Fillmore

Confirmed Speakers

• Zienab Abdelgany
  Ms. Abdelgany grew up in Irvine, CA and graduated with a BA in Development Studies from UC Berkeley in 2012. She was the president of the Muslim Student Association at Berkeley and was heavily involved in community organizing within the Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian (AMEMSA) communities on and off campus. Currently, she is researching Pro-Palestine organizing on university campuses and reconnecting with her community in Southern California. She has been writing poetry since childhood and developed an interest in spoken word in her freshman year of college. Since then, she has participated in many local slams and poetry nights as she speaks about identity and the politics of personhood.
• Francis Tapon
  Francis Tapon was born and raised in San Francisco, California and has traveled to over 75 countries. His mom is from Chile and his dad is from France. He co-founded a robotic vision company in Silicon Valley. He consulted at Hitachi Data Systems and Microsoft. He thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail. In 2007, he became the first person to do a round trip on the Continental Divide Trail. He’s walked across Spain twice. He wrote Hike Your Own Hike: 7 Life Lessons from Backpacking Across America. After spending three years in Eastern Europe, he wrote The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us. He plans to visit all 54 African countries in 2013-2016. He has a degree in Religion from Amherst College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
• Dr. Wes Watkins
  Dr. Wesley Watkins is the founder of The Jazz & Democracy Project® (J&D), a music integrated curriculum that uses jazz as a metaphor to bring American democracy to life, enrich the study of U.S. History in elementary, middle, and high school, and inspire youth to become active, positive contributors to their community. “Dr. Wes,” as his students call him, first proposed such a curriculum as part of the Stanford University School of Education Undergraduate Honors Program. He conducted research for his undergraduate honors thesis at Oxford University where he engaged and learned from music educators at both local elementary schools and world renowned secondary institutions like The Bedales School, Eaton College, and The Yehudi Menuhin School. After earning his Ph.D. from the International Centre for Research in Music Education at the University of Reading, England, Dr. Wes immediately applied his knowledge as an independent arts education consultant in the Bay Area, working at the district, school, and classroom levels. He is an avid music lover—especially Jazz and Latin Jazz—who loves little more than witnessing artists stand emotionally naked, transmitting their emotions to the audience, and modeling the best of what improvised music has to offer: a lesson in unity.
• Dyanna Loeb
  Dyanna Loeb aka Dyna*Mic is an MC, poet and arts educator who started performing with Youth Speaks in 2001.  She has shared her words and music for international audiences, at venues including the San Francisco Opera House, the Nuyorican (NYC), and Project HeartBeat Jerusalem. Her poetry and songs have been featured on several  releases through Youth Movement Records, where she co-founded a writing workshop  for incarcerated youth in Alameda County Juvenile Hall. She has toured the Pacific Northwest to perform for Amnesty International's Make Some Noise for Darfur benefit.  Her first chapbook,  "Birkat HaGomel: A Survivor's Blessing" was published in 2010.  She is currently working on her first full-length poetry collection, to be published by First Word Press in Spring 2012.
• Harley Sitner
  Harley Sitner has more than 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur, business person and collaborative community builder. He has worked with hi-tech startups and the largest of corporations; he has bought and run his own small business and started a consumer products business from scratch; and he has created large art and intentional communities at Burning Man and beyond. Drawing from his myriad experiences, he has developed an interdisciplinary approach to team building and collective work that brings the best out of people, maximizes participation and enjoyment, and achieves the objectives at hand. His passions for bringing non-traditional leadership practices into the business world and bringing business lessons and disciplines into his community building efforts are at the center of his present work. Harley has a B.S. in Computer Science and an M.B.A, both from the University of Michigan
• Thomas Simpson
  Mr. Simpson is an award winning actor, director, producer, and writer. He is the founder and artistic director of the AfroSolo Theatre Company. Since 1991 he has concentrated on writing and presenting African American and African Diasporan art and culture through solo performances and the visual and literary arts. In 2006 he won a coveted Bay Area Jefferson Award for Public Service. In 2009 he was awarded a prestigious Certificate of Honor from the San Francisco Board of Supervisor for his contributions to our community. The past nineteen years he has produced the award winning and critically acclaimed AfroSolo Arts Festival in San Francisco. Mr. Simpson has presented over seventy-five San Francisco Bay Area solo performance artists. He has also showcased celebrity artists such as: award-winning actor Ruby Dee, comedian and political activist Dick Gregory, beloved teacher, poet and social activist June Jordan, sensational black gospel singer Emmit Powell and many more. Since 1999 Mr. Simpson has also utilized the arts to improve the health of African Americans by hosting forums, collaborating with the medical community to present health fairs with a particular emphasis on breast cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS testing and providing information to the community of available services.
• Victoria Rue
  Victoria Rue, M.Div., Ph.D. is a Roman Catholic woman priest, ordained in 2005 on a boat on the St. Lawrence Seaway by three women bishops . She is the pastor of Sophia in Trinity in San Francisco, and two other Catholic communities in the Bay Area. Dr. Rue is a professor at San Jose State University in Comparative Religious Studies. Her Master of Divinity is from Union Theological Seminary in NYC. Her Ph.D. is from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley,CA. She is also a theatre writer/director whose work has been seen in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. Dr. Rue has published numerous articles, her most recent in New Feminist Christianity: "Many Voices Many Views." Victoria is also author of “Acting Religious: Theatre as Pedagogy in Religious Studies,” published by Pilgrim Press.