In celebration of International Women’s Day, Heaven Gallery invites ten women working toward positive change within their communities to speak about their respective projects. This group includes activists and community leaders paving the way for social change. The goal of this event is to inspire people to take initiative while raising awareness and celebrating the achievements of our speakers. We hope to encourage women to continue leading, smashing barriers, and doing what they love! Heaven Gallery is pleased to feature Kristin Drutchas, Andrea Hart, Tanesha House, Jaclyn Jacunski, Vanessa Creightney-Stokes, Ciera Mckissick, Maria Hadden, Niketa Brar, Vanessa Sanchez and Alma Wieser.

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Vanessa Stokes is an Artist, Curator, Photographer and Owner of VSC Consulting. VSC Consulting is an artist representative firm where her main client is Dorrell Creightney Photography Collection, Vanessa’s Father. Dorrell Creightney had the first black owned photography studio in Chicago and after his death left behind a 300,000 plus image collection. In addition, she is a community organizer and founder of the Austin Community Food Co-op, Co-Founder of Resident Association of the Westside and co-curator of several public art displays in the Austin community, including 2 displays of the work of Dorrell Creightney located inside the train stations at Austin and Central on CTA’s Green line train. Currently, Vanessa is collaborating with Chicago Park District’s TRACE (Teens Re-imaging Art, Community & Environment) Program at Austin Town Hall Park on the Westside. Also, she is collaborating with local artists and community members creating the future of art and public art on the Westside of Chicago. Lastly, Vanessa is currently on The Hatchery Community Advisory Committee, Advisory Circle at the Oak Park River Forest Community Foundation and a Steering Committee Member for the Quality of Life Plan for Austin. When Vanessa is at home, she spends time with her children Vivian and Sarah and catches up with friends and family.

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Locally, Tanesha D. House, EdD., M.B.A., is a Community Organizer on the Westside of Chicago, where she was born and raised. As lead QLP staff, she is responsible for galvanizing all community stakeholders to develop and execute a comprehensive Quality of Life Plan for the North Lawndale community. Universally, having had diverse experiences in a variety of sectors, Tanesha is recognized as an award winning transformational leader, organizer, speaker, educator, and coach. Tanesha is very people oriented and possesses great optimism for community and economic development locally and globally. She is often described as a change optimizer, natural community organizer, encourager, and conscientious, as well as, proficient in her professions with an uncanny ability to connect with individuals from various social stratums–disadvantaged to diplomats.

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Born and raised in Michigan, Kristin Drutchas moved to Chicago after college. Early on, Kristin dove into nonprofit management by working for Smith, Bucklin & Associates, a world-wide association management firm. Her career took many turns to media and marketing, with Chicago magazine and at Conde Naste in their Chicago office. Entrepreneurial forces were stirring and Kristin created Porte Rouge table & home, a boutique offering French antiques but with the economic hardships of 2008, Kristin closed the store and dug into fundraising for her family’s local public school. She originated many of the school’s fundraising programs, and collaborated on the playground re-imagination project, which upon its completion, is now being enjoyed daily by students and members of the community. A brief stint in fashion sales brought her back to the for-profit world, but she soon learned of Humble Design while doing the same type of work on her own for a local family in need. Through her Detroit roots, Kristin learned of Humble Design’s plans to expand and immediately began campaigning by collecting furniture and city networking to ensure that Chicago was the first city chosen for Humble Design’s growth. Kristin is thrilled to be a part of changing lives for the Chicagoans that live on the thin line of homelessness.

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Maria Hadden is the Executive Director of Our City Our Voice, a national nonprofit organization she founded to enable communities and government across the country to redesign democracy for more empowered and equitable participation. Her expertise in public participation is grounded in grassroots organizing efforts for social change. In both her professional and civic life, she creates space for effective public engagement and the implementation of transformative processes. Maria is a founding board member of the Participatory Budgeting Project and from 2010 – 2018 led their technical assistance work in the Midwest and Southern United States. She earned her B.A. in International Peace and Conflict Studies from The Ohio State University before moving to Illinois to serve as an AmeriCorps*VISTA. Maria’s interests in community voice and the role of civil society were the focus on her graduate studies at DePaul University where she earned an M.S. in International Public Service Management. Maria serves on the board of directors for Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100) and Voqal. She lives with her partner and their two dogs in Chicago, IL.

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Niketa Brar serves as the founding executive director of Chicago United for Equity, an organization that supports building leadership and accountability to achieve racial equity. She comes to this work from a career working to bring a community-centered approach to government, starting during her time advising a city councilmember in Oakland, California. She has served as a consultant and policy adviser to elected leaders ranging from school board to city and state leadership roles. Niketa began her career in direct service, spending five years as an investigator with the DC Public Defender’s Office and later as a teacher and dean in Title I schools. She currently serves on the Local School Council at National Teachers Academy, a Level 1+ school serving a majority Black, majority low-income student population. She co-founded CUE with LSC President Elisabeth Greer as they worked together to organize parents, students, and a larger citywide coalition to fight this school closing. In December 2018, they won an injunction to stop the closure of this school in the first legal victory against school closures in Chicago. Niketa holds a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy and International Affairs from the George Washington University, a Masters of Arts in Teaching Secondary Mathematics from American University, and a Masters in Public Policy from the Ford School at the University of Michigan. She is the proud partner of a Chicago Public Schools teacher and mom to a future CPS student.

