Nan Elsasser, founder and executive director, Working Classroom, Inc., received a BA in international relations from American University, an MA in secondary education from the University of New Mexico (UNM) and is ABD in educational linguistics at UNM. She was an education instructor in UNM’s Navajo Teacher Education Project, an English instructor at the University of Albuquerque and the Institute of American Indian Arts, an assistant professor at the University of the Virgin Islands and a Fulbright Teaching Fellow at the College of the Bahamas. Her work on issues of educational equity has appeared in Harvard Educational Review, Journal of Education, College English, Humanities in Society and the International Journal on the Sociology of Language and in Freire in the Classroom and Thought and Language/Language and Thought. She co-authored Las Mujeres: Conversations from a Hispanic Community, an oral history of four generations of New Mexican women and has written social and cultural commentary for In These Times, Arete, Encounters and the Albuquerque Journal. She served as a national consultant for the Association of Community Based Education and co-authored three plays produced by Working Classroom.

Anzia Bennett, assistant director, Working Classroom, Inc., recieved her BA in cultural studies from Antioch College and a Certificate of Nonprofit Management from UNM's Anderson School. She first joined Working Classroom as an intern through Antioch's co-op education program.

Guillda Archibeque, Office Manager

Francisco Guevara, Visual Arts Program Director /
Gestión para el Desarrollo Integral S.A. De C.V., studied painting at the Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla (BUAP) and continue at the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana in Mexico City.

He started his cultural management career with a year of law studies at the Escuela Libre de Derecho (ELD) in Mexico City following with a semester of International Relations at the Instituto Tecnológico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM). He received a University Expert title in Management and Planning of Development Cooperation Projects in the Fields of Education, Science and Culture at the Universidad Nacional de Estudios a Distancia (UNED) at Madrid, Spain, in coordination with the Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura (OEI). He has promoted several international artistic exchange programs with Australia, Brazil, Ecuador, Hong Kong, Paraguay and Spain.

As an artist he has participated in several collective exhibits and had 11 solo exhibits and installations including the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City and the 10th Mexican Festival in Australia. His work can be found in important private and public collections such as: Museo Dolores Olmedo Patiño in Mexico City, Lila Downs Collection Mexico, Ministry of Culture of Bolivia, Salma Hayek Collection USA, The Margrethe II Collection Denmark, among others.

Bethany Collins, public art program coordinator

George De La Torre, visual art program assistant

Laurel Butler, Theater Program Education Coordinator, Working Classroom Inc, received her BA in Performing Arts, Pedagogy and Community Cultural Development from Hampshire College in 2006. Laurel has worked as an artist-educator and administrative associate for Enchanted Circle Theater in Holyoke, MA, where she used theatre arts to enrich learning and promote literacy in preschools, k-12 classrooms and community centers throughout Western Massachusetts.  She was also an actor with the company.
Laurel is the Director of the Multi-Arts Theater and Co-Director of the Children's Center Theater at the Idyllwild Arts Academy Summer Program in California.  Laurel has served as Political Theater Advisor to Students for a Free Tibet, New England Chapter, Drama Advisor to the Hadley Public School District, and Chairman of the Hampshire College Theater Board.  She has taught and directed theater programs at Hopkins Academy, the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Holyoke, the Holyoke YMCA, and Rocky Mountain Theater for Kids, and was a lead preschool teacher at the Hampshire College Children's Center. Trained in samba, salsa, flamenco, modern, African and Afro-Brazilian dance forms, Laurel has been a visiting instructor at Bantaba World Dance and Music in her hometown of Boulder, Colorado.  She has coached gymnastics for the Boulder Flyers and the Northampton regional YMCA.  In 2005, she traveled to Salvador, Brazil with her four-woman street theatre troupe; there, she trained in clowning and acrobatics with the Circo Picolino and helped found the Projeto SolArte after-school arts program for children. She is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.

Amelia Ampuera, theater program assistant