Staff & Board
Staff
Jil Weinstock
Executive Director
Jil Weinstock is an experienced executive and dedicated arts professional who facilitates inclusivity by championing innovative programming that urges audiences to investigate, engage, and create. Throughout her 15-year career, she has held positions at the Whitney Museum, Drawing Center, and, most recently, the Children’s Museum of the Arts, where she helped shape exhibitions, programming, and financial sustainability that reached and engaged new audiences. Represented by the Winston Wachter Gallery in NYC and the Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, Weinstock is a practicing artist who has completed residencies at the American Academy in Rome and the Museum of Art and Design in New York. Her work has been exhibited internationally and written about in the New York Times; The New Yorker; Art in America; New York Magazine. Weinstock received a joint MFA from the University of California Berkeley and the San Francisco Art Institute in 1995. She can be reached at jil@baxterst.org.
Sydney Ellison
Programs Manager
Sydney Ellison is a Queens-based artist and curator. Her studio and curatorial practices share many of the same concerns, primarily addressing gaps and intersections within American identity. She received her BFA in Photography from Pratt Institute. She has previously worked closely with The Photographer’s Green Book. She can be reached at sydney@baxterst.org.
Tejas Venkat
Gallery and Special Events Coordinator
Tejas is a public health advocate passionate about human rights, drug policy, prison abolition; and art as resistance philosophy. Her expertise lies in health disparities research and forming evidence-based policy solutions rooted in the human rights framework, to address the needs of marginalized communities. She received a Master of Public Health in Health Policy and a Certificate in Social Determinants of Health from Columbia University. She later completed the Business of Contemporary Art program through Christie’s Education. In her role at Baxter St, she hopes to use her previous experience in government and nonprofits to spur conversations about equity in the art world and champion an organization whose focus is amplifying intersectional programming. She can be reached at tejas@baxterst.org.
Ekaterina In
Development Associate
Ekaterina In brings a unique blend of experience to her professional and academic endeavors. She used to be a professional ballroom dancer for 15 years. Having parted with her career, she seeked new challenges. Ekaterina obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Public Relations and Advertising and later moved to New York to pursue a Master’s degree in Art and Politics at New York University. Her career in arts nonprofit started during her last year at NYU when she joined a performing arts organization, Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation. Ekaterina believes in the versatility of experiences, now applying her skills in art nonprofit development, donor relations, and event management. She can be reached at ekaterina@baxterst.org.
Thomas Brown
Communications Consultant
Thomas Brown is a communications consultant specializing in media relations and strategic communications for the cultural sector. He has international experience promoting museum and gallery exhibitions, public art, cultural diplomacy, non-profit organizations, arts businesses, and luxury brands. Believing that each campaign deserves a tailored approach, he strives to create meaningful connections between clients and the journalists and influencers who tell their stories. Since starting his consultancy, some of Thomas’ clients have included Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Dia Art Foundation, CUE Art Foundation, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, The Ranch, the International Center for Art and Landscape at Vassivière Island, Ceysson & Bénétière, and numerous others.
Thomas holds a Bachelor of Arts in Visual and Critical Studies from Hampshire College, a Certificate in Management from Harvard Business School, and a Certificate in French Language from École Polytechnique. He has completed courses at Amherst College, Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Smith College. Thomas is a Young Patron of the French Institute Alliance Française and a member of the French-American Chamber of Commerce. He is also an artist, whose films and videos have been exhibited at Cinéma La Clef in Paris, France as well as at the Flat Earth Film Festival in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland.
He can be reached at THOMAS@THOMAS-BROWN.INFO.
Lesley Cannady
Advancement Officer
For over a decade, Lesley has collaborated with artists and arts organizations to realize their creative and operational goals through fundraising and strategic planning. Previously, she oversaw foundation and education fundraising for The Museum of Modern Art and was a senior development officer for The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lesley received her M.A. from Columbia University. She can be reached at lesley@baxterst.org.