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Andrea Faye Hart is a multimedia-based organizer, social entrepreneur and interdisciplinary educator. Andrea is a Co-Founder and the Director of Community Engagement for the Chicago-based journalism lab City Bureau. Since 2011 she has designed civic journalism projects for media outlets as well as leading youth media organizations. She was a 2016 Voqal Fellow, a Fall 2015 recipient of a Shuttleworth Foundation Flash Grant and continues to serve as a consultant for the Democracy Foundation. She is a proud queer femme and is happy to conspire on: community-centered media, non-profit development and intergenerational educational design.

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Ciera McKissick is the founder of AMFM, a creative arts brand based in Chicago. She created AMFM, originally a web magazine, as an independent study project during her senior year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she studied Journalism and Mass Communications. Her work since then has evolved to support emerging and established artists by offering them a platform to showcase their work and passions on a larger scale through exhibitions, web content and curated events. As a curator and producer, she seeks to combine the arts to cultivate community, access, diversity, inclusivity, intergenerational interaction and a dynamic experience. Her work often involves collaboration through many art practices, organizations, and seeks to stimulate community engagement with purpose, mission, or cause. Ciera Mckissick also currently has a residency at the Chicago Art Department where she curates her larger conceptual projects and exhibitions. Projects and events for AMFM have been featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Allied Media Conference in Detroit, on Chicago’s Fox 32, and published in The Chicago Reader, where AMFM was named “Best New Gallery,” The Chicago Sun Times, Southside Weekly, Afropunk, The Milwaukee Business Journal, Millennial Magazine, and more.

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Jaclyn Jacunski is a Chicago-based artist and cultural worker. Her works take on various formats from printmaking, installation, and sculpture using themes of community and its boundaries. Known for using materials scavenged from building sites, often in gentrifying neighborhoods, Jacunski reveals how neighborhood landscapes become expressions of a lived experience resisting powerful cultural systems such as gentrification, environmental threats, and state violence. Her practice stems from a search for understanding, engagement, and care with political controversies that surround land, and communities’ acts of resistance. She is the Director of Civic Engagement for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she creates platforms for the arts and social practice in the North Lawndale. Jaclyn works closely with local residents on the Westside to develop art programming from and with the community. In her work, she promotes community engagement in the arts with the aim to build equity and social justice in Chicago. She is interdisciplinary artist who exhibits locally and nationally; she earned her M.F.A. from SAIC and a B.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin- Madison. She has taught at SAIC and Harrington College of Design. She has been an artist in resident at Chicago Artist’s Coalition’s Bolt, exhibited at the ICA in Portland and Baltimore and recently highlighted in the Chicago Tribune and Hyperallergic.

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Vanessa Ann Sanchez is the Yollocalli Arts Reach Director, the award-winning and nationally recognized, youth and teen program of the National Museum of Mexican Art. Since 2001, she has dedicated her career to designing innovative, creative, and free art and media programs for teens and young adults in collaboration with local and international artists. She has served on the Hive Chicago Advisory Committee, the Little Village Quality of Life Plan, the Pilsen Image Taskforce, and the Lakefront Curatorial Committee. Currently, she is the Board Vice President for Villapalooza, the Little Village Music Fest. She is also an artist and collaborator in the Instituto Grafico de Chicago print collective, and the Chicago Artists Creating Transformation (ACT) Collective. She received her BFA in Painting at the University of IL at Chicago in 2005.

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Alma Wieser has been the director of Heaven Gallery for the past ten years. Since joining the organization, she has expanded its capacity by implementing the board of directors and the internship program, as well as the vintage shop which helps sustain programming and increases outreach to a wider audience. Alma holds a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and Fashion Design from the International Academy of Design and Technology in Chicago and has maintained a professional studio within the gallery where she mentors aspiring fashion designers. Most recently, Alma has been focusing her efforts on creating Community Arts Wicker Park (CAWP), an equitable development project that is organizing residents in her neighborhood to come together with the goal of creating a community arts center. This project seeks to bring awareness to the ongoing problems with gentrification of neighborhoods and the displacement of artists.

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Tags: Alma Wieser, Andrea Hart, Chicago, Ciera McKissick, Heaven Gallery, Illinois, Inspire & Empower: Women Creating Change in Their Communities, Jaclyn Jacunski, Kristin Drutchas, Maria Hadden, Niketa Brar, Tanesha House, Vanessa Creightney-Stokes, Vanessa Sanchez, West Town