Board of Directors
Quita Sullivan (Montaukett/Shinnecock) is the program director for Theater at New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) where she leads the National Theater Project, supporting the creation and touring of devised, ensemble-based theater. She holds Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in Theatre from Knox College and SUNY Stony Brook, respectively, as well as a Juris Doctorate from Wayne State University Law School. Before law school, she worked as a Stage Manager at ETA in Chicago and was the first stage manager for ETA's production of Checkmates by Ron Milner, directed by Woodie King, Jr. She later worked at Great Lakes Performing Artist Associates, a not-for-profit artist management office, creating contracts, and managing booking and performing fees for musicians in the Great Lakes area. After law school, she practiced environmental justice law for 10 years in Detroit and Boston. She is a senior fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program and an alumna of the artEquity Facilitator Training. She is also a former Associated Grant Makers Diversity Fellow, the mission of which was to identify, recruit, and cultivate emerging practitioners of color who represent the next generation of philanthropic leaders and offer them training, support and strong community. She continues to work to support equity and inclusion at all levels of theater and grant making. She is a frequent speaker on supporting Indigenous Artists and Land Acknowledgement. Prior to joining NEFA as a staff member, Sullivan was an advisor for NEFA's Native Arts Program. Outside of work, she continues to develop her own artistic talents as a beadwork artist. Sullivan is Of Counsel to and an enrolled member of the Montaukett tribe.
Photo by Jeffrey Lyons Filiault.
Board of Directors
Susan is the Board Secretary of Alaska Pacific University (designated as a Native Student Serving Institution and working toward becoming a Tribal University), Board Member of Cook Inlet Native Head Start, and the Alaska Children's Trust. She has served as Chair of the Alaska Humanities Forum, the United Way of Anchorage, Best Beginnings Alaska, University of Alaska Foundation and served on the national Native Americans in Philanthropy Board. She is also a past member of the University of Alaska Anchorage's College of Education and College of Arts and Sciences advisory committees, Philanthropy Northwest, and the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education.
Tracey Knuckles joined Bloomberg Philanthropies in January 2016. Tracey helps cities develop strategies for strengthening the creative sector, and optimizing its impact through economic development, cultural marketing and tourism initiatives, and other key civic projects.
Prior to joining Bloomberg Philanthropies, she served as Deputy Commissioner & General Counsel for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), the nation's largest funder of the arts. At DCLA, Tracey managed the agency's core operations and guided the agency through a host of strategic reforms and programmatic initiatives. A trusted advisor to the Commissioner, elected officials, and community stakeholders, she provided guidance on topics ranging from non-profit governance and capital project management to land use and public art.
Before DCLA, Tracey was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, and served as Deputy Chief of the Asset Forfeiture Unit. Prior to that, she was a litigation associate in private practice. Tracey earned a Juris Doctor from Tulane Law School and a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Virginia.
Kathy Mouacheupao (she/her/hers) joined the MRAC team as executive director in June 2018. She has been an MRAC applicant, panelist, and board member and brings all of those perspectives to her role.
She is passionate about the intersection of arts, culture and community and has dedicated her personal and professional life to the field. Prior to MRAC, Mouacheupao served as Program Officer for Creative Placemaking with the Twin Cities Local Initiatives Corporation. In her earlier career, she was the Executive Director for the Center for Hmong Arts and Talent. She was a 2016 Roy Wilkins Fellow and a 2011 Bush Leadership Fellow. Currently, she is Vice Chair for the Forum of Regional Arts Councils of MN, and serves as a member of MN Citizens for the Arts Board, the Racial Equity Funders Collaborative, the We Are Still Here MN Philanthropy Task Force, and the Building More Philanthropy with Purpose Giving Circle.
Beyond her work at the Arts Commission, Anna participated in the development of the first national Native Arts & Cultures Convening and companion federal resource guide produced in February 2020. She has been a panelist for other local, regional, and national funders, including the National Endowment for the Arts. She is currently part of the Circle of Advisors for the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies' Strengthening State Arts Agency Relationships with Native Communities initiative. In 2022, Anna developed the foundational Tribal Consultation Policy for the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the first and currently only of the total 56 state and jurisdictional arts agencies in the United States.
Bré Rivera is a Black trans femme who has dedicated over 20 years of movement building for Black trans communities. She is a multi-published researcher working with both Wayne State University and University of Michigan schools of Public Health, and a writer and co-creator of The Femme Queen Chronicle, a series about the lives of Black trans women living in Detroit, Michigan.
In 2020, Bré launched the Black Trans Fund, incubated by Groundswell Fund, the first fund centering joy and liberatory practices in Black transgender and gender-expansive communities. Black trans leaders drive the mission and vision of the fund, create programming and make thoughtful grants to support Black trans joy and thriving. During its inaugural year, BTF moved $500,000 to Black trans communities. She is now founder of Building Transformation and Joyous Futures.
Before her time at Black Trans Fund, Bré was a founder and executive director of Trans Sistas of Color Project-Detroit, the first Black trans-led organization in Michigan. Bré is very active in various movements, serving as a board member for Positive Women's Network-USA, Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico, Third Wave Fund, and Grantmakers for Girls of Color.
