Sarah williams

Co-founder & Executive Director

Sarah Williams is a co-founder and Executive Director of the Feminist Center for Creative Work. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Sarah returned to the city in 2006 to attend USC’s Curatorial Practice in the Public Sphere M.A. program after receiving a B.A. in Art History from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Since then she has been producing projects, exhibitions, programs, events and publications with ForYourArt, FCCW, CLOSING, and the Art Book Review.

mandy harris williams

Programming Director

Mandy’s work seeks to get everybody the love that they deserve. She focuses on desirability privilege as a real and mythological market and political force. She graduated from Harvard, having studied the History of the African Diaspora, as well as the mass incarceration crisis, and other contemporary black issues. She received her MA in Urban Education and worked as a classroom teacher for 7 years in low income communities.

She integrates a holistic and didactic style into her current creative practice. Her creative work has been presented at Paula Cooper Gallery, Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Art + Practice, Navel, Knockdown Center and Feminist Center for Creative Work to name a few. She has a monthly radio show, the #BrownUpYourFeed Radio Hour, on NTS. She has contributed writing work to Dazed Magazine, MEL magazine, ForHarriet, and The Grio and is a frequent radio and podcast guest.

Kamala Puligandla

Communications & Marketing Director

Kamala Puligandla is a writer of autobiographical fiction and essays, on queer love, friendship and futures. She has earned degrees in Creative Writing from Oberlin College and UC Riverside, and is the author of two books, Zigzags (Not A Cult, 2020) and her novella, You Can Vibe Me On My FemmePhone (Co-Conspirator Press, 2021).  Kamala has many years of experience working as a copywriter and content strategist at tech companies, and was the Editor-in-Chief at the lesbian culture site Autostraddle.com, before coming to Feminist Center for Creative Work. She is the one sending you Feminist Center for Creative Work emails, so you know how to get involved in the many great opportunities here!

Raquel Hazell

Graphic Designer

Raquel Hazell is a Vincentian-American graphic artist and publisher born and raised in New York. In 2017 she graduated from the School of Visual Arts with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art where she spent perhaps too much time reminding people not to touch her hair. Her work is deeply rooted in and inspired by the ever-changing relationship between fact, fiction, and fantasy. Since 2018, she’s collaborated with artists and friends to create printed matter for what feels like the end times. In 2020, she (officially) founded Saalt Press, an independent publishing and design studio. Despite not having a design background, she’s managed to convince people to hire her. It’s been going well so far. Sometimes a writer, kind of a dj, never a morning person.

Stella Ramos

Programming Manager

Stella Ramos is a writer and dancer raised in Seattle, WA. She graduated from Occidental College in 2020 — where she studied Religious Studies with a focus on Environmental Ethics and Indigenous Futurity. She joined the Feminist Center as the 2020 Programming and Press Getty MUI intern, supporting the Programming and Co—Conspirator Press teams. After her internship, Stella stayed on as the Programming Manager and Administrative Assistant to support the vibrant programming and operations of FCCW.Joking that she’s a “Professional Virgo,” Stella works as a Studio Manager and Creative Assistant for individual artists. Stella’s motivations are to support the logistical frameworks, creative visions, and long-term goals of artists and creatives through her work within and outside the Feminist Center. Outside of work, you can find her at your nearest bookstore buying one-too-many new books, at the park writing, or at home with her two cats.

Aandrea Stang

Board Chair

Stang has diverse professional experience including education, curatorial, and management roles at museums, galleries, and academic institutions with additional experience in non-profit galleries and government agencies. She has developed and launched contemporary art and arts education programs for a variety of audiences at major cultural organizations including Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, Occidental College, and MOCA, Los Angeles. Stang holds degrees from USC and Oberlin College.

Stefanie Botelho

Treasurer

She consults on strategy, marketing, and product for consumer brands like Chateau Margaux and is an active angel investor looking to support minority and otherwise marginalized voices. A Southern California native, she earned her MBA at Harvard Business School and her BA at Harvard University and has been awarded various accolades including Forbes 30 Under 30.

Carolina Ibarra-Mendoza

Secretary

Carolina Ibarra-Mendoza is a graphic designer, creative strategist, photographer, and Xicana feminist. She runs her own creative practice, where she translates social complexities into dynamic designs. She also works with Anne Bray as the Creative Director of the non-profit LA FREEWAVES. She’s a recipient of the “Woman’s Building and Metabolic Studio’s Special Projects in Archiving” art fellowship.

Notable past work includes creating the archive website for Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz. As a visual artist, she understands the power of design to provide resources for marginalized communities, and that’s the kind of work she wants to be a part of.