Ting Y. Lin
Digital Strategist
Ting Y. Lin is a curious cultural strategist with a fluid, interdisciplinary philosophy specializing in digital communications and strategic planning. She has collaborated with artists, thinkers, and artist-centered organizations to build socially engaged projects, deepen community engagement, and elevate artistic narratives at the intersection of culture and social justice. She can reached at ting@kaishuconcept.co.
Board of Directors
Michi Jigarjian
President
Michi Jigarjian understands the unifying power of art. She is an unmatched leader in spearheading social impact and creative initiatives that strengthen and engage communities in both the for-profit and non profit sectors. As Partner and Chief Social Impact Officer in 7G Group, Jigarjian employs socially responsible investment models to create sustainable long-term projects in underserved communities that have yielded tremendous results. Jigarjian’s launch of The Rockaway Hotel in 2020 has been widely recognized and celebrated for its art and culture focus and revitalizing presence in the community.
Jigjarjian’s contributions to the artistic and cultural fabric of New York have been further cemented through her leadership on boards in New York City and beyond. Since 2011, she has been president of Baxter St at CCNY. Under her tenure, Baxter St, established in 1884, has become the premier incubator for diverse and emerging lens-based creators. Jigarjian also serves on the board of the Brooklyn Museum and National YoungArts Foundation with a focused role supporting community engagement and advancing DEIA at both organizations. She is a trustee of the Art Production Fund and is a
representative of the 7G Foundation.
Jigjarjian is a dynamic educator and creative force. She was on faculty at ICP-Bard MFA program, her alma mater, for seven years. She is co-founder of New Draft Collective, her artistic practice, and the project-based publishing press Secretary Press. In addition, Jigjarjian has authored several books, including Writing as Practice, How We Do Both: Art and Motherhood, and has contributed to and edited the three-volume series Mold.
Michi Jigarjian is a bi cultural first-generation Mexican-American who works and lives in New York with her husband Charles and three children, George, James, and Rose.
Daniel Handal
Vice President
Daniel Handal is a Honduran-born artist who lives and works in New York City. His work explores issues of gender, sexuality, identity, and representation and has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe; Deborah Colton Gallery, Houston, Texas; The powerHouse Arena, New York City; the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney; MKII, London; and many others. Handal’s work has been written about in publications including The Huffington Post, Slate and Hyperallergic. He has participated in residencies at The Millay Colony for the Arts, Austerlitz, New York; the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Ithaca, New York; and the Center for Photography at Woodstock, New York. Handal currently serves on the board of directors of Baxter St at CCNY and is represented by CLAMP in New York. His website is danielhandal.com
Lorraine Gracey
Secretary
Board Secretary Lorraine Gracey is employed by Tiffany & Co. as a media relations and speech writer. As a consultant she has worked with such clients as Chanel, Estee Lauder, Architectural Digest, among others. She has been a contributing writer to photography magazines, covering various aspects of the field, from fashion to stock photography and photojournalism. A graduate of the University of Iowa, she has been a member of Baxter St at CCNY for 18 years and has studied at ICP and the 92nd Street Y. Her website is lorrainegracey.com.
Cynthia Bittenfield
Board Member at Large
Cynthia Bittenfield pursues projects that shed light on the human cost of war whether dealing with the issue of post-traumatic stress, documenting battlefields and sites of atrocity, or considering life on the home front. The discovery of her father’s wartime scrapbook after he died was the spark that ignited this new direction in her work. Bittenfield has exhibited nationally and internationally. She has been awarded with residencies with The Wassaic Project and Picture Berlin. Bittenfield is a grant recipient from the School of Visual Arts, New York, where she received her MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media. She holds a Masters of Education in Instructional Technology from the University of Illinois and has worked developing multi-media and instructor-led training at Arthur Andersen & Co. and Microsoft Corporation. She lives and works in New York City and is currently on the board of Baxter St at CCNY. Her website is www.bittenfield.com.
