April 18, 2018 – 8:30AM to 4:30PM Michael C. Carlos Museum, Atlanta, GA

Session Description 8:30-9:30 AM Julie Rhoad, President & CEO, The AIDS Memorial Quilt / The Leadership Profile NAMES Foundation discusses what leadership in the Atlanta Region means and her personal vision and style of leadership. Julie Rhoad, The AIDS Memorial Quilt

9:45-11:00 AM Creativity & Arts at Emory Healthcare strives to enhance patient Arts & Health experiences through the arts by deepening our partnerships with the Winship Cancer Institute and Emory’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Candy Tate, Emory Center for Center. Creativity & Arts Lillian Russo, Winship Cancer Institute Whitney Wharton, School of Medicine

11:15-Noon A chance for the class to reflect on the day and the class so far. Class Discussion

Noon-1:00 PM Lunch 1:00-2:15 PM Tour of the Rose Library with a discussion of how artists use literary Tour of Rose Library collections and the role of academia in the arts and in the region. Pellom McDaniels III, Rose Library

2:30-3:00PM Our last session will go right until the closing bell for the day. We’ll do Class Discussion our wrap up beforehand! Evaluation

3:00-4:30 PM Brandon Jones will break down a case study of a creative Public Art & Creative Placemaking placemaking project, discussing how it was planned, executed and evaluated. Brandon Jones, WonderRoot Katherine Dirga, MARTA Katherine Dirga will discuss MARTA’s Artbound program and public art in public transit.

Also: 5pm: Post-class gathering at Double Zero at in the Emory Village – 1577 North Decatur Road Julie Rhoad President & CEO – The AIDS Memorial Quilt / The NAMES Project Foundation

President and CEO of The NAMES Project Foundation since 2001, Julie Rhoad has focused her time on keeping the issue of HIV/AIDS prevention front and center with thoughtleaders and the public alike. Under Julie’s leadership, the foundation has expanded The AIDS Memorial Quilt’s outreach to ever-growing communities in need, starting key programs such as “Call My Name,” which works to encourage panel-making and HIV prevention in the African American community, as well as programs for middle and high schools to reach our new generation of youth with prevention and other educational messages. She also oversees the ongoing work of making Quilt panels available to organizations throughout the country and around the world for educational programs and community-based fundraisers, as well as the ongoing care and upkeep of all of the 48,000+ Quilt panels handsewn by family and friends who have lost loved ones to AIDS.

Prior to joining The NAMES Project Foundation, Julie enjoyed a successful career as a creative director, producer and owner of Candler Creative, Inc., a firm providing innovations in communications strategy and special event planning. She has worked throughout the world creating, producing and executing domestic and international special events, presentations and shows. In addition, she has provided design and project management services in the areas of exhibit design and integrated audiovisual systems applications for museums, visitor centers, customer and product presentation centers and traveling expositions. Her corporate clients included The Coca-Cola Company, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc., BP America, Dun & Bradstreet Software, Reebok International, Ltd., Dentsu, Inc., The Mitsui Corporation, Software Solutions, Inc., The System One Corporation, KFC-I, Continental Airlines, Georgia Pacific, Prudential Bank and ENTEX Information Services, Inc.

Julie began her career as a professional theatrical stage manager and, in regional and stock theatre, she held a variety of positions including production manager, technical director, general manager and production stage manager prior to becoming active in the corporate communications field.

Julie is thrilled to return her roots in non-profit with The NAMES Project Foundation/The AIDS Memorial Quilt.

Dr. R. Candy Tate Assistant Director – Emory Center for Creativity & Arts

Dr. Rachanice Candy Tate is an Art Historian and Assistant Director of Emory’s Center for Creativity & Arts. She has worked with photographers and painters to facilitate community projects through Arts at Emory’s “Reach Initiative” to have deeper engagement with Atlanta. Creativity & Arts at Emory Healthcare is one of the interdisciplinary programs she manages with the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and Emory’s Winship Cancer Institute facilitating art engagement with patients, caregivers, volunteers, and staff. Tate is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University’s History Department where her dissertation was “Our Art Itself was Our Activism: Atlanta’s Neighborhood Arts Center.” Her research interests include cultural politics in Atlanta, African American photographers and veterans’ history. A native of Atlanta, she finished her undergraduate work at Emory University in Art History. Her Masters degrees are from Georgia State University in Public Administration and Non Profit Management and from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in Art History. She is a 2017 graduate of Arts Leaders of Metro Atlanta.

Lillian Russo Activities Coordinator – Arts in Health at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory

Lillian Russo is Activities Coordinator for Arts in Health at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. Winship works to enhance the patient’s experience through creative arts that focus on self-expression and compliment traditional treatments.

