Art, Community, and Self-Sustainability Conference 2025

Medar de la Cruz is a Dominican-American cartoonist based in Brooklyn. A graduate of Art Center College of Design, he has illustrated for The New York Times and The New Yorker. He volunteers, providing book cart services at Rikers Island, and is a Pulitzer Prize winner for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary.

SAKINA PITTS| Principal
Transformative Leader| Change Agent| Principal Barrrzzz

Sakina Pitts is a fearless, thoughtful, and bold leader. She learned these very principles growing up in Newark, NJ and being educated by the Newark Board of Education’s public schools. Sakina has been the proud appointed Principal of Chancellor Avenue School located in the South Ward of Newark “Brick City” for five years prior to her becoming the appointed Principal of Newark School of Fashion and Design in 2021. She is an active member of the Educational Coalition “Off School Grounds” (OSG) since its inception and collaborates weekly with like-minded School Leaders around the country who are dedicated to closing equity gaps and creating real change in the school-wide communities they are servant leaders of across the nation. Principal Pitts is also an engaging public speaker who is passionate about infusing Hip Hop culture into education. She uses rap as an artform to connect the learning to the students’ sensibilities. She can be seen around her school building, in her educational leadership forums, leading administrative meetings and connecting with her community dropping lines. Any chance she gets, she is quick to “spit barrrrzzzz,” especially in the name of education… “ergo” Principal Barrrrzzzz.”

Lyann Arias, MS.Ed (She/Her/Ella), is a Youth Advocate Counselor with about a decade of experience in post-secondary education and student support services. As a first-generation Afro-Latina of Dominican descent from Washington Heights/Inwood, NYC, she is deeply committed to empowering students, particularly in navigating their educational and personal growth journeys. Lyann holds a Master’s in Higher Education Administration and Master’s in Mental Health Counseling. Passionate about the intersection of mental health and academic success, she integrates a holistic approach to student support. Lyann’s mission is to help individuals gain clarity, cultivate resilience, and define success on their own terms.

Elizabeth is an artist of Puerto Rican and Dominican decent. She is also an educator, tarot reader, event producer in NYC. Her art practice is deeply tied to her spiritual practice which often takes themes of queer latinidad, gender exploration, ancestral veneration, and spritual guiddance.

Havanna is an transdisciplinary artist and designer from Harlem who uses design, performing arts, film, and education to bring about political and social awareness and thus probable change within the American landscape of ideological identity. She received both a BFA in Fashion Design from Parsons New School for Design and a BA in the Arts with a concentration in dance from Eugene Lang College. Her goal as an artist is to blend different art forms like fashion, dance, and film with an emphasis on community and unity to create a world of many possible approaches to living life and creating a new just society. She was an artist resident in 2016 at The Laundromat Project and has presented work at Sisters on the Runway, BAAD!ASS Women Festival, The University of Orange, The New School’s Centennial Celebration and twice at Movement Research.

Tomo is a master’s student in the MS Strategic Design & Management program at Parsons School of Design, with a professional background in business development in the healthcare sector at a Japanese technology company. With experience in driving cross-functional collaboration and strategic growth, Tomo is passionate about integrating human emotions into business models and exploring how design can rebalance the relationship between technology and humanity. Through a multidisciplinary approach combining systems thinking, ethnographic research, and design strategy, Tomo seeks to create meaningful, sustainable impact by bridging innovation with empathy and human connection.

Maria is a master’s student in the Strategic Design and Management program at Parsons School of Design, with a background in architecture and creative direction. She brings a systems-thinking mindset to complex challenges, working across disciplines to design thoughtful, experience-driven solutions. Her work often explores how design can restore a sense of agency, encourage more intentional habits, and make space for emotional connection in both digital and physical environments. Maria is especially interested in using the strategy as a tool for living more consciously, reconnecting, and building futures that feel more human – not just more efficient.

Nadia Williams is full-time faculty at Parsons, where her teaching explores the power of art and design when historically oppressive systems are disrupted. She has collaborated on a range of university-wide social justice and access initiatives, and is continually impressed by the continuum of students who hold The New School accountable to social justice values. The work she has learned the most from has been collaborating with Mayan and Mixteca artisan groups of women in Mexico to create horizontal design processes, collectively developing a framework for the Parsons Scholars Program through which the experiences of people of color from low income backgrounds are centered in art, design and social justice, and co-creating a space for radical mama educators and our children through NYCoRE (NY Collective of Radical Educators). Currently, her creative practice is grounded in family history research as a practice of freedom, healing and reconnecting with ancestors.

