Meet the Team

STAFF | BOARD of Directors | CREATIVE WORKFORCE ADVISORY BOARD

STAFF

Executive + Development + Admin

Jaime Zavala
Executive Director

Lynn Warshafsky
Founding Director

Karen Kiss
Director of Institutional Giving

Khalil Zeiger
Development Manager

Eric Wang
Director of Operations

Melanie Deas
Media Assistant

Media Arts Education + Mentoring Programs For Youth

Alanna Styer
Director of Education

Riya Medapati
Program Intern

Aminata Diop
Programs Outreach and Opportunities Coordinator

Camila De Luna
Administrative and Development Associate

Center for Creative Workforce Equity

AJ Amiri
Director

Brigid McCaffrey
Senior Lead Artist

Ziyao Liu
Teaching Artist

JJ Tolibao
Teaching Assistant

MEDIA ARTS EDUCATION + MENTORING TEACHING TEAM

Lead TEACHING ARTISTS

I love travelling and street photography - capturing the world around me has always been a vehicle for me to pay attention and see the details and the broad strokes wherever I travel with my camera. And the darkroom - that is a magical place. I've been teaching since I was a kid - I remember the awkwardness of teaching adults how to swim at the YMCA when I was only 14 years old. I've been a Teaching Artist for 25 years. I love teaching because I learn so much through the process. The arts helped me find myself when I was a teenager - it was the first time I was truly passionate and focussed on something. I want to support young people in finding what they are passionate about. I enjoy learning new skills and bringing them into the classroom. I'm a certified council trainer - a practice of listening and sharing stories. I love listening through images.

In an alternate universe, I would’ve been out in the dirt digging up dinosaur bones as a paleontologist. However, I found more comfort and joy staying at home and drawing whatever was in my brain onto paper! It was then through an art teacher in elementary that paved a way for me to join a comic’s class in Venice Arts. It would be years later that I came back as a teacher’s assistant in 2022 and then became a teacher in 2024!
Before becoming an assistant, I studied Communication Arts with a major in Illustration at Otis College of Art and Design. As an artist, imposter syndrome was and is a tough battle. My time in college played a big part in exploring what I find interesting in artwork and who I am as an artist. With inspirations such as Jhonen Vasquez, Guillermo Del Toro, Frida Kahlo and Junji Ito, I knew that the artwork I wanted to create was to be eye-catching in a fun, weird way! I often found myself exploring different kinds of mediums, never sticking to just one or oftentimes combining them! I like to jump from acrylic to linoleum prints to plain old graphite pencil.
Having been a student and an assistant in Venice Arts has helped me move forward with being a teacher. The creativeness of the student’s storytelling year after year has also been a source of inspiration! So I make it a goal to help them expand their stories to their fullest and to not be afraid of taking chances. Outside of teaching, I’ve been working as a freelance artist drawing several children’s books and planning for future projects to explore. When I’m not working, I like to read manga/comics at home, search for more creative outlets or collect trinkets at a thrift store.

Makeda Flood is a photographer, teaching artist, and community arts practitioner based in Los Angeles whose work centers on storytelling, youth empowerment, and equitable access to creative opportunities. With over six years of experience designing and leading arts-based education and outreach programs, Makeda combines classroom practice with public-facing exhibitions and community engagement to create meaningful pathways for young people to develop technical skills and artistic voice.
Since 2022 Makeda has served as a Teaching Artist at Venice Arts, where she develops curriculum, leads hands-on workshops, and builds trusting relationships with students to support their creative and personal growth. Her program work extends across Los Angeles—previous roles include Workshop Coordinator at artworx LA, Visual Arts Coordinator at Boys & Girls Club Venice, and Teaching Artist at Las Fotos Project.
Makeda’s personal practice includes producing photo series, self-published zines, and curating community exhibitions that explore identity, place, and resilience. Selected recognitions and engagements include participation in the Venice Chamber of Commerce LA 13th Annual Wave Awards; Echoing Change at Gall3ry on Abbot Kinney in collaboration with The LA Guild for Reproductive Rights; and moderating the Education Day panel at Photoville (New York).

Ella de Buck (she/they) is a synthesizer of tools, concepts, and queer feelings – often mistaken as an emotional computer and poet. Descending from Dutch-Indonesian immigrants and European settlers, de Buck is also in the business of Thinking Out Loud and Cracking Jokes About Confusing Stuff. She holds a BFA from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in NYC and has since lived in the magical cities of Baltimore, MD, Asheville, NC, Truckee-Tahoe, CA and Reno, NV. She now resides in the San Gabriel Valley where she was raised by two abstract painters.
de Buck’s lifelong goals are to contribute to food sovereignty and ecological wellbeing, to fight for social-justice, and to celebrate the creative expression of children. In her practice, de Buck uses the context of material culture to speak on large-scale power dynamics using small-scale themes such as longevity, trash, function, efficiency, manufacturing, value, and emotional attachment. She works with graphite, paint/ink, video, sound, animation, installation, photography, wood, metal, textiles, found objects, and performance. In the classroom, de Buck’s goal is to facilitate a playful and experimental environment for her students to build agency and get curious about technique and concept.

Coffee Kang is a visual artist based in Los Angeles, primarily working with photo, video, installation, and performance. Coming from a photographer’s background, she embodies ephemera in her works within site-responsive art and alternative gallery spaces, actively exploring the theme of temporality and narratives of impermanence while attempting to see and seek between liminal spaces. Kang holds a BA in Creative Media from City University of Hong Kong (2016), and an MFA in Photo and Media from California Institute of the Arts (2018). Her works have been showcased at The Box, Last Projects, MAK Center, Launch LA, A Room to Create, LA Artcore, LACE, and Phase Gallery. She and her projects have received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, City of Pasadena, Mike Kelly Foundation for the Arts, California Humanities, and Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Kang was an artist in residence at Pilotenkueche and Eastside International in 2019, and Level Ground in 2021, and is currently an Armed with Camera fellow at Visual Communications.

Mengxi is an artist and educator based in Los Angeles, originally born and raised in Nanjing, China. She received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2020 and has been teaching since 2018. She primarily works with animation in various forms, including stop motion, archive video, collage, drawing, and video installation. Her projects care about mental health and the ever-shifting personal memories. Her experimental film Ai Can is a documentary portrait of a landscape artist suffering from Alzheimer’s. In 2024, she collaborated with the experimental musician duo Squash and Biscuit on a recent film Seven Little Trains, a periodical outcome of re-examining the increasingly obscured boundary between physical and virtual space. Through constant walks, reads, discussions and experiments, she reunites those unbounded territories in a non-violent way, in order to fight against the rapidly segmenting third space. Her works were shown in festivals and exhibitions in many countries internationally including France, USA, China, Japan, UK, and Turkey. She has one cat and one gecko, and loves going camping and hanging out with rocks.