Ashley Mitchell

As the daughter of a professional boxer, a competitive athlete, theatre major, and fitness professional, Ashley has uniquely experienced a myriad of physical and mental training philosophies, and has seen what works and what doesn’t from various points of view. Her background and upbringing have taught her to successfully navigate failure, fear, and discrimination, and use adversity to redefine her own success. Through the work of her non-profit, The Courage Campaign, Ashley now aims to share what she’s learned and help others to unlock passion, invoke courage, and reinvent achievement.

Nyugen Smith

Nyugen E. Smith is a first-generation Caribbean-American interdisciplinary artist. His work explores historical and present-day conditions of Black African descendants in the diaspora. Trauma, spiritual practices, language, memory, architecture, and climate change are primary concerns in his practice. 

Nyugen holds an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is the recipient of the Leonore Annenberg Performing and Visual Arts Fund, Franklin Furnace Fund, Dr. Doris Derby Award, and Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Nyugen is a Lecturer of Interdisciplinary Art in the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University.

AnthonyFebo – Adobo Fish-Sauce

Anthony Febo is a Puerto Rican poet from Lowell, MA. He has been a dedicated teaching artist for over a decade, working in non-profits in the Greater Boston area, coaching youth slam teams, and touring the country individually and as half of the cooking and poetry duo Adobo-Fish-Sauce. As a youth worker, Febo meets youth where they are at and provides them with tools for their own learning. He’s been developing and applying his own pedagogy called Slinging, which is rooted in mindful practices and combines walking, writing, and out loud expression as a means for self-reflection and creation. As an artist, Febo’s work explores what it means to actively choose joy in the face of what is trying to break you. Weaving performance into his writing, he examines issues such as toxic masculinity, family, culture, identity, and the role representation plays into a person’s development.

Ricky Orng – Adobo Fish Sauce

Ricky Orng is a Cambodian-American organizer, designer and storyteller. He has worked extensively with youth organizations on contemporary arts and social justice projects using mediums such as photography, film, and poetry. He has coached the youth poetry slam team, FreeVerse!, to final stages at Louder Than the Bomb Massachusetts and showcased at Brave New Voices. He currently organizes one of the cutest poetry venues in the Northeast, the bi-monthly Untitled Open Mic in Lowell, MA; and also was the organizer of one of the longest running Asian American Pacific Islander open mics in the country, East Meets Words. All of Ricky’s poetry is about love and relationships and his relationships with his loves.

Soyoung L. Kim

At the age of six, Soyoung L Kim was displaced from Seoul, South Korea, her birth country, and relocated to Nairobi, Kenya, her adopted childhood home. She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Through her art, she seeks to convey a place that exists in all our unconscious, a place where we are free to feel, to express, to be accepted. Because of the many displacements in Soyoung’s life, home is something to hold within her and is expressed through her art.