Anida Yoeu Ali
Anida Yoeu Ali (BFA ’96 Graphic Design) is an interdisciplinary artist whose works span performance, installation, new media, public encounters, and political agitation. Raised in Chicago and born in Cambodia, she is a woman of mixed heritage with Malay, Cham, Khmer, and Thai ancestry. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach to artmaking, her installation and performance works investigate the artistic, spiritual, and political collisions of a hybrid transnational identity.
Ali is the winner of the 2024 Arts Innovator Award and the 2014–2015 Sovereign Asian Art Prize for her series The Buddhist Bug, a multidisciplinary and internationally recognized work that investigates displacement and identity through humor, absurdity, and performance. Ali has performed and exhibited at the Haus der Kunst, Palais de Tokyo, Musée d’art Contemporain Lyon, Jogja National Museum, Malay Heritage Centre, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, the Smithsonian, and the Seattle Asian Art Museum.
Her artistic works have been the recipient of grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Art Matters Foundation. Ali’s pioneering poetry work with the critically acclaimed performance group I Was Born With Two Tongues is archived with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program.
Ali holds an MFA from School of the Art Institute Chicago (2010) and a BFA from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (1996). She currently serves as a senior Artist-in-Residence at the University of Washington Bothell where she teaches courses in Interdisciplinary Arts, Global Studies, and Performance. She spends her time traveling and making art between the Asia-Pacific region and the United States.
Jaime Torres Carmona
Baker and Ryerson Fellow Jaime Torres Carmona (BSAS ’99, MArch ’01), AIA, is the Founder and Principal of Canopy, an award-winning architecture and urban design practice based in Chicago. Recognized for his approach and sensitivity towards the end user, social impact, and the environment, Jaime explores the role of design as a vehicle for positive change. Through projects ranging in scale from community and health centers to housing, schools, mixed-use buildings, and urban design, Jaime is drawn towards the urban and civic realm and its impact on the human experience.
Engaging in this approach, Jaime’s firm has produced some of Chicago’s most recognized neighborhood-based architecture, including the Enlace Community Center in Little Village, OSO Apartments in Albany Park, and the Encuentro Square Master Plan at the mouth of the 606 trail in Humboldt Park.
Jaime is currently engaged in projects throughout Chicago and the Midwest, including the conversion of the historical Humboldt Park United Methodist Church into affordable apartments, the adaptive reuse of a former Chicago Public Library in Marshall Square to serve as Latino Progresando’s (LP) New Community Center, and Chicago’s first Urban Native American inclusive mixed use housing and cultural center “Jigzibik.”
Jaime’s work has been presented at a number of venues including the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the AIA Oregon Housing Design Conference, the Chicago Cultural Center, and the National AIA Conference in New York City. A distinguished graduate of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he has taught at U of I, Judson University, and other local universities where his studios have focused on cities, urbanism, people, and culture.
Leslie Cuyjet
Leslie Cuyjet (BFA ’03 Dance) is a dance artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Her practice is decorated with performances and collaborations, both formal and informal; with contemporaries, legends, and counterparts; on rooftops, good and bad floors, and alleyways; on stage, in film, art, on tour, and on the fly since 2004. She was awarded a 2019 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for her sustained achievement as Outstanding Performer. And her 2021 solo Blur earned her a 2022 award for Outstanding Choreographer/Creator. She is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow in Choreography.
“A potent choreographic voice,” says The New York Times. Her independent work has been presented in New York, where she aims to conjure life-long questions of identity, confuse and disrupt traditional narratives, and demonstrate the angsty, explosive, sensitive, pioneering excellence of the Black woman.
Paul Christian Pement
With over two decades as the leader of Classical Kids Music Education, Paul Pement (BFA ’87 Studio Acting) has instilled a love of music and theatre in millions of children. His dedication is the driving force behind this important Chicago-based nonprofit, shining a beacon of access and opportunity and creating a positive global impact.
As Founder and Executive & Artistic Director, Paul has led Classical Kids to be the industry leader in theatrical symphony concert programming for young people. Each year he produces and directs multiple touring productions incorporating actors in performances with dozens of orchestras in cities throughout the US, Canada, and abroad. With an arts education focus, Paul ensures that all productions are accompanied by corresponding recordings and educational guides so that children, parents, and educators can continue to engage beyond the stage. Under his guidance, Classical Kids has won multiple distinguished awards and received abundant critical acclaim.
Paul’s work demonstrates a passionate commitment to the Classical Kids mission: to provide children with an exciting and educational point of entry into the world of classical music by humanizing the lives of the great composers, creating an emotional connection to their musical masterpieces, and inspiring a personal excellence that leads to greater achievement in life. He is a courageous believer in the power of music and storytelling to inspire young people and contribute to their future success.
Paul is also an accomplished actor and singer, having performed in over 50 professional theatre productions.