Robert Smith III (he/him) is Surdna Foundation's Senior Program Officer of the Thriving Cultures Program, leading a $10 million portfolio focused on unleashing the radical imagination of artists and culture workers in the service of racial justice. He manages the Program's grantmaking, learning strategies, and collaborations with grantees, partners, and funders that further the Foundation's social justice mission.
Robert's work is guided by the long struggle for freedom as summed up in these two quotes. “As a culture worker who belongs to an oppressed people, my job is to make revolution irresistible.” — Toni Cade Bambara, Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara
“Without new visions, we don't know what to build, only what to knock down. We not only end up confused, rudderless, and cynical, but we forget that making a revolution is not a series of clever maneuvers and tactics, but a process that can and must transform us.” – Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Before joining Surdna in 2019, he served as Associate Director of the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago, IL, the only cultural institution devoted to telling the story of public housing in the United States. Robert has held positions at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Walker Art Center, the Minnesota Historical Society, and OutRight Action International. He has served on the boards of Project Fierce Chicago, a grassroots response to LGBTQ youth homelessness; PFund Foundation, an LGBTQ community foundation based in Minneapolis; and the Brown University Alumni Association.
Born and raised in South Florida, he is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Minnesota.
Marissa Tirona is President of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, where she leads the organization's efforts to move money and power to immigrant and refugee communities and galvanizes funders to resource a robust immigration and refugee rights power-building ecosystem. Previously, she was a program officer at the Ford Foundation, where she managed a multi-issue, multi-country portfolio as part of the BUILD initiative, Ford's flagship program designed to strengthen organizations and networks core to the global social justice infrastructure. Before joining Ford, Marissa led the Blue Shield of California Foundation's efforts to address, prevent, and ultimately end domestic violence and promote health equity in California. Prior to that, she was senior project director at CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, where she led comprehensive, multiyear leadership initiatives. Marissa currently serves on the boards of the Foundation for Child Development, Grantmakers in the Arts, United Philanthropy Forum, and Change Elemental. She holds a J.D. from Santa Clara University School of Law, is a member of the California State Bar, and has a B.A. in English literature with a concentration in women's studies from Swarthmore College.
Carlton Turner is an artist, agriculturalist, researcher, and co-founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture).
Turner serves on the board of First Peoples Fund, Imagining America, Project South, and the National Black Food and Justice Alliance. A member of the We Shall Overcome Fund Advisory Committee at the Highlander Center for Research and Education and is the former Executive Director of Alternate ROOTS, he is also a founding partner of the Intercultural Leadership Institute.
Turner is an Interdisciplinary Research Fellow with the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation and was named to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts YBCA100. He is a former Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow and former Cultural Policy Fellow at the Creative Placemaking Institute at Arizona State University's Herberger Institute for Design in the Arts.
Turner is also co-founder and co-artistic director, with his brother Maurice Turner, of the group M.U.G.A.B.E.E. (Men Under Guidance Acting Before Early Extinction), a Mississippi-based performing arts group that blends of jazz, hip-hop, spoken word poetry and soul music together with non-traditional storytelling.
Sixto Wagan is the Project Director for the Greater Houston BIPOC Arts Network and Fund (BANF). Using the collective impact approach to social change as a model, BANF is structured as a community-led collaborative fund and a resource network guided by arts leaders, arts practitioners, and funders. Acknowledging historical underinvestment in Houston BIPOC cultures and art communities, the initiative will cede decision-making power about grants to the very communities impacted by funding decisions.
Previously, he founded and developed the Center for Art and Social Engagement (CASE) in the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts at the University of Houston. At CASE, Wagan developed pilot programs, community partnerships, and research initiatives that centered creativity and community in impact conversations for 21st century cities. He also led DiverseWorks, serving as Artistic Director, Co-Executive Director and Performing Arts Curator. During his tenure, he nurtured artists, communities and emerging arts organizations through commissions and place-based initiatives.
Wagan continues to expand his work as a strategic visioning and cultural equity facilitator.
He has been a speaker and moderator at national convenings around topics of equity, leadership development, transition planning, and community stewardship.
Marcus F. Walton serves as President & CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations.
Walton has over a decade of practice in both nonprofit management and the ontological learning model. Walton specializes in operationalizing conceptual frameworks; racial equity facilitation and training; leadership and management strategy; stakeholder engagement; program development and navigating philanthropy.
In his previous role as Director of Racial Equity Initiatives for Borealis Philanthropy, Marcus lead the Racial Equity Initiatives team and worked in partnership with 18 nationally-networked, philanthropy-serving grantee organizations to move past the “transactional” nature of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to a unified movement which prioritizes strategies that close gaps in access to opportunity, resources and well-being (across all categories of gender, identity, sexual orientation, class and ability).
Before that, Marcus served as Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for the Association of Black Foundation Executives (ABFE), where he oversaw its operations, HR and staff development functions, including the overall strategy, conceptualization and administration of racial equity programming.
Prior to ABFE, he combined his organizing experience and passion for public service in the role of Program Officer of Community Responsive Grantmaking with the Cleveland Foundation and Sr. Program Officer with Neighborhood Progress, Inc.
Marcus is a Newfield Network-trained ontological coach, with additional training in the Action Learning systems coaching model. Marcus received a Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Science from Bowling Green State University and has continued graduate studies in public administration at Georgia State University's Andrew Young School of Public Policy as well as Rutgers University's School of Public Affairs and Administration.