has often revolved around La Peña Cultural Center where, as a performer and student at La Peña, she has participated in hundreds of events and classes throughout the last 20 years. About one decade ago, she added “dancer” to her performance resume, when she joined the De Rompe y Raja Cultural Association, an Afro-Peruvian music and dance troupe.

Today, Fernanda furthers her commitment to social justice in her professional life as an immigration attorney and founding partner of Fuerza Immigration Lawyers, representing clients before the various immigration agencies. She completed her undergraduate studies with a B.A. in Psychology from UC Berkeley and graduated cum laude from the University of San Francisco School of Law. She shares a music- and flower-filled home in Oakland with her musician husband and children, who are already frequent visitors of La Peña.

Berklee Sati

Berklee has been drawn to Latinx culture since her Mom used to practice Spanish with cassette tapes in their family minivan. She started learning Spanish herself in 7^th grade, but it wasn’t until 2022 that she learned her maternal grandfather grew up a native Spanish-speaker in a long-established Southern California Mexican-American family. Berklee first learned about La Peña as a Cal student in 2005. When she studied abroad in Santiago de Chile the next year to improve her Spanish, she fell in love with Chilean culture, especially the folk music and its strong ties to social justice and activism. After she graduated, Berklee worked with a local nonprofit organization on an international campaign to stop construction of five megadams in Chilean Patagonia, and through this work was able to travel to Chile again, further strengthening her appreciation for the country. A lifelong dancer, Berklee reconnected with La Peña in 2022 when the monthly ¡Baila! parties began. As a single parent, she’s especially grateful to have a place she can bring her 9-year-old son for family-friendly cultural events. Berklee works in philanthropy at San Francisco Foundation, and has been volunteering with La Peña since 2023 to support fundraising strategy and data management. In her free time, she likes to cook, bake, read, knit, dance, camp, practice Spanish, make jewelry, and most of all, spend time with her son. She’s passionate about racial and gender equity, women’s rights, environmental justice, and helping other survivors of domestic violence live safe, happy, and empowered lives.

Paloma Salazar, Governance Committee

Paloma has been involved with La Peña for over 30 years. Born and raised in Oakland, she spent her childhood at La Peña. Her father, a Chilean exile, moved to the Bay Area in 1978 and is still closely connected to La Peña, along with her mother, a former Oakland public school teacher. Previously, Paloma served as a member of La Peña 2nd Gen, a group of young adults, many of whom grew up in La Peña, to revitalize the lounge space during the economic recession between 2010 and 2015. She had also house managed, volunteered, ran the sound and lighting board, and supported during the Covid-19 vaccine rollout in Summer 2021. Paloma attended Occidental College in Los Angeles earning her degree in Sociology and earned her Master of Social Work from Cal State University, East Bay. Her love of the arts and education drives her passion for creating a more equitable world. She creates abstract visual art under the handle Artist Warrior. Paloma works as a school social worker in Oakland School District.

Carolina Calderón, Treasurer

Carolina Calderón is a Chilean born software engineer who is passionate about technology and how it interfaces with society to improve lives. In 2014 she gave birth to her daughter, Laura, and founded her company, DENTIDESK, a cloud based software management solution for dental practices. Today, DENTIDESK has a presence in over 20 countries throughout the Americas and has developed other cloud based platforms related to health administration such as MEDICALDESK, VETDESK, and CALDESK. Her relationship with La Peña started in 2003 when she first lived in San Francisco and studied at UC Berkeley, enjoying many of the cultural activities. After returning to Chile for nine years, she moved to New York in 2019. It was during the pandemic Carolina realized she was greatly missing the community she had built while living in the Bay Area, and so in August 2022 returned home to San Francisco. She is determined to prioritize supporting efforts that advocate intercultural understanding and believes there is no better place to do this work than La Peña.

Jazmin Morelos, Fundraising Committee

Jazmin Morelos strongly believes that art and culture should be at the forefront of our society. She is a leader in the Latino ERG (Employee Resource Group), and has held her  commitment to promoting diversity and inclusion both at work and in her personal life. During the day, she works at Credit Karma as a Technical Program Manager for the office of the CTO. Jazmin is also a mother, podcast host, photographer, and a cultural producer. She is an Advisory Board Member for Berkeley City College’s technology department. Her alma mater is San Francisco State University, where she earned a Bachelor and a Masters in Communications Studies. Jazmin is passionate about art, culture, social justice, access to education and overall improving the quality of the life we live.

Josephine Miller-Williams

Jo is a lawyer, linguist, and friend. Growing up as a racially othered, mixed race and Black woman in a growingly Indigenous and Latine Southern California during what some have now termed the “Juan Crow” era, she found community and fulfillment as a translator-interpreter, bringing language access to immigrant communities in the Central Valley. Her experiences as a certified Spanish interpreter brought her a deep appreciation for the cultures and foods of Southern Mexico. Jo holds the distinction of being one of the only Black federally-certified Spanish interpreters, of any national background, in the entire United States, and among only a handful of state-certified Spanish interpreters with afro or afroindigenous roots. During law school, Jo externed for several prominent international agencies including the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, Chile. After graduating with a degree in both Public Interest and Public International Law at UCLA Law, Jo left the US to complete a fellowship in International Data Privacy law in Europe. She returned stateside in late 2020 and has been working in local government since that time. She has collaborated extensively with language access organizations, the Salinas Valley chapter of LULAC, and indigenous rights groups such as CIELO. Her passion is for decolonial justice, language access, history of racism, afrodescendant, afroindigenous and indigenous rights across the Americas.  

Production Team: Oscar Autie, Pablo Quintero, Mariola Fernández, Gustavo Soriano, Jennifer Soto, Daniel Nghiem, Centli Pérez, Jeanette Alanis, Clara Pérez, Fred Aube, Itzel Rodríguez, Kathy Orozco, Jiovani Valdivia, Anthony Valdivia, Luis Medina, Brenda Martínez, Ezequiel Casas, Angélica Casas, Maya Simon. Special thanks to all of our event staff and volunteers for making our work not only possible but impactful and memorable every time!

Part-time Staff and Contractors: Deborah Badhia (Bookkeeper), Bob Spies (Website Development), Larry Hester (Custodian).

Archive Committee: Francisco Núñez Capriles, Ana Fox-Hodess, Christina Azahar, Alex Leenson, Biel Delgado.

Facility Committee: Jaime Salazar, Víctor Martínez, Paul Chin.