Board of Directors

Executive

Chair:  Gin­ger Scott 

Trea­sur­er:  Nobi Nakamura

Sec­re­tary:  Jes­si­ca A. Rodriguez

 

Members

Matt Salton and Sharon Switzer.

 

Board Bios

Nobi Naka­mu­ra is an arts and cul­tur­al pro­grams admin­is­tra­tor based in Toron­to who recent­ly worked as the Man­ag­er of Oper­a­tions at Regent Park Film Fes­ti­val. He has worked at var­i­ous NPO and gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions such as Cana­da World Youth, the Con­sulate Gen­er­al of Japan, Japan Foun­da­tion, Reel Asian Film Fes­ti­val and was a board mem­ber at the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Japan­ese Cana­di­ans (Toron­to Chap­ter), and Rain Gar­dens Unit­ed, which brings low-impact green infra­struc­ture to the east-end of Toron­to. While pro­gram offi­cer at Japan Foun­da­tion, he curat­ed a pro­gram of 40–60 film screen­ings a year and admin­is­tered audio visu­al grants for local orga­ni­za­tions in Ontario and across Cana­da. In 2020, he spear­head­ed the imple­men­ta­tion of Japan Film Fes­ti­val Plus in Cana­da, an online 28-film, 10-day fes­ti­val that reached over 20K film fans across the country. 

 

Jes­si­ca A. Rodriguez is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, New Media, and Cul­tur­al Stud­ies at McMas­ter. Her prac­tice and research focus is on visu­al music, elec­tron­ic lit­er­a­ture, video exper­i­men­ta­tion, sound art, visualization/sonification, and live cod­ing, among oth­ers, and col­lab­o­rat­ing with com­posers, writ­ers, design­ers, and oth­er visu­al artists. She is co-founder of andamio.in, a col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­form that uses dig­i­tal and ana­logue tech­nolo­gies to explore text, visu­als, and audio. She is also part of RGGTRN, a col­lec­tive that engages in algo­rith­mic dance music and audio­vi­su­al impro­vi­sa­tion informed by Lat­inx expe­ri­ences. She is cur­rent­ly Chair of the Art Board at the Fac­to­ry Media Cen­tre locat­ed in Hamil­ton, Ontario, a not-for-prof­it artist-dri­ven resource cen­tre ded­i­cat­ed to the pro­duc­tion and pro­mo­tion of cre­ative­ly diverse forms of inde­pen­dent films, videos, and oth­er stream­ing mul­ti­me­dia art forms.

 

Matt Salton is a proud neu­ro-diverse cre­ative who loves camp, kitsch, and cats. For­mer­ly the fes­ti­val direc­tor for Cal­gar­y’s Fairy­Tales LGBT Film Fes­ti­val, he is now the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Reelout Queer Film Fes­ti­val in Kingston, Ontario and has been pro­gram­ming and curat­ing queer film for over 20 years.  He is a grad­u­ate of the Film and Video Pro­duc­tion pro­gram at South­ern Alber­ta Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (SAIT) and cur­rent­ly sits on the board of the Media Arts Net­work of Ontario and can be seen act­ing and direct­ing in local Kingston stage productions. 

 

Gin­ger Scott is an arts man­ag­er (and some­times writer and artist) who has worked for over 15 years in sup­port of non-prof­it arts ser­vice, the­atre, dance, media and visu­al arts orga­ni­za­tions. She cur­rent­ly serves as Exec­u­tive Direc­tor at Inter­Ac­cess (Toron­to) and has held pre­vi­ous posi­tions at Eye­lev­el Gallery (Hal­i­fax), Art­s­peak (Van­cou­ver), Wal­ter Phillips Gallery (Banff), Artscape (Toron­to), OCADU (Toron­to), and Fac­to­ry The­atre (Toron­to). She has a Mas­ter in Muse­um Stud­ies from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, where she focused on per­for­mance art, insti­tu­tion­al cri­tique, and Cana­di­an artist-run cen­tre his­to­ry, and a Bach­e­lor of Arts in Art His­to­ry and Draw­ing from the Nova Sco­tia Col­lege of Art and Design University.

 

Sharon Switzer is a media artist, arts edu­ca­tor, and the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Near North Mobile Media Lab in North Bay, Ontario. She has, since the ear­ly 1990s, exhib­it­ed across Cana­da and in the U.S, as well as at inter­na­tion­al art fairs with Corkin Gallery. For 10 years, between 2007 and 2016, she pro­duced the Art in Tran­sit pro­gram, as well as the Toron­to Urban Film Fes­ti­val (TUFF) in the Toron­to sub­way sys­tem, offer­ing artists an oppor­tu­ni­ty to show their work in the pub­lic spaces fre­quent­ed by urban com­muters. Switzer has an MFA from the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Ontario and is a Grad­u­ate of the CFC Media Lab at the Cana­di­an Film Centre.

 

Emi­ly-Jane Williams is an accom­plished arts admin­is­tra­tor with a deep com­mit­ment to advanc­ing equi­ty with­in the media arts sec­tor. Since 2017, she has served as Devel­op­ment Direc­tor at Reel­world Screen Insti­tute, where she has played a cru­cial role in secur­ing grants, advo­cat­ing for pol­i­cy changes, and lead­ing fundrais­ing ini­tia­tives. Her efforts have been piv­otal in advanc­ing Reelworld’s mis­sion to pro­mote diver­si­ty and anti-racism in the media-arts, while sup­port­ing Cana­di­an film­mak­ers from under­rep­re­sent­ed communities.

EJ’s expe­ri­ence spans var­i­ous arts orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing Hermione Presents and Cindy Tanas Actors Stu­dio, where she devel­oped grant pro­pos­als, man­aged donor rela­tions, and sup­port­ed orga­ni­za­tion­al growth. With a proven track record in strate­gic plan­ning, gov­er­nance, and com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment, EJ is pas­sion­ate about build­ing impact­ful ini­tia­tives with­in the media arts sector.