Custom Categories: Team

Suhaly Bautista-Carolina is the Senior Managing Educator of Audience Development and Engagement at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Prior to her position at the Met, Suhaly held roles at the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute (CCCADI), Creative Time, and Brooklyn Museum and has worked in various capacities with organizations including The Laundromat Project, ArtBuilt, and ArtChangeUS. She has curated exhibitions and public programs in collaboration with Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership, Art Connects New York (ACNY), FOKUS, and NYC Salt and is one of 50 field leaders profiled in Jasmin Hernandez’ 2021 book, “We Are Here: Visionaries of Color Transforming the Art World.”

Her herbalism practice, as Moon Mother Apothecary, has been featured in The New York Times, Oprah Magazine, and People en Español among others. Suhaly has presented her work as an arts educator and community organizer at conferences around the world including MuseumNext, ArtPrize, Open Engagement, Culture Push, The New York City Arts in Education Roundtable, and POW Arts (Professional Organization of Women in the Arts). She is a Weeksville Heritage Center Ambassador, a founding member of the arts collective, present futures, a member of Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter, and founder of BlackMagic Afrofuturism Book Club.

Suhaly was recently named a 2021 Women inPower Fellow with the 92Y Belfer Center for Innovation and Social Impact and is a member of the inaugural class of NYFA’s Incubator for Executive Leaders of Color. She earned her BA and MPA from New York University and lives in her native city of New York.

Bahia Ramos has been director of arts at The Wallace Foundation since 2018. She leads the team responsible for the strategy and implementation of the foundation’s work in areas including investments in arts institutions and promoting arts education for young people. 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 ArtPlace and Sundance, and 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. Ramos has given presentations on a wide range of topics at forums across the country, including Grantmakers in the Arts, the Arts & Business Council of New York, the Alliance of Artist Communities, and Black Portraitures IV. Ramos received her undergraduate degree in history from Williams College, and a Master of Public Administration from Baruch College’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, where she was a member of the Pi Alpha Alpha Honors Society and a National Urban Fellow. She also serves on the board of Prospect Park Alliance.

Executive Director, Center for Contemporary Arts | Santa Fe, NM

Danyelle Means is the newly appointed Executive Director of the Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She will continue her successful philanthropic and non-profit leadership by advancing CCA’s mission to celebrate creativity across the arts, humanities, and sciences by generating transformative experiences designed to ignite minds and connect people.

Means has served as the Director of Advancement at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and the Executive Director of the IAIA Foundation. During her tenure at IAIA, like many in the philanthropic sector, Means and her staff shifted all efforts online during the pandemic, bringing IAIA one of the most successful fundraising years ever.

Means also draws from her museum experience at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) where she oversaw several exhibitions at the New York venue. Recently, she co-curated the 2019-2020 CUNY-QCC exhibition: Survivance and Sovereignty on Turtle Island at the Kupferberg Holocaust Center and will present, along with her co-curator, on Connecting Survivor Communities and Picturing Indigenous Survivance, at the USC Shoah Foundation’s fall conference. Means was named an advisory board member to the Gallery and Museum Studies Department at QCC.

Means was recently elected to the Board of Directors at ArtTable, an organization dedicated to advancing the leadership of women in the visual arts.

The newly formed Women of Color in Fundraising and Philanthropy recognized her work in the philanthropic sector with the inaugural Shine Award for lighting a path for other women of color in the field.

Raised on the Rosebud Reservation and proud member of the Oglala Lakota tribe in South Dakota, Means hopes to inspire other BIPOC philanthropic and non-profit professionals to strive for greatness, remembering that she and so many others like her are their ancestors’ greatest hopes and dreams for the future.