Jia Yi Gu

Jia Yi Gu (she/her) is an architectural scholar, curator, and designer working on histories of knowledge production through the lens of media studies, cultural techniques, and material cultures (i.e. how we know and show our histories). Her research and courses explore changing definitions of architectural knowledge from the building site to the desktop. She is Assistant Professor of Architecture at Harvey Mudd College and one-half of the architecture and research studio Spinagu. Over the past decade, she has cultivated a curatorial practice centering transdisciplinary and inquiry-based exhibitions, alongside the critique and transformation of institutional work informed by feminist ethics of care. Previously, she was director at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, and curated Schindler House: 100 Years in the Making, Subject Studies: Reorientations, VALIE EXPORT: Embodied, and Entourage. From 2014-2020, she served as director of Materials & Applications, a Los Angeles based project space for experimental architecture. She develops exhibitions, texts,  and experimental programming and projects.

Irene Georgia Tsatsos

Irene Georgia Tsatsos (she/they) is an artist with a daily practice of writing, drawing, and reading, all of which inform works rendered in clay, textiles, plants, and space through her work as a contemporary art curator. She is a values-driven arts professional with experience in program development, leadership, and administrative oversight. Most recently, Irene served as Director of Exhibition Programs and Chief Curator at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, CA. She has also held positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Getty, published extensively, and served on numerous award and programmatic panels. Currently, Irene serves on the board of directors at the Children’s Community School, and, after holding the honor of being founding chair of the early Feminist Center for Creative Work, is back on the board for this next chapter.

Susan Nwankpa Gillespie

Susan Nwankpa Gillespie, Founder of Nwankpa Design, is a Nigerian-American architect and interior designer based in Southern California. Her firm specializes in the holistic design of residences, restaurants and hospitality projects, and commercial spaces for retail and office. Over the course of her career, her bold, contemporary designs have been published in some of the industry’s most-read publications including Dwell, Interior Design Magazine, and The Architect’s Newspaper, and have been recognized by the American Institute of Architects.

Jessica Simmons-Reid

Jessica Simmons-Reid (she/her) is an artist, writer, and critic based in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree. Her work spans drawing, printmaking, photography, and occasionally poetry. She has contributed writing to Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (CARLA), Artforum, and The New York Times’ T Magazine, among others. She received her MFA in Printmedia from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was also a Writing Fellow, and her BA in the History of Art and Architecture and Visual Arts from Brown University. Previously, she worked in the curatorial departments at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. She also managed editorial content at ForYourArt. Currently, she is co-developing a film project based on and inspired by the work of the late French photographer and theorist Hervé Guibert.

Young Joon Kwak

Young Joon Kwak (they/them and she/her) is a LA-based multi-disciplinary artist and educator whose work spans sculpture, performance, music, video, and community-based collaborations, creating connections that bridge communities across a wide variety of socio-cultural, institutional, and alternative art contexts. Through sculptural manipulations in the form, functionality, and materiality of objects, they question common modes of perception and bodily objectification, while posing alternative ways of viewing bodies “beyond the skin.” Kwak is the founder of Mutant Salon, a roving beauty salon/platform for collaborative performances and installations with their community of queer, trans, femme, POC artists and performers. They are lead performer in the electronic-dance-noise band Xina Xurner.

Kwak has presented solo and collaborative exhibitions, extensively, around the U.S. and globally. Kwak received an MFA from the University of Southern California in 2014, an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago in 2010, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. In addition to FCCW, Kwak serves on the board of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Kwak taught and mentored at schools including California Institute of the Arts; California State University Long Beach; School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s low-residency MFA program; University of California, Riverside; and University of California, San Diego. Kwak’s work has been reviewed and featured in Artforum, ARTnews, Artillery Magazine, BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, and LA Times, among others

Xtina Webb

Xtina Webb (she/they) is a Queer intersectional feminist who operates a design practice in Los Angeles prioritizing cultural, non-profit clients. This work includes exhibition design, environmental graphics, branding, publications and art initiatives. The research area of her practice combines making through chance outcomes and participation with a critical nature, looking at social constructs in public space. This is also present in her teaching, along with modes of participation, collaboration, site specificity and citizenship.

Before joining the Board of the Feminist Center for Creative Work, Xtina co-founded the temporal LGBTQAI+/QBIPOC collective Foreground, which focused on strategies for thriving in overlooked creative community in L.A., served as Director of the AIGA–LA DEI committee, created Criticality of Queer Craft talk for LA Design Festival and actively volunteers with RISD Alumni Club of LA events. Xtina received her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, and is currently faculty at Otis College of Art and Design and Loyola Marymount University. Her work has been recognized by various awards.