Power in the Middle: Strategies for Effective Regranting
Bahia Ramos, Juan Souki, Anika Tené, and Joy Young, PhD
Community-oriented arts organizations are the lifeblood of their communities, and support for their work is more vital than ever. Yet, they are often the hardest for large funders to reach. The Wallace Foundation believes that intermediary regranting organizations, often overlooked, can play a pivotal role in bridging this gap to get support where it is needed most.
As part of its Advancing Well-being in the Arts initiative, a five-year initiative supporting arts organizations rooted in communities of color, Wallace partnered with the six Regional Arts Organizations (RAOs) on regranting efforts that sought to better understand and alleviate the constraints intermediaries may face when undertaking equitable regranting efforts.
In this GIA podcast episode, we will hear from Juan Souki (Mid-Atlantic Arts), Anika Tené (Creative West), and Joy Young (formerly South Arts) in conversation with Bahia Ramos (Wallace Foundation).
This podcast was recorded on September 5, 2025.
Jaime Sharp:
Hello, and welcome back to a podcast by Grantmakers in the Arts. My name is Jaime Sharp, and I am the senior program manager here at GIA. I use she, they pronouns, and I'm a light-skinned Black person with dark curly natural hair. GIA is headquartered on the unceded land of the Lenape and Wappinger peoples. We ask you to join in acknowledging the Lenape and Wappinger communities, their elders both past and present, as well as future generations. This acknowledgement demonstrates a commitment to beginning the process of working to dismantle the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism.
Community-oriented arts organizations are the lifeblood of their communities and support for their work is more vital than ever. Yet, they are often the hardest for large funders to reach. The Wallace Foundation believes that intermediary regranting organizations, often overlooked, can play a pivotal role in bridging the gap to get support where it is needed most. As part of its Advancing Well-Being in the Arts Initiative, a five-year initiative supporting arts organizations rooted in communities of color, Wallace partnered with six regional arts organizations on regranting efforts that sought to better understand and alleviate the constraints intermediaries may face when undertaking equitable regranting efforts.
In this podcast episode, we are joined by Juan Souki from Mid-Atlantic Arts, Anika Tene from Creative West, and Joy Young from South Arts, in conversation with Bahia Ramos from the Wallace Foundation. I hope you enjoy.
Bahia Ramos:
Hi, I'm Bahia Ramos, vice president of arts at the Wallace Foundation. I go by she, her, hers. I'm a Black woman with curly hair, glasses, wearing, in my picture, a pink blazer and black blouse. Wallace is situated in the land of the Lenape. And I'm coming from the land of the Canarsee nation.
Joy Young:
I'm Joy Young, vice president of programs at South Arts. My pronouns are she and her. I am a Black woman. My face is brown. I have hair that is black, locked, and shoulder length, and just touching my multicolored shirt.
Anika Tene:
Hi, everyone. I am Anika Tene. I'm the director of Grants Awards and Programs at Creative West. I use she/her pronouns. And today I am Zooming in from Los Angeles on the ancestral and unceded lands of the Tongva, Kizh, and Chumash peoples who have been the caretakers of this land. Thank you so much.
Juan Souki:
My name is Juan Souki. I serve as executive director at Mid-Atlantic Arts. My pronouns are he, el. I am joining you from Baltimore, Maryland, and the homelands of the Susquehannock peoples. I am excited to be here. And today I am wearing a sand-colored shirt with a short sleeve and a sand-colored hat.
Bahia Ramos:
Thank you all for being with me today. As I said, I represent Wallace Foundation. And as a research foundation, our goal is really to provide both funding directly to grantees, while also identifying unanswered questions and knowledge gaps to try to fill them so that practice may move forward as a whole.
We start by asking, what is it that the field doesn't know that if it did know could lead to a breakthrough? We design and carry out our initiatives with these two goals in mind. One is to be in partnership with our grantees to seek answers to those unanswered questions, but also developing useful ideas and information for the sector. We finally share publicly what's been learned from that effort to advance policy and practice nationwide. The cycle begins again as lessons spur a new round of inquiry into how we could help sectors progress further.
Today, we're discussing a part of our current initiative, Advancing Well-Being in the Arts, which launched in 2021. We designed the initiative to center on wellbeing. What does it mean to have organizational wellbeing that is tied to or has a relationship with the community's wellbeing? As we designed this initiative, we spent a lot of time speaking to stakeholders in the field, and ultimately partnering with a number of them to create an initiative that would be reflective of the field.
So with that, in AWA, we have a smaller group of 18 grantees from across the country and Puerto Rico with budgets over 500,000, where we are supporting new programs and practices to bolster their organizations. This group is more similar to what one might think of as a typical Wallace designed initiative. We also started two new regranting efforts, one of which we'll focus on in today's conversation that is helping us to understand what more equitable grant making would look like. We have over $25 million going into the field through this cohort, and it's looking to serve organizations under $500,000 of size that are rooted in communities of color.
In our last group, we have a field studies cohort where we're supporting partnerships between arts organizations of color and researchers to design and lead their own research studies, addressing issues of importance to their organizations and to others. Each of these strands contribute to the fuller picture of addressing our guiding question of how organizational wellbeing is defined and developed, particularly through the lens of arts organizations rooted in communities of color. In total, once this five-year initiative is finished, we will have invested over $107 million in this work.
I'm really excited to talk more about the regranting efforts and Wallace's collaboration with the regional arts organizations, where we are documenting what equitable grant making looks like. Our hope is that learning how intermediaries effectively reach new organizations can provide insights to other funders about how to expand who they are funding and what questions to ask. This is one way we think that this initiative can contribute to a more equitable arts ecosystem.
In addition to the regional arts organizations, we're also working with arts service organizations that support organizations rooted in communities of color, such as First Peoples Fund, Color Congress, and others. We're also interested in learning more about the field, including smaller budget arts organizations, as these organizations often fall under the radar or are underincluded in field research. While not the primary focus of the regranting studies, the hope is that we can lift up some of the ways perhaps uniquely that this under-resourced segment of the arts sector contributes to their communities and the arts ecosystem as a whole.
So welcome to my panel today. As moderator, I will be asking a few questions and hope that we can engage in some lively discussion around them. Joy and Anika, you were with us in early days. So to start off, your organizations have, of course, collaborated as regional arts organizations in the past. With the Cultural Sustainability Program, what, if anything, was different in that collaboration?
Joy Young:
Oh, wow. I'm excited to jump into this one. As regional arts organizations, we've had many ways of collaborating in the past. In some ways, our work has been led solely by one regional organization and the others come in as a partner. In other ways, we've worked with highly, highly structured committees, multiple committee assignments and work. What we were able to devise with cultural sustainability was a hybrid model for working where our staff worked together along with staff leadership, each RAO leadership, to really build out a way of working that took the voices of the collective and created space for each RAO to then work more in autonomy within the context of the organization, each organization. Anika, I'm curious to hear what you would say about that.
Anika Tene:
Yeah. Thanks, Joy. There's so many thoughts. There's so many sort of innovations that we had in the context of designing this program. And one of the first things I'll say, which is not really a part of Bahia's question, but the involvement of Wallace, I think, was really key to me, the way that Wallace showed up and came to us and had several conversations with us as we really dreamed of what equitable grant making would look like, building on what we were already doing, but that they would engage with us as partners, really sort of laid a foundation.
And I think with the two of us, it's really special, Joy. I mean, we spent hours and hours also, once we knew this program was happening, we spent hours and hours on Zoom and telephone calls, just kind of clarifying with each other, working on definitions of terms. And so there was a lot of community building that went into this work that really was a foundation. And then when some of our team members, managers and so on, got involved in developing guiding principles for the work, it was really built on that foundation of collaboration right from the start.
Joy Young:
Indeed, indeed. And to your point, having the Wallace framework set that stage, helped us, you and I Anika, really come in and begin a process of building that team, building those committees, who then took that work, and turned it into that unified structure that we were able to take into our own regions.
Bahia Ramos:
I wonder if there are things that you learned from each other. And also, Juan, feel free to jump in here, that helped you enhance your organization's support for arts organizations rooted in these communities. Were there things about the conversations or practices that you picked up that said, oh, maybe I could try this in my region, or ways, I heard you talk about terminology, but are there things that you saw and learned from each other while going through this?
Joy Young:
I would say the language, clarity of language. Sometimes language can be used as a barrier. And we took time to have an external focus group, if you will, to help us think about what the cultural sustainability language that was developed initially, what that looks like, and how it could be interpreted and shifted again to meet our context. So definitely that was a learning moment for South Arts. And the other learning moment I would say is recognizing that what the field thinks, what grantees or potential grantees think about how funding should be used, how our guidelines tell them to use funding versus what is really needed within an organization, being able to hear that on the front end was also very helpful.
Anika Tene:
I think I want to just lean in a little bit on difference. And so geography played a huge role. And I know we're just Mid-Atlantic, South Arts, and Creative West today, but if I could think about NEFA in New England, and recognizing that they could drive to all of their states very easily and there's that connection. For us, we're a massive, we're a very expansive region. And so we've got six to seven time zones depending on the time of year.
And so the impact of that, that distance, that time, there can be 14-hour differences. There's all these different things. And so how we really need to think about that in the work. And not just sharing, hey, for us, geography is a big deal. But what that means for a NEFA or even a South Arts where geography is different. Just kind of that light bulb moment of, wow, this really shapes the terms we use, how we think about the work, how we build community with the would be grantees in the future.
Bahia Ramos:
Did any challenges surface while you were kind of going through this, and how did you find ways to navigate them?
Anika Tene:
I mean, there definitely were challenges. I think it's important for us to name that. But I have to turn to, especially our second line or managers who really built community with each other, spend time talking story, learning about each other, and then building a framework of guiding principles that could be broad enough, a catchall for some framing for the work built on the collaboration that we'd already done. But really learning from each other and like, okay, what can really work? What are the things, what are the questions that will guide this work broadly, knowing that, as individual regions, we'll still come up with sort of region-focused themes and questions on our applications and so on.
Bahia Ramos:
Yeah. I have questions about your internal and external questions. But Juan, I'm thinking about you coming in as a new leader, both to this part of the ecosystem and into this new collaborative challenge as it were, and thinking what types of questions did you and your teams, what did you challenge to ask yourself while embarking on this effort to ensure that the ideas that you had for change at Mid-Atlantic were grounded in this effort?
Juan Souki:
Thank you. I can tell you this is a program that I will never forget because I arrived at Mid-Atlantic, and being totally new to the regionals or to this side of the fence of the regionals, because historically I've worked directly with artists and communities in the past. And upon arriving at Mid-Atlantic, I requested/suggested for the org to grant a long period of listening, 100 days of listening to understand a little bit more.
And it was a joy to learn about this project because some of the questions I was asking were at the time beyond the program. Who have we served historically? What types of organizations? And the more I looked into that, it seemed like we were serving with huge gaps. And the more I asked about those gaps, a lot of the time the answers had to do with the limitations or regulations that came with the funding. This funding is meant to be used only with organizations with a 501(c)(3) status, or this is only a funding that can be used for these types of disciplines, et cetera.
And to learn that there was a program that was challenging that was a big joy. And it also made me ask a lot of questions about the program specifically. And my perception at the time was that a lot of heart and intention was being put into the thinking, but in a way that I found surprisingly narrow, because when we were looking at the numbers, this program was meant to serve communities that we had very little history of serving as an organization. And it felt urgent to become a vehicle for them to become the designers of the program in a way.
And I think a lot of the work that was being done internally at the time was thoughtful and human and open, but limited in the sense of these connections because we historically didn't have the connections. So it was a very interesting journey. I think there were a lot of wins. And I can talk a little bit about into what those conversations turned, but it was also one of the few situations where I had to speak during a time where I was meant to listen only, because I felt it was new in so many ways. And that it would be hurtful and delicate to not do the program with a community approach.
Fast forward, I think it became a madly inclusive program for Mid-Atlantic to the point of every single aspect of communications, graphic design, community outreach. None of it was something that we handled internally with our team. We wanted to make sure that every single aspect of the program sounded as if it was coming from a conversation with the communities. And the only way to do that is to make it their voices.
So it was a gift of a process, a very unique opportunity that felt very futuristic at a time where I was personally also trying to think and wonder how some of our work beyond the program could sound, feel, become more like this. And having the gift of working with community members and gathering information from the field in areas like fund distribution or outreach and accessibility, transparency, and making the decision process also a conversation with the communities we were meant to serve was a gift and was amazing. Yeah.
Bahia Ramos:
Thank you. I think to just expand on that engagement process a bit, I know you all had different approaches for engaging with potential grantees in advance, to just understand what change might look like for your regions. Are there learnings from other regions that you'd like to share about that process, Anika, Joy?
Anika Tene:
Yeah, I'd love to jump in just before I go through TSA here.
Bahia Ramos:
I'm sorry.
Anika Tene:
Yeah. So we did a snowball method where we reached out to our community, existing grantees, existing alumni of our fellowship programs, and told them about this program, and had them submit a survey to see if they met the baseline criteria for the program. And then we got about 100 responses. And people also had the opportunity to say, "No, I don't fit this criteria. My organization doesn't fit this criteria, but I do know others who do." And so this sort of snowball effect to find folks to respond to another level of survey to ask questions about their work.
So from there, and to see if they were interested in participating in stakeholder focus groups. And so this process, two rounds of surveys, led us to 22 folks to participate in seven different stakeholder feedback sessions where we took them through our intent from the guiding principles of the program to the application that we had devised, our region specific questions. Were we asking the right things? This is essentially what we were trying to drive at.
And so we got some great feedback. That obviously was a lot of work. And so we wanted to honor that work by really responding to what people said, thinking about tiers within the budgets under $500,000. They're like, yeah, there's a big difference between an organization that's at 50,000 and one that's at 450,000 in terms of their thinking, their focus, their community, how they approach the work. And so making a recognition of that is super important. And so we were able to embed that into the program. That was a very significant one.
And then another one, there was a lot of them, but I'll just name these two. That one, and then being able to hear voice. They were like, we have to respond to written applications all the time. And there's very specific questions that are asked, but where's the space for us to just tell our story? And so what we then did with that, we had two round application process. So once we had our top 50 that were going to the second round, we invited them to, there was an application that they could do audio or visual, but there was also a real-time five-minute interview.
So we had a setup time of, the whole thing, 10 minutes. You arrive 10 minutes, we give you all the instructions, five minutes we start, and at the end of five minutes, we're going to stop you. But they had that real-time moment to say the most compelling thing from their point of view about their organizations. And it was honestly so powerful. And so we learned that from the stakeholder. Give us voice, give us space to say whatever the heck we need to say in this moment. And so that was a really important learning for us.
Joy Young:
Yes. And because we saw the amount of work, time, effort, and energy that Creative West put into their process, and we recognized that we don't have capacity as South Arts to do all of what they were doing, but we took what we saw and believe were some of those best practices. So convening individuals through our own networks. And we have other programs that center communities of color. So bringing them in to review the application, to review the language, to understand the program, and to help us make the refinements necessary to share it with the broader field. I will say that those folks who provided feedback were allowed to be applicants as well as panelists, but of course not for their own applications. And we also had two rounds of application process and engagement with applicants.
Something else we did and learned through the process was how crucial the engagement of panelists is, ensuring that they understand what it is we're wanting to achieve, understanding what the guidelines and the language in the guidelines meant so that we could really trust the review process, which was a little more traditional than how Anika has described theirs for Creative West. But knowing that the panelists represented community, involved in communities, some again, were applicants, and being able to know that their training, their engagement, their understanding the process would yield a cohort of applicants and grantees specifically to really build out a cohort that we're very proud to have selected.
Bahia Ramos:
Juan, would you like to add any, I know we talked about your website at one point in the development and the engagement of artists with the website and how you reflected grantees with every step. Is there a particular part of the process that you would like to highlight from that process? Go ahead.
Juan Souki:
Thank you, Bahia. Yeah, there were a couple of breakthrough moments that I think felt very important for the program. I think the first one was a collaboration with Marisel Hernandez in Puerto Rico who helped us set up a first survey to start a conversation with community members throughout all 10 states. And it was very interesting to start a conversation about their own perception of funds distribution, outreach and accessibility, transparency, and capacity building. And looking at the answers from them about the needs that they were seeing from the field beyond the evident, like the limited access to funds, to also hear important feedback about the complexity of application processes or bias in funding decisions.
And that was a very important point because it was an opportunity to jumpstart a conversation with the region that then led into a different model for the panels, a model that was informed by some of the work that our folk department is doing with working circles and making sure there's no academic approach to the review, but that the basis for the review is inspired or anchored in the true needs of the community, not as seen from outside, but as seen from inside.
And when you look at the numbers specifically for Mid-Atlantic, it was, I think, not only an inspiring journey, but also a very important decision. Because when you look at our numbers, more than 75% of the applications that we received were completely new applicants to our program, and I do believe everything is interconnected. And I think the intentionality of making the process so community-based, and then the review process as well really allowed for different patterns of flow for the information to reach the communities. So yeah.
Bahia Ramos:
Yeah. Thank you for that. I'm thinking about something Joy mentioned earlier about, and I want to get to a practice question really about your teams, a management question perhaps of, as regionals, a large part of your work has particular boundaries and guidelines that have been in practice for some time. And this was, I guess, an attempt, a shift to try to, I think at Wallace, we were thinking if there were no boundaries, no rules, meaning if an organization didn't have to be a 501(c)(3), if the budget lines were $1 to $500,000 in size, what would you be able to do? How did you begin to galvanize your teams around these ideas of equity in the regranting effort, and shed perhaps notions of old practices in an effort to really capture new organizations and relationships in your region?
Joy Young:
First, it was so liberating to be able to take off, and I can imagine Anika may be smiling with that word, to take off those shackles, if you will, of having to jump to a drum that just didn't feel right. And so the beauty of being able to work with Wallace in this work was that you gave us the freedom to think big and to think broadly and to recognize that organizations working by, with, and for community, or by, for, and with community, but very specifically with community are doing the hard work and aren't being recognized, and yet doing amazing work.
And so once we saw this liberation, there was this ongoing desire, and you've heard it from Anika, you've heard it from Juan, to figure out ways that worked within our unique regions to address this freedom, to identify new organizations. And I think this notion of new organizations, I know was very important to South Arts. To be able to say to an organization, "No, you don't have to be a 501(c)(3), yes, you can be a fiscal agent, yes, you can be an organization that works at the intersection of arts and community," is so liberating.
And once I think the full committee doing the work of the program design, once we're able to really see that, so many ideas popped up. I'll punt over to Anika and Juan to speak to some of those ideas that they saw for us at South Arts very specifically, being able to fund for profit entities that, again, are rooted in communities, centered in communities of color, and are doing work that is built where relationship is the capital, not the money. That is just tremendous. Anika?
Anika Tene:
Yes, absolutely. This was a game changer for us. Again, coming back to the collaborative work with Wallace that we asked the question, can we include for profits, LLCs, groups? And there was never a no. There was just this expansive, it's really like, yes, you all design the program. Because if it's going to be equitable, it has to be rooted in what that looks like for you and what's important for your communities. And so this was brand new for us. We had never had the opportunity to fund for profits, LLCs.
And so anecdotally, we knew they were out there and we knew, as Joy said, that they were rooted in community, but we didn't have the hard data. But when we put the call out, they responded. And I think it's been, I have to jump to today, but we do have, we have LLCs, we have these groups that are these for profit organizations that are doing great community work that are a part of this program.
And the beauty has been them coming alongside 501(c)(3)s, and having these conversations, and understanding the challenges and strengths of their different statuses. And then learning from each other. Maybe in addition to my LLC, I need to think about having a 501(c)(3). These conversations and learning from each other are able to happen. And if we had not been able to set that up from the beginning, these conversations couldn't happen. So it's been amazing.
Juan Souki:
I want to-
Joy Young:
And I'll-
Juan Souki:
Sorry.
Joy Young:
Go ahead. Go ahead, Juan, please.
Juan Souki:
No, I just want to second Joy and Anika. For Mid-Atlantic, it was so important. I feel being new to the journey personally, it felt like I could see and it would be nice dreamlike feeling in the team become a it has to be this way feeling. And it's informing a lot of the future thinking that we are doing along some of the programs that we're doing in folk that have the same spirit of supporting the intention of communities to share their stories regardless of the shape of their collective or organization or way of acknowledging their collective work.
And it's been fantastic to see the team get inspired. And I want to recognize them, the team at Mid-Atlantic that embraced this project, Sarah Theune, Sarah Branch, Leeann Wallett. And then also some of the external supporters like Uzo Njoku and Nathan Young, that really pushed for the process to be inclusive, and I think helped us learned a big lesson for Mid-Atlantic.
Joy Young:
Again, the liberation of being able to do this work to recognize also that we are talking about an ecosystem. And the nonprofit arts is just one part of how the arts show up within our communities. So recognizing that these organizations are able to come together now as South Arts has made its selections. I know that Anika and Creative West, they're ahead of us by light years in that way. But what we're seeing is that organizations are beginning to come together on their own. They're making time to have discussions now about their communities, and how they can be part of changing their ecosystems. So I just want to say that that is an outcome that we're seeing already.
Bahia Ramos:
That's fabulous. I mean, I think it was really such, and it continues to be a pleasure to work with you all. Because this started as a way for Wallace to be responsive to the stakeholders we were hearing from in the field as we pursued this work. And released the constraints of our own internal kind of structure and say, okay, we know we have to respond to this call. And we wonder what it might feel like to release the boundaries, take off some of our own limitations and practice this in a different way.
So I just appreciate you all doing that, entering this conversation with us. And also how important your regional context and ways of understanding played into your own definitions of equitable grant making and collaboration as a body. Just lastly, as we wrap up, just I ask for one takeaway from this work that you're looking forward to implementing in regranting practices going forward.
Anika Tene:
Something that was really critical for us, [inaudible 00:38:30] we had, and Joy mentioned, we're a bit ahead of the other regions in terms of this work, we are closing out in sort of of our first year of the program. And in July, we were able to have an in person retreat where we gathered all grantees in New Mexico in a very beautiful setting, and our focus was rest and also finances, how to be future ready in our finances. But rest was really centered, really that community building.
And from the feedback surveys, something that was significant was being able to invite Wallace to come out on the last day. And so Bahia and some of her colleagues were able to join us. And just share from, yes, the program and all the things that Bahia shared at the top, but also for humanity. And so it just kind of had this leveling experience. It allowed these small organizations to be able to square their shoulders and know that they had expertise to bring to a funder, a researcher.
And so that is something that I'd really like to see more. I thought about this yesterday, allowing us to be true intermediaries. Not transactional. But what does it look like to be this in between that is shepherding, stewarding relationships between grantees, between us and the grantees and the original funder so that everyone can understand priorities as they go forward in the work and looking at the landscape of our country and all of the things. But that they're able to have that sort of hands-on. So that was significant for the grantees to experience that time with a funder. So I'd love to see ways in which we can build that into future programming.
Joy Young:
I'll definitely second that latter part, Anika, thinking about how we can continue to work with foundations. Wallace, you've set a huge example, so thank you. Our takeaway is pretty simple. General operating support. That yes, we can remove barriers to who we fund and how we fund, that we don't have to focus so much on what a worthy organization looks like based on its board structure or based on its business structure. But really wanting to provide an organization general operating support to do what it does as it centers community. To compare an organization that is well-funded, well-healed, with one that is not and yet is still doing the work is just not fair. And we can begin to right that ship with general operating support.
The grantees, our cohort, they're so grateful. It gives them breathing space. Anika used the word rest. I mean, this work can be a grind. It can take a lot out of you. And yet in the arts, we are filled by this work. It is our passion and it is our purpose. And general operating support is the means by which this work can get done at a community level that is very, very different for organizations that are centered in canon versus organizations that are centered in community.
Juan Souki:
I couldn't agree more with you, Anika and Joy. I want to add from Mid-Atlantic, that's something that we want to take away and keep is involving in panel process and in program design processes, just to put at the center those who are most directly impacted by the grants and programs. So positioning those community members as experts in the decision-making and panel process, and making sure the work really is informed and goes back to the community in ways that are less vertical and more organic and collaborative.
Bahia Ramos:
Well, thank you so much for just the sharing and the honest conversation today. I really appreciate all that you have said. And it kind of affirms our intention and the care with which you all carried out what felt, I assume, as a pretty open and ambiguous directive from Wallace at the beginning. But I think really calls into work that's centered in community, as Joy describes. Work that's really centered in community and not canon, and dispels these notions of what structure looks like in the arts, what stability looks like in the arts. How this part of the ecosystem brings so much tremendous value to all the work that we do. So thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing this with the GIA, with all our GIA colleagues and peers. And I look forward to more opportunities to talk to you about this in the future. Thank you.
Jaime Sharp:
Thank you so much for listening to this podcast episode from Grantmakers in the Arts. Thank you again to Juan, Anika, Joy, and Bahia for joining us today. You can check out more podcast episodes at reader.giarts.org, and we hope you tune in next time. Thank you.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Bahia Ramos joined The Wallace Foundation in 2018. She leads the team responsible for the strategy and implementation of the foundation’s investments in arts institutions and youth arts education. Before arriving at Wallace, Ramos served as program director of the arts for the Knight Foundation, where she led the organization’s strategy for a $35 million annual investment in arts funding across the country. In that role, she built national partnerships and initiatives with organizations such as the Sundance Film Festival and ArtPlace, a collaboration among foundations, federal agencies, and financial institutions that, from 2011 to 2020, funded arts projects to enhance community development. She also worked on the local level to bring more high-quality arts experiences to diverse audiences and neighborhoods. Previously at Knight, Ramos had served as director/community foundations, managing a $140 million investment in community foundations in 26 cities supporting local civic innovation and community vibrancy.
As the Executive Director at Mid Atlantic Arts, a prominent US non-profit organization dedicated to fostering global artistic exchange through touring grants and programs, Juan Souki is pivotal in supporting artists worldwide. His leadership extends from his previous position as the director of Odelia Artists, where he supported Latinx artists aspiring to break into new markets. Born in Venezuela and later naturalized as a Canadian citizen, he is committed to facilitating cross-cultural connections and promoting artistic diversity.
Anika Tené (she/her) is a cultural strategist, arts leader, and community builder who works at the intersection of belonging, freedom, and care. As Director of Grants, Awards, and Programs at Creative West, she supports artists, culture bearers, and organizations through responsive funding, artist-centered support, and programs that reflect the lived realities of communities. Her work is grounded in the belief that arts and culture are essential to democracy, wellness, and belonging. Anika co-designed national initiatives such as ArtsHERE and Cultural Sustainability, which uplift equity in arts funding and infrastructure. She continues to design and implement regional artist funds that champion those who live and create at the intersections of place, identity, and access. Her work builds networks of trust and opportunity that center brilliance, need, and vision. Locally, she advocates for human-centered public investment and creative ecosystems where artists thrive. A skilled strategist and convener, Anika brings care and clarity to cross-sector collaborations that amplify cultural expression and community voice. Her work is rooted in a commitment to healing and transformation through art, storytelling, and collective action. She is also the author of The Oceans We Hold, a lyrical novella exploring memory, healing, and womanhood. Whether shaping national strategy or holding space in community, Anika leads with warmth, integrity, and a deep belief in the power of culture to connect, repair, and reimagine what’s possible.
Joy Young, PhD isn't just an arts professional; she's a leader with passion. Each day expands her 25+ years in the arts as an vocal artist, administrator, advocate, and academic. Her diverse background fuels a unique, innovative approach, driven by her core belief in connecting the arts to purpose. With a gift for turning vision into reality, Joy consistently forges robust partnerships that spark ideas, expansion and growth. She approaches her work with a unique blend of adaptability, creative problem-framing, and a genuine heart for people. Joy's personal philosophy on the arts is beautifully captured in a haiku she penned herself: Arts for unity. Not for uniformity. All, together, good.
