Creative Support for Organizations-Round 1

Kati Bachmayer moved to Minnesota in 2017 to work for the city of Lakeville?s community and economic development department. As the economic development coordinator, she collaborates with city staff, developers, local businesses, chambers, and other stakeholders on business retention and expansion projects, as well as on strategic planning. Her major project of 2020 has been managing a small business emergency grant program. Originally from South Dakota, Bachmayer was a dedicated Aberdeen Community Theatre (ACT) volunteer for eighteen years. Bachmayer also served for seven years on the Aberdeen Area Arts Council board, two as president and one as past president.; Sandra Bentley worked 21 years as a nursing home administrator for a national nonprofit company. During her tenure, she served five years on the company?s national board of directors. Bentley then was executive director for the Violence Intervention Project (VIP) in Thief River Falls. VIP serves victims of sexual and domestic violence. This work included writing RFPs and managing several grants. Notably, Bentley was a MN All State musician and later performed with the Devils Lake Community Orchestra for seven years and one year with the Grand Forks Symphony.; Trenne Fields: Fields is currently the department assistant in physics and astronomy at Carleton College, where she supports the faculty in their teaching efforts, as well as acts as the public face of the department and works to build a welcoming, cohesive community for students. Fields serves on the board of directors for Tapestry Folkdance Center in Minneapolis, and is also cofore of Bells of the North Morris Dancers. She graduated with a BA in international studies and French from Macalester, previously worked as a program director at the YMCA of the Twin Cities, and is a volunteer EMT.; Lisa Horton is an assistant professor in the Department of English, Linguistics, and Writing Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Born and raised near Grand Rapids, she trained as a pianist in her youth, attended Itasca Community College for a year, then complete her BA in English at what is now the University of Northwestern St. Paul, being involved in both choral music and theater there. She worked extensively in the theater scene in the Twin Cities for nearly a decade before moving to Duluth to take an MA at UMD. She has a PhD in English (Medieval literature) from Western Michigan University, and has been teaching at UMD since 2011. Horton has had her jewelry work displayed in various galleries across northern Minnesota, and has performed as a musician and singer very occasionally, notably with the AOL Chorus at Carnegie Hall in November of 1997.; Marla Klein is a freelance photographer and art director based in Minneapolis. Her work focuses on building compassion for our human experience through conceptual portraits; she is the creator of the Arts Board funded photo series, The Metamorphosis Project. She graduated from Hallmark Institute of Photography (Turners Falls, MA) in 2012 and has served as a volunteer board member for Freeborn County Arts Initiative gallery for five years.; Camila Kuntz: Kuntz is the founder of CK Consulting in 2002, also known as CKC Marketing. Over the course of her 28 year career, she has worked with Fortune 100 and 500 companies, media companies, movie studios, and nonprofits directly through consulting, promotions, program development, grant evaluations, and as a donor.; Edward McDonald serves as the executive director of the East Metro Civic Alliance. He also served as the director of the Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage. He is a former Bush Leadership Fellow and Humphrey Fellow. He has a master?s degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.; Ekaterina Oicherman is an artist, educator, and textile researcher. She is a visiting research fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies, University of Minnesota and a continuing education lecturer at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She studied textile design and art, and modern Jewish studies in Israel and the United Kingdom. In her practice based PhD (Goldsmiths, London) she studied 19th century German Jewish ritual textiles to develop a model of imbuing historical craft artifacts with contemporary relevance through rigorous creative research. She exhibited her artwork internationally. She taught textile art, design, and history and headed the department of Textile Design (Shenkar College, Israel).