Team

Staff

Judilee Reed For over 15 years, Judilee has worked in the not-for-profit field of arts, culture, and community service directing programs that build on the many intersections of people, art, and community development. Judilee Reed is the Executive Director of Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC). In her role, Judilee develops the overarching strategy for the organization and defines its priorities with a staff of five and national team of expert consultants and partners. Prior to joining LINC, Judilee was Program and Resource Manager at the New England Foundation for the Arts, where she helped design program and manage fundraising efforts for special initiatives including the programs of the National Dance Project and Art & Community Landscapes, a public art program in partnership with the National Park Service. In addition, Judilee managed the Cambodian Artists Project, a ten-year program to develop the capacity of Cambodian performing arts in the US and in Cambodia that now continues as a program of LINC. Judilee’s career began with local work as grants officer and gallery director of the Cambridge Arts Council, and Assistant Director of the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center. Judilee has served as a board member of WGBH, Club Passim, and the United South End Settlements and as a volunteer at the Asian American Resource Workshop and the Asian Community Development Corporation. Judilee has a BFA in painting, a BA in Art History, and has completed the Program for Leadership Development, Harvard