Arts Editor, LA Weekly | Los Angeles, CA

Founding Director, GAS | Los Angeles, CA

Principal, Cabrera + Art + Management | Los Angeles, CA

Principal, Maren Art Services | San Francisco, CA

Director of Luce Productions | San Francisco, CA

Special Projects, Bloomberg Philanthropies | New York, NY

Felice Axelrod provides special project and management services to both Bloomberg LP and
Bloomberg Philanthropies, including fundraising and event production. She managed special
events for the Bloomberg for Mayor campaign in 2009 and recently worked with the affinity
groups on Mike Bloomberg’s 2020 presidential campaign. Felice also consults with nonprofit
organizations on fundraising, event production, marketing and strategy and is currently
working with the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, Rudin Center for Transportation at NYU,
Asia Society, Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center, Everytown for Gun
Safety, Cities of Service and the New American Economy. Former clients include The Fortune
Society, New York Law School, Lupus Research Alliance, American Friends of the Israel
Philharmonic, Hunter College and Citizens Committee for New York City, among others.

From 2000-2008 Felice was Senior Vice President for Corporate Events, Philanthropy and
Protocol at Lehman Brothers. There she created the employee volunteer program and
worked with the many nonprofits that Lehman supported. Prior to joining Lehman, she
was Assistant to the President and Director of Special Events at Mount Sinai NYU Health
as well as for the Mount Sinai and NYU Schools of Medicine. Previously she worked in
fundraising, special events and public relations for the Museum of the City of New
York and the New York Public Library.

Felice served as Mayor Bloomberg’s representative to the Brooklyn Academy of Music board
of trustees. She currently serves on the boards of the Women’s Forum of New York,
Finch College, Bachmann-Strauss Dystonia and Parkinson Foundation, Jeffrey
Modell Foundation, Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center and ArtTable. Felice is also a
member of the finance committee for Biden for President.

She is the past president of The Council of Protocol Executives (COPE), a nonprofit association
for professional event planners and protocol officers, now known as EventFluence. Also, Felice
is a Corporate Etiquette and International Protocol Consultant certified by the Washington
School of Protocol.

Felice volunteers at several New York City organizations including Read Ahead, God’s Love We
Deliver, Children’s Hospital at Montefiore and LaGuardia Community College, among others.

Brooke Davis Anderson is the former Museum Director at PAFA, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, a position she had held since 2017. In this role Anderson was responsible for building the permanent collection and originating exhibitions for the first art museum in America: central to her leadership is expanding and making elastic the American art story to more fully include women artists and artists of color: ArtNet recently published articles delineating how PAFA is leading the way, nationally, in its acquisitions of artists of color and women. Anderson was recently honored by Rush Philanthropic Arts with an award for her dedication to diversity in the arts. 

Prior to moving to Philadelphia Anderson was the fourth Executive Director of Prospect New Orleans/U.S. Biennial (2013-2017) where she successfully implemented Prospect.3 and jump-started Prospect.4, all while making the organization debt free for the first time in its history (She closed the debt from Prospect.1, Prospect.1.5 and Prospect.2 while preparing for Prospect.4). Brooke also moved all operations from NYC to New Orleans with the belief that the project would be better poised for success if it emanated from its host city, and changed the project from a biennial to triennial. 

From 2010 to 2012 Anderson was the inaugural Deputy Director of Curatorial Planning at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). In this role, Anderson oversaw the Watts Towers Conservation and Community Collaboration, and the Curatorial Diversity Initiative, a Mellon-funded pilot program aiming to change the demographics of professionals in museums across the nation. Both of these celebrated programs are flourishing ten years later. From 1999 to 2010, Anderson was founding Director and Curator of The Contemporary Center at the American Folk Art Museum in New York, where she curated countless exhibitions (most notably projects on Martin Ramirez, Henry Darger, and other contemporary self-taught artists), authored several books and numerous articles, and led the $1 million acquisition of the Henry Darger Study Center: an effort supported largely by individual donors. Here, Brooke continued her commitment to demonstrating the porous nature of art history and made work by self-taught artists central to the NYC discourse. She has been an Assistant Professor at the following institutions – Columbia University, City College of New York, and Winston-Salem State University. 

From 1992-1999 Anderson was the first full-time director of the Diggs Gallery at Winston-Salem State University, where she tripled the budget, audience, programming, and publicity. During her tenure in North Carolina she was recognized by the Chronicle Newspaper as “Curator of African American Art,” and was honored by an endowment established in her name to ensure the museum’s future.