2020 Creativity Conference

Mario J. D’Anna Jr., Director, Bob’s Burger

Began his animation career on Steven Spielberg’s Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain and has drawn on hundreds of shows, including Angry Beavers, CatDog, Scooby Doo, G.I. Joe, and The Spectacular Spiderman. He graduated from Fairfax High School and attended LA Community College. Currently he is a director on the Bob’s Burgers and the upcoming Central Park.

Simon Chong, Director, Bob’s Burgers

Is a Director on FOX's Emmy award winning show Bob's Burgers. He joined the Bobs team in 2017 after a decade of running an animation studio in London.

Keisuke Hoashi, Actor

Has nearly 200 credits in television, films, and commercials, including Bob’s Burgers, Marvel’s Runaways, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Better Things, Will and Grace, and Hawaii Five-0.

Joseph Raymond Lucero, Outreach Speaker, Homeboy Industries

Has been with Homeboy Industries since 2003 when he was released on parole. Through telling his story, Joey has been able to help bring awareness to the issues facing the formerly incarcerated. Featured in the 2007 documentary Fr. G and the Homeboys, he has appeared in episodes of ER, The Shield, Cold Case, Criminal Minds, and Shameless. He presently plays “Creeper” in the Sons of Anarchy spin-off series Mayans MC.

Chacko Sonny, Video Game Developer

Is currently working as Production Developer for Blizzard Entertainment’s smash hit “Overwatch.” The video game boasts over 35 million players worldwide and was awarded Game of the Year by The Game Awards, D.I.C.E. and the Game Developers Choice Awards.

Gary Palmer, Painter

“Other Worlds and Far Away Places”

Painter. Born Belfast, 1968. Palmer grew up in Hollywood, County Down, Northern Ireland. After working as an architect, he gained renown as a 3D street-painter and muralist featured in International festivals and publications worldwide. Will create a masterpiece live at the Conference and discuss it in a talk later that day.

Dr. Emily Musil Church, Executive Director of Education and Learning, XPRIZE

“Creativity and Innovation: Imagining and Building a Better Future”

XPRIZE designs and operates multi-million dollar competitions to incentivize innovators to build new technologies to solve global problems.

Joshua Elias, Artist

Is a well-established artist whose work has been in MOCA Summer Auction in Los Angeles. It is collected by the President of Iceland, several major film industry executives, RAND Corporate Collection, and numerous private collections, well as the Corporate collection of Shapell Properties for their main offices in Porter Ranch California. Publications include Rock/Light Lumen Press, Reagan Books, Modern Glamour Kelly Wearstler, The Nature of Color Gloria Jaroff, and Repositioning Weather Dr. Tracy Biga Ashton Hunt Publications. He will exhibit at Fathom Gallery in West Los Angeles in September 2020, his Love Painting series.

Katherine Boutry, Professor of English, West Los Angeles College

Has a PhD from Harvard University and is Director of the Creativity Studies Lab and a full-time professor at West Los Angeles College. She is author of The West Guide to Writing and several articles on the link between Creativity and Well-Being.

Doug Harvey, Professor of Art, West Los Angeles College

Since graduating with an MFA in painting from UCLA in 1994, Doug Harvey has written extensively about art for LA WEEKLY, Art issues, Art in America, The New York Times, The Nation, and numerous other publications as well as for museum and gallery catalogues, etc. Harvey’s curatorial projects have ranged from many traditional museum and gallery exhibitions (including retrospectives of Don Suggs, Rick Griffin, and Michael Arata) to compilations of sound art, programs of found and experimental films, performance events, experimental radio, and the global self-replicating curatorial project "Chain Letter" (which shut down the freeway exit at Bergamot Station Art Complex.) 

Rick Mayock, Professor of Philosophy, West Los Angeles College

Is particularly interested in the way philosophers have interpreted and explained, or failed to explain, the creative process. Some philosophers claim that we create “reality” to some extent. How much of what we think of as the "real world" is the result of our own artistic impulses? Rick Mayock is also a musician and songwriter and is currently performing with the band East of Lincoln, playing an eclectic blend of original rock and urban acoustic music.