Mariah Rankine-Landers, EdM
Mariah (she/ her) is most proud of her 12 years as a kindergarten and first grade teacher. She stepped out of the classroom in 2011 to lead for teacher leadership and school transformation at Alameda County Office of Education, a role she was asked to lead due to her outstanding methodology and equity outcomes in her classroom leading through the arts.
Mariah’s work promotes and invites the educational system to redesign its purposes with the role of the contemporary artists at the forefront of how young people can develop the capacity for imagination, innovation, perception, and critical thought that will bridge and build a society that we all deserve. Mariah leads with conviction that if you tend to your heart, tend to the art that motivates you, and lead with love, that our schools can dissolve the oppressive systems they uphold and become the sanctuaries we all need to fully bloom and become.
Jessa Brie Moreno, MFA
Jessa is Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director for Studio Pathways, and has collaborated as a pedagogical advisor, instructional designer and facilitator for leading edge arts organizations and educational institutions nationwide. Studio Pathways’ projects, partners and clients include: Rise Up! An American Curriculum, The Kennedy Center, Turnaround Arts National, Othering and Belonging Curriculum for UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, Racial Healing Curriculum/WKKF Foundation, Instructional Designers/Zaretta Hammond, Favianna Rodriguez’ The Center for Cultural Power, and may more.
Moreno utilizes a stance of “creative midwifery” to assist in the ethical “birth” of transformative practices in education, arts and culture. She wrestles actively with complex lineage as a sixth-generation settler colonist to Ohlone lands, fourth generation artist, third generation activist, and mother to two young women. She is a graduate of Scuola Internazionale dell’Attore Comico in Italy, holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Inquiry from CIIS and an English Language Arts Teaching Credential.