Zoë Buckman
Board Member at Large
Zoe Buckman (b. 1985 Hackney, East London) is a multi-disciplinary artist working in sculpture, installation, and photography, exploring themes of Feminism, mortality, and equality. Buckman’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions including Every Curve at Papillion Art, Los Angeles and Present Life at Garis and Hahn Gallery, New York. Notable group exhibitions include: Harlem Postcards, The Studio Museum, Harlem; Off The Wall, Monique Meloche, Chicago; Making and Unmaking, Camden Arts Centre, London; Truth To Power, the Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia, Framing Beauty, Grunwald University, Indiana; For Freedoms, Jack Shainman Gallery New York; Game On! The Children’s Museum of the Arts, New York; To Be Young Gifted and Black, Goodman Gallery, South Africa; New Abstraction, Leila Heller Gallery, New York. Buckman was a featured artist at Pulse Projects New York 2014, and Miami 2016, and was included in the curated Soundscape Park at Art Basel Miami Beach 2016. Buckman completed an artist residency at Mana Contemporary. Public works include a mural at Live Arts, Chelsea, New York in collaboration with Natalie Frank which will be installed Dec 2016. Buckman studied at the International Center of Photography (ICP) and lives and works in New York. Her website is zoebuckman.com
Reena Jana
Board Member at Large
Reena is a second-generation Indian-Filipina-American. Currently, she is Head of Content Strategy for Responsible Innovation at Google and focuses on intersectional innovation—how designing for underrepresented groups can unlock new user experiences for all users Reena has held various positions at Google, including Head of Product Inclusion and Creative Lead for Business Inclusion. She’s been deeply involved in various efforts across the company related to the development of human-centric AI, including the People + AI Research initiative. Before Google, Reena was a product owner at IBM’s Design Lab, focusing on intrapreneurial employee engagement apps and content strategy (and earned a related design patent), as well as C-suite thought leadership. Prior to IBM, she was Executive Editor at frog design, where she led the firm’s external thought leadership and consulted on inclusive innovation content strategy with tech world clients. Before joining the tech world, she was the Innovation Department Editor at BusinessWeek, where she wrote about the value of new user experiences and business models found in emerging markets and within design for accessibility. Reena co-author of the book New Media Art (Taschen), which looked at creative uses of video games, websites, robotics, and hacking by artists.She’s advised and mentored startups and founders across industries, including Built NY and Owners.com (formerly Owners Network), and incubators such as New Inc., Matter Ventures, and Area 120. Reena holds a BA from Barnard College of Columbia University, an MA from Columbia’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and was a Fellow at Columbia Journalism School. A former editor, art critic, and tech journalist, Reena now collaborates with teams to create tools and resources that support value-driven innovation mentoring artists and creative technologists and mentoring artists and creative technologists. Throughout Reena’s career she has focused on inclusive and ethical innovation and design, as a journalist, consultant, product owner, strategist, creative director, curator, and editorial lead. Reena analyzes how culture, commerce and technology influence each other in positive ways to improve all peoples’ lives around the world and her mission is to provide engaging, actionable and accurate information to contribute to a more inclusive, productive future for computing, society and business. A former figure skater and varsity ice hockey player, she spends her spare time these days with her two boys and working toward her black belt in mixed martial arts, paddle boarding, and playing the piano. She is a board member of the Asiam American Arts Alliance.
LaVon Kellner
Board Member at Large
LaVon Kellner has a rich background in marketing, sales and entrepreneurship that led her from a top position at Hallmark Cards to Random House and Starbucks. In 1995, she became founding President of Ethis Communications, Inc., a medical communications company. In 2016, Kellner sold her stake in the companies she co-founded in order to pursue her great passion for the arts. She holds frequent salons in her home where artists, museum scholars, gallerists and collectors mingle together to talk about common interests and discuss fine art. Kellner’s memberships, committees, and Board positions include: Independent Curators International: Board Member; The National Arts Club: Art, Technology, Photography and Roundtable Committees; Friends Seminary: Contemporary Art Committee Co-Chair; Children’s Art Guild, Board Member; Aperture, Paul Strand Circle, Royal Academy America, Frick Museum, National Historic Preservation Society, Whitney Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA.
Gillian Laub
Board Member at Large
Gillian Laub (b.1975, New York) is a photographer and filmmaker based in New York. Laub has spent the past two decades investigating political conflicts, exploring complex family and community relationships, and challenging assumptions about cultural identity. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison with a degree in comparative literature before studying photography at the International Center of Photography, where her love of visual storytelling and family narratives began. Laub’s first monograph, Testimony (Aperture), began as a response to the media coverage during the second intifada in the Middle East. Laub spent over a decade working in Georgia exploring issues of lingering racism in the American South. This work became Laub’s first feature length, directed and produced, documentary film, Southern Rites that premiered on HBO. Her monograph, Southern Rites (Damiani) and traveling exhibition by the same title are being used for an educational outreach campaign, in schools and institutions across the country. Laub’s work is widely collected and exhibited, included in the collections at the International Center of Photography, New York; Museum of Fine Art, Houston; High Museum, Atlanta; Harvard Art Museum, Boston; Jewish Museum, New York; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC and a wide range of corporate and private collections. In 2014, Laub was the recipient of an Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship. She regularly photographs for The New York Times Magazine, TIME, and Vanity Fair, among many other publications. Laub lectures widely and has been interviewed on NPR, CNN, MSNBC, Good Morning America, and Times Talks.
Elissa Levy
Board Member at Large
Elissa Levy is a mixed media artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design. Her artwork combines photographs and sculpture, manipulating imagery and bringing a new sense to common-place materials. In 2018, she was one of the inaugural residents at The Oak Spring Garden Foundation, VA, returning in 2019 and 2024. In 2018, she participated in the Quirk+VisArts residency, Richmond, VA, which culminated in a solo exhibition at The Visual Arts Center of Richmond. Other solo projects include “Lock Her Up!” an exhibition in three parts under the umbrella title of “Legacy” at Theodore Art, NY, and an installation at the Children’s Museum of Art, NY. Her work is included in the Altoids Curiously Strong Collection, part of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY, permanent collection and has been exhibited at the New Museum, and the Luckman Center Gallery, Los Angeles, Consolidated Works, Seattle, Blue Star Arts Complex, San Antonio, Soo Visual, Minneapolis. She has also been included in group exhibitions at Charlie James Gallery, LA, Flag Art Foundation, NY, The Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, Field Projects, NY, Winkleman Gallery, NY, White Columns, NY, and G Fine Art, Washington, DC, NurtureArt, NY and Momenta Art, Brooklyn. She has participated in residencies at The Fashion Institute of Technology, NY, The Wassaic Project, NY, the Glenfiddich Artist in Residence Programme in the Scottish Highlands, and the Scottish Sculpture Workshop, Lumsden, and is a 2017 Belle Foundation Grant recipient. Levy has done extensive work with non-profit art spaces, including being on benefit committees for Art in General, Art F City, Children’s Museum of the Arts, Momenta Art, and NurtureArt, to name a few.