Jazmine Hayes is an interdisciplinary visual artist, musician and poet—born, raised and based in Brooklyn, New York. Her practice explores histories of the African diaspora and the ways they are preserved and reproduced through cultural traditions. Through this exploration, Hayes works across an array of mediums such as installation, painting, drawing, performance, video, sound, textile and writing. She is a 2023 U.S. Fulbright researcher, in which she traveled to Senegal, West Africa to explore weaving traditions and pattern as coded communication, protection and a preserver of Black American, Caribbean & West African histories. She received an MFA from CUNY Hunter College and a BFA from CUNY Queens College. Hayes is a past EFA Robert Blackburn print fellow and has been featured in Art Forum, Interview Magazine, Artnet, and several other publications for her practice. For over 14 years, she has worked with community-based youth organizations across New York City as an educator and muralist with non-profits such as Groundswell Mural, Artistic Noise, and Made in Brownsville. She believes in the accessibility of art resources for the development of Black and Brown youth.

Nelson De Jesus Ubri is a part-time faculty at Parsons and a PSP Youth Advocate. Nelson received a Master of Science in Real Estate Development and a Master of Architecture from Columbia University GSAPP and a Bachelor in Architectural Design from Parsons The New School for Design. He is an affordable housing development associate at Gilbane Development Company, where he helps manage multiple ground-up and rehabilitation housing projects in the mid-Atlantic region through detailed financial models, market research, consultant management and engagement with community stakeholders and local elected officials. He is also a founding member of PartnerPartner, an architecture and interior design firm that focuses on residential renovations. 

Nelson was a Fulbright Scholar in the Dominican Republic, where he developed research on how hurricanes affect the architecture and infrastructure of the Bani region. He is passionate about an interdisciplinary approach to architecture and real estate to enable a deeper understanding of the built environment and communities around it.

Guillermo Restrepo is a film publicist at IFC Films and Shudder, where he champions independent cinema and the art of horror. Born in Colombia and raised in Brooklyn, he cultivated his passion for storytelling at SUNY New Paltz before pursuing a career dedicated to amplifying original voices in film.

With a commitment to independent storytelling, Guillermo has spearheaded numerous national publicity campaigns, guiding films through prestigious festival debuts—including Sundance, SXSW, and TIFF—to theatrical and streaming releases, and strategic awards positioning. Prior to his role at IFC Films and Shudder, he spent nine years at Brigade Marketing, collaborating with distributors such as A24, Amazon, GKIDS, Hulu, Magnolia Pictures, Neon, Netflix, and Oscilloscope.

As a gay Colombian immigrant, Guillermo is a passionate advocate for challenging representation, transgressive horror, and daring narratives. His work is driven by a singular mission: to help filmmakers bring their stories to the audiences they deserve.

Jeanette Torres Molina is a Mexican American multimedia artist and educator raised in Brooklyn. Their work has been recognized for its political, personal, and cultural themes; currently their work focuses on identity, mental health and healing. Jeanette uses ink illustrations, collage, and storytelling as a way to talk about these issues more openly.

Jeanette is a Part-Time Faculty at Parsons The New School for Design as well as a Youth Advocate at the Parsons Scholars Program, where she assists high school students with the college and financial aid process while they explore art and design through college-level classes.

Jeanette’s goal for the future is to create a safe space for artists to present and sell their work, for people that wish to find a space where they can be a part of a community.

Fernanda de la Torre Ricaud is a curator and producer. Originally from Mexico City, she began her career in gastronomic research and later as an art director at Plato en Blanco, an editorial content production studio for gastronomic projects where she participated in the creation of various digital and printed publications. In 2016, she joined Mexico’s Department of Foreign Affairs, which led her to direct the visual and performing arts programs at the Mexican Cultural Institute New York. For three years she actively participated in the cultural agenda of the Consulate General by curating exhibitions and public programs aimed at the dissemination of Mexican art in the Tri-state area. She has been Pocoapoco’s exhibition director, translator, and program director since 2019.