Nibia Pastrana Santiago
Based in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and trained in improvisation, Nibia Pastrana Santiago (MFA ’12 Dance) develops site-specific choreographic events to experiment with time, fiction, and notions of territory. Her work has been commissioned by EMPAC (2026), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (2025), the Mead Art Museum (2024), MASS MoCA (2022), de Appel (2020), and the Whitney Biennial (2019), and has been supported by the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña. She was a 2020–2022 Fellow of the Puerto Rican Arts Initiative, supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Northwestern University, and University of Texas, Austin. Along with dance scholar Susan Homar, nibia is co-editor of Inhabiting the Impossible: Dance and Experimentation in Puerto Rico (University of Michigan Press, 2023). The first-of-its-kind book brings together writing by artists and scholars to survey the field of Puerto Rican experimental dance across four decades. nibia holds an MFA in Dance with a Minor in Latina/o studies from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a postmaster in performance and scenography studies from a.pass, Belgium. She served for five years as the Academic Coordinator of the Dance Program at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, the first and only BA in Dance on the island. Her practices on laziness are deeply analyzed in the chapter “Doing Nothing Together,” included in Digital Lethargy: Dispatches from an Age of Disconnection (2022) by digital media scholar Tung-Hui Hu. Most recently, she collaborated as curatorial advisor for the major exhibition at the MCA, Chicago: Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón.
Lisa Gaye Dixon
Lisa Gaye Dixon (BALAS ’86) is a proud Professor Emerita of the Theatre and Dance departments at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She has served as chair of the acting area, resident director, and producer for Illinois Theatre. She has worked professionally across the country and around the globe, beginning her career at the renowned Steppenwolf Theatre of Chicago, and has performed on the stages of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the New Globe Theatre in London. Regional US theatres include Attic Theatre (Detroit), Performance Network (Ann Arbor), Lost Nation Theatre (Vermont), The Kitchen Theatre and GEVA Center (NY), Illinois Shakespeare Festival, Milwaukee Shakespeare, and The Goodman Theatre of Chicago. She is also a poet, essayist, playwright, choreographer, and devisor, and film credits include The Trouble with Men and Women (BBC/IFC), Leading Ladies, USING, and Ruby Love. Professional directing credits include Clarence Brown Theatre (TN), Milwaukee Shakespeare in the Park, New Canon Theatre (Monterey, CA), Illinois Shakespeare Festival, and others.
At the University of Illinois, Lisa has directed several successful productions for the Department of Theatre, all dealing with a range of ‘heavy’ social and political issues that address and reveal the common threads of our humanity and the universality of human experience across race, culture, class, economic, gender, and sexual lines, all whilst always ‘keeping the passion,’ and ‘finding the funny.’
Eric Nash
Eric Nash (BFA ’84 Graphic Design) is a third-generation University of Illinois graduate, proudly born and raised by an Illinois farm family. As a child he attended Saturday School, an arts program for community children sponsored by the Art Education Program at the School of Art and Design. This set his trajectory as an artist.
In 1986, he graduated with a BFA in Graphic Design through the benefit of the Talented Student Tuition Waiver Program. He was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon and remains close to his U of I fraternity brothers.
After graduation he pursued a career in graphic design and advertising. He eventually became Vice President and Creative Director at Leo Burnett and then Foote, Cone & Belding in Chicago, where he worked on leading consumer brands. In 2000, he moved to Los Angeles and started an advertising production company which assisted global ad agencies and brands in the production of advertising film and photo shoots.
He ultimately attracted well-known film industry collectors with his iconic Los Angeles-inspired paintings. He later collaborated with Val Kilmer in establishing HelMel Studio and Art Gallery in Hollywood. Over the past 26 years he has become a noted California painter whose work is collected worldwide both in private and corporate collections. His large-scale “Sunset Blvd” painting greets visitors at the Delta Terminal Sky Club at LAX. He has had dozens of solo shows and leading art galleries in Southern California and New York, and his work has been featured in museum exhibitions and permanent collections.
Thomas W. Siwe
Professor Emeritus Thomas Siwe (BMUS ’63, MMUS ’66) earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Illinois. Upon graduation, he performed extensively as a soloist and recorded both solo and ensemble music, playing with such diverse groups as the Chicago Symphony, the Boston Pops Orchestra, the University of Chicago Contemporary Chamber Players, and the Harry Partch Ensemble. He is a former member of the Chicago Lyric Opera, Sinfonia da Camera, and the US Marine Band at Camp Pendleton.
Professor Siwe began his teaching career at Northwestern University. He later taught at the University of Wisconsin and Northern Illinois University before returning to his alma mater, the University of Illinois, to direct its percussion program from 1969 to 1998. His students may be found teaching in many well-known collegiate music schools and departments and are members of some of the most prestigious performing organizations throughout the United States.
As a past president of the Percussive Arts Society, Professor Siwe served on the Society’s Board of Directors contributing articles to both Percussive Notes and its Research Edition. His catalogs of percussion ensemble and solo music are found in libraries throughout the world. His most recent publications, Percussion: A Course of Study for the Future Band and Orchestra Director and 10 Hall of Fame Snare Drum Solos, are available from Media Press. In 2011, Professor Siwe was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society’s Hall of Fame.
