Staff

Tomás Riley, Executive Director
tomas(at)artschange.org
Tomás Riley is the former Deputy Director of Streetside Stories and Director of Residencies and In-School Programs at Youth Speaks in San Francisco. A Chicano spoken word artist and educator born in Oakland, CA and raised in the Southeast San Diego neighborhood of Emerald Hills, Tomás returned to the Bay Area in 2002 to further his progressive work in arts education, alternative literacy and youth development. A first generation college student, he earned a B.A. in English in 1996 and received his M.A. in American Literature three years later at San Diego State University. As a college lecturer he taught courses in Literature, Chicana/Chicano Studies and Education as adjunct faculty in San Diego and at San Francisco State University. Tomás has also taught elementary school in Spanish bilingual classrooms for 5 years in both Southern California and San Francisco’s Mission District. Throughout his teaching and administrative career Tomás has simultaneously successfully sustained his own creative work writing as both a soloist and member of the influential guerrilla performance collective The Taco Shop Poets. Over the course of his fifteen-year performance history Tomás has performed at more than 200 venues across the country from NYU to Tacos El Gordo (Tijuana, BC) and countless cultural centers, galleries, high schools, public trains and street corners in-between. He has appeared in the HBO documentary Americanos: Latino Life in the United States, Gregory Nava’s PBS dramatic series American Family, and is profiled in the NALAC documentary series on Latina/o arts Visiones. A finalist for the California Voices Award from Poets & Writers Magazine, his written work has been featured in Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Primera Palabra, Chorizo Tonguefire: The Taco Shop Poets Anthology and various journals and literary publications. His first book Mahcic debuted on Calaca Press in December 2005.  

Rae Thomas, Program Coordinator
rae(at)artschange.org

Oliver Rodriguez, Community Outreach Associate
oliver(at)artschange.org

Current Teaching Artists

Fred Alvarado - Painting and Aerosol Art
Ana Teresa Fernandez - Painting and Aerosol Art
Joseph Mintz - Photography
Sophie Leninger - Visual Art
Bobby Nicholson - Visual Art
Alejandra Perez - Visual Art
Marc Pinate - Theater and Spoken Word Performance
Aimee Suzara - Poetry and Movement
Vanessa Zelmer - Visual Art