Vivien Lewit
Board Member at Large
Vivien Lewit is YouTube’s Global Head of Artist Relations. She directs a team of music ambassadors and experts in the field of digital music distribution focused on developing and executing strategies to support the growth of artists’ careers on YouTube. Vivien also oversees the company’s music content programming, including international live music events and special fan engagement activities. Before joining YouTube in March 2011, Vivien was an accomplished attorney in the recording industry. She specialized in music, digital rights and branded entertainment. Starting as an associate at the law firm of Rudolph & Beer, she eventually took a partnership at Davis Shapiro Lewit & Grabel. At both firms she structured and negotiated numerous multi-million dollar sponsorship, endorsement, branding, and live performance agreements with Fortune 500 companies and global media outlets alike. Vivien sits on the Executive Committee of She Is The Music, an industry wide non-profit, designed to empower female creators and increase the number of women working in music and, during its tenure, was a member of the Advisory Board of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, a leading think tank studying diversity and inclusion in entertainment through research and action focused projects. In prior years, Vivien served as a board member of the Country Music Association. In January 2021, Vivien was recognized by Billboard Magazine as an “Agent of Change” for her work spearheading YouTube’s Black Voices Fund initiatives and more. Vivien has consistently been listed among Billboard Magazine’s most powerful Women in Music and in 2019 she was named one of Variety’s coveted “New York Women of Impact” for her cross functional work in the tech and arts communities.
Roberta Marroquin
Board Member at Large
Born in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Roberta Marroquín is a renowned Mexican photographer. For nine years, Marroquín lived in Paris, a city famous for its photographic traditions, where she began her formal training as an artist. In 2008, after her residency in the City of Light, Marroquín moved to New York City to expand her vision through documentary, artistic, and editorial photography. Inspired by the cosmo-vision of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, Marroquín specializes in the creation of timeless narratives for most of her artistic career. Marroquín’s first years in New York City certainly marked the beginning of an investigation in which the artist pursued with various series that clearly manifest Marroquín’s genuine interest: to explore and record the manner in which certain peoples, geographical locations, and physical objects possess the ability to evade time, remaining unchanged for years and even centuries. Each series combines different elements and covers them with a layer of “pigments” in an effort to convey the feeling of eternity – a concept intrinsically linked to spiritual beliefs of ancestral cultures from Mexico. Marroquín’s deep respect for nature and her passion for philanthropy have taken her on countless trips. A curious woman of adventurous spirit, Marroquín is always in search of undiscovered places and new cultures — the sources of her inspiration. The artist has exhibited at prestigious venues such as ICP NY, the Arsenal of Venice (Italy), Mona Bismarck Foundation in Paris (France), and MARCO Museum of Monterrey (Mexico). Among other things, Marroquín was recognized as a finalist for the 2016 FEMSA Biennale in Mexico and collaborated in world wide philanthropic photographic projects with Tribal Trust Foundation (TTF) and En Classe.
Folake Ologunja
Board Member at Large
Folake Ologunja has over 15 years of experience developing and implementing communications campaigns in the art and culture sector, with a particular emphasis on projects at the intersection of art, tech, and social justice. She has previously worked with numerous artists and institutions including: Dawoud Bey, HBO, The Rockaway Hotel, Harvard University, and Aperture, among others, providing out of the box strategies, sharing stories, and creating partnerships to underscore core mission and amplify cultural currency. She can be reached at communications@baxterst.org.
Amanda Snyder
Board Member at Large
Amanda Snyder is a partner of the Winston Wächter Gallery. With exhibition spaces in Seattle and New York City Winston Wäcther specializes in the acquisition and placement of contemporary and 20th Century works of art. Throughout her career, Amanda has worked with over fifty contemporary artists who work in a variety of media including painting, photography, sculpture, and printmaking. In addition to gallery artists, she also works with secondary market placement of modern and contemporary masters and is an art consultant. Amanda studied Art History and Business and has contributed to many non profits through her philanthropic work. She has skills in advising leadership on strategic planning, financial management and growth potential. Amanada is also an owner/officer of a vertical integrated affordable housing company in North Carolina spanning several real estate verticals.
Jasmine Wahi
Board Member at Large
Jasmine Wahi is the Founder and Co-Director of Project for Empty Space, a nonprofit organization rooted in Newark, NJ, and soon to be in New York City. Her multi-faceted curatorial practice predominantly focuses on issues of femme empowerment, complicating binary structures within social discourses, and exploring multi-positional cultural identities through the lens of intersectional feminism.