Selina Morales is a folklorist, a writer and a film maker. Selina earned a B.A. in Anthropology at Oberlin College and an M.A. in Folklore at Indiana University-Bloomington. For nearly a decade, Selina worked through the Philadelphia Folklore Project, supporting artists in using their folk traditions for social change. She is now a Philadelphia-based public folklorist, consults nationally on projects that connect community aesthetics, heritage, and social justice. Currently, she works as the lead folklorist for the Southwest Folklife Alliance’s Folklife PAR Network and as an advisor for the National Folklife Network. She is a member of the Advisory Council of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. A founding partner of Botánica Pictures Selina is an Executive Producer for Daughter of the Sea (2022).

Nelda Liliana Ruiz Calles (ella/she/hers) is a fronteriza community organizer, cultural worker, and educator born in Ambos Nogales in the Sonoran Borderlands. Since 2010, Nelda has dedicated herself to organizing in the south side of Tucson, facilitating connections between communities and the resources essential for fostering safe, healthy, and regenerative communities. Nelda presently serves as a program manager and educator at the Southwest Folklife Alliance (SFA), where she oversees the folklife PAR network—a national platform for community-driven participatory action research (PAR) initiatives, where everyday people come together to learn and share cultural expressions, driving long-term change. Her community development work at SFA, both nationally and locally, focuses on centering folklife practices as a tool for liberation.

Laura Yohualtlahuiz Rios-Ramirez (she/her/they/them) is a Mexican-born Xicana scholar-practitioner of Tepehuan, Guachichil Chichimeca, French and Spanish descent trained in educational pedagogy, circle keeping, performance art, and community organizing. Currently residing in occupied Somi Se’k Territory of Yanaguana, (San Antonio, TX) she’s recognized for her canon of healing-informed praxis intersecting performance art, ancestral knowledge systems and restorative/transformative justice practices as tools for personal and collective transformation. She is a veteran Bgirl/Hip Hop dancer, a wife, and most importantly, a mami passionate about healing intergenerational/colonial trauma through matriarchal leadership, cultural resilience and folklife preservation. Laura is a Co-Founder and Visionary behind De Corazón Circles, a consulting and capacity building firm that envisions a safe and equitable world where restorative interactions transform individuals, relationships, communities and systems through the prevention, repair and deep healing of harm.

Adriana Camarena (she/her) is a Mexican writer, researcher and community organizer in San Francisco. Through a decade-long multi-disciplinary project called “Unsettled in the Mission,” she has documented the stories and histories of Latinx peoples and other traditional residents of the Mission District of San Francisco to capture the sense of place of this working class, now gentrified, neighborhood. Camarena is involved in anti-police brutality work, currently with Justice for Luis Góngora Pat, who was a beloved Mayan father, brother and son, killed by SFPD in April 2016. During the pandemic, she deepened her understanding of the struggles of the immigrant Latinx community of San Francisco, through research collaborations with El Tecolote/ Acción Latina and Mujeres Hacia El Conocimiento, and as a PAR Fellow of the Southwest Folklife Alliance. Learn more about her work at www.unsettlers.org.