Dr. Whitney Wharton Assistant Professor – Department of Neurology, Emory University School of Medicine

Dr. Wharton is a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related disorders. She received her BA at the University of at Austin and went on to complete her doctoral training at The George Washington University in Washington DC. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Her research focuses on the influence of vascular risk factors on Alzheimer’s biomarkers in individuals who are at risk for the disease due a parental history. She conducts both observational and clinical trials that investigate the extent to which blood pressure and blood pressure medications act on brain systems known to be involved in AD neuropathology. Dr. Wharton is currently conducting an NIH/NIA funded study investigating the influence of peripheral arterial function on AD biomarkers by measuring beta amyloid levels and blood flow in the brain in individuals at risk for AD. Her secondary area of research involves the influence of sex hormones and hormone therapy on cognition and AD neuropathology.

Dr. Pellom McDaniels III Curator of African American Collections, Emory University Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, & Rare Book Library

Dr. Pellom McDaniels III is the curator of African American collections in the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University. He is the author of The Prince of Jockeys: The Life of Isaac Burns Murphy (2013), and editor of two recent volumes Porter, Steward, Citizen: An Memoir of World War I (2017) and Still Raising Hell: The Art, Activism, and Archives of Camille Billops and James V. Hatch (2016). Dr. McDaniels has contributed essays to anthologies such as Before Jackie Robinson: The Transcendent Role of Black Sports Pioneers (2017), The Olympics and Philosophy (2012), and All Stars and Movie Stars: Sports in Film History (2010). His current project For Dignity and Honor: A Photographic Meditation on African American Masculinity and World War I is under contract with Northwestern University Press and slated for publication in 2019.

He has curated or co-curated nearly a dozen exhibitions over the last three years including “A Question of Manhood: African Americans and World War I” (2017); “Still Raising Hell: The Art, Activism, andArchives of Camille Billops and James V. Hatch (2016); “Breaking Barriers: Sports for Change” (2016); “Othello: The Moor Speaks” (2016), “Pearl Cleage: A Time for Reflection (2015); and “What Must Be Remembered: An Exhibition Inspired by Natasha Trethewey’s Poem ‘Native Guard’” (2014). Dr. McDaniels has also tried his hand at screenwriting. In 2015, his first screenplay based on the biography The Prince of Jockeys was optioned and is currently in pre- production. He is also an accomplished visual artist. His 2017 exhibition, Black: Towards an Afro-Cosmological Understanding, marked his debut of new works on paper after a ten-year hiatus. This work centers around understanding the complexities of identity construction for people of African descent throughout American history, especially African American males.

Brandon Jones Head of Creative Placemaking – WonderRoot

As the Head of the Creative Placemaking Department at WonderRoot, Brandon Jones works to creatively align the built environment with the collective identities of the community it serves. Under Brandon’s leadership, the Creative Placemaking department leverages cross- sector partnerships, civic engagement, and artistic strategies as tools for community development in the metro Atlanta region.

Deeply committed to fighting inequity in Atlanta, Brandon serves as the Co-Chair of the Creative Placemaking Committee for the TransFormation Alliance, a collaborative addressing equitable transit-oriented development and communities; on Advisory Board of Twin Radius, an organization connecting artists and faith-based communities; and is a member of the ARC Community Engagement Network. He also served as the Community Engagement Specialist for the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Public Art Grant program 2016-2017.

Prior to joining WonderRoot, Brandon served as the founding Director of Cultural Engagement for the -based organization, Theatre for the Free People; and is the Co-founder of Free People Int., a social advocacy firm based in Amsterdam, NL with clients throughout the Europe and the United States.

He is an alumnus of the prestigious University of North Carolina School of the Arts, School of Drama; received a BA in Theatre Performance from MaryMount College in NYC; and is currently an MA candidate for Cultural Sustainability and MA candidate for Business Management at Goucher College.

Katherine Dirga Arts Administrator - MARTA

Katherine Dirga is an artist and arts administrator with 15 years’ experience in the Public Art field. She was brought to MARTA in late 2016 to develop an Art in Transit program: “Artbound”. Artbound is comprised of permanent and temporary visual artworks as well as live music, theater, and dance presented in a transit environment. Before coming to MARTA, Katherine served as Art Program Manager at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport where she implemented projects and programs for the International and Domestic Terminals as well as the Annual Music Series and various temporary exhibitions with local and regional partners.

Katherine has a deep interest in community and was a founding curator of the Cabbagetown Art Wall, working with other local curators, artists, and the CSX Railroad to produce what is now an annual rotating exhibition and event with over 40 artists and 25 murals in one of Atlanta’s most eclectic and walkable neighborhoods. She served as founding Board Chair for Dashboard, an Atlanta-based, national curatorial team, leading the Board as the organization scaled from local and regional to national projects during her four-year tenure.

Katherine received her Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from Washington University in St. Louis, and her Master’s Degree in Fine Arts from Georgia State University. She is a member of Arts Leaders of Metro Atlanta (ALMA) and has served on the Board and Advisory Councils for various local non-profits including Living Walls, Dashboard, and Cabbagetown Initiative, a 501(c)3 Community Development Corporation.