Mark Alcazar Diaz

Mark Alcazar Diaz is an artist, curator, educator, and arts administrator. Diaz serves as Associate Director of Education at Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education. He oversees in-school programs and exhibitions and provides ongoing professional development to teacher and teaching-artist partnerships to expand their pedagogical arts practice. Before CAPE, he was a teaching artist facilitating youth media arts programs. Diaz received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Through his artistic practice, he examines issues around migration, memory of place, and natureculture through video, sound, and object making. He is a Lecturer in the Art Education Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Karen Benita Reyes

Karen Benita Reyes, Ph.D., has been the Executive Director of Firebird Community Arts since 2012. A proud Chicago Public School graduate and a family-taught fiber and textile artist, she helps to ensure the smooth production of classes, workshops and events in the East Garfield Park-based art space. She is also an active member of the Chicago ACT Collective and a 2018 Civic Leadership Academy Fellow through the University of Chicago.

Outside of community art, Karen served for eight years as the Managing Editor of the international academic journal Latino Studies and has held teaching positions at St. Augustine College, University of Illinois at Chicago, St. Leonard’s Adult High School, and Literacy Works. She was also a member of the 2015 cohort of the National Guild for Urban Art Education's Community Art Educators Leadership Institute (CAELI) and YNPN Chicago’s 2015 Leadership Institute cohort.

Karen earned her Doctorate in 2012 in Urban Educational Policy Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Miguel Angel Rodriguez

Miguel Angel Rodriguez (he/him/his) is an artist, comedian, and educator. He is currently the executive director of the Albany Park THeater Project (APTP). Hailing from Chicago, he began his career in education in the South Bronx. In 2016, Miguel was one of 12 recipients to be awarded the Harriett Ball Excellence in Teaching Award. He served as the assistant principal of KIPP Bloom College Prep in the Englewood neighborhood from 2017-2021. Miguel has a performing arts background and is passionate about increasing arts access for students of color. Miguel is a member of the 2020-21 Surge Fellowship cohort, which unites, accelerates, and empowers emerging leaders of color in education. On the weekends, Miguel performs comedy.

Shamilia Tocruray

Shamilia Tocruray is a Brooklyn-based creator, facilitator, and arts educator with roots in applied theater, liberatory education, and healing justice work. She curates participatory, arts-based learning spaces that focus on developing anti-racist practice, centering participants' experiences, cultivating community, and encouraging freedom and creativity. Her experience spans more than a decade of creating and leading arts programming for young people, educators, arts leaders, facilitators, organizers, justice workers, and wellness practitioners, among others. Shamilia's past and ongoing projects include program direction, curriculum design, educator mentorship/professional development, and DEIA facilitation across organizations in New York City and beyond. Shamilia lives with her family in the Little Caribbean section of Flatbush, Brooklyn and currently works as the Director of Education at the Brooklyn Museum. When time allows, she enjoys making herbal medicine, playing Capoeira Angola and singing jazz and Jamaican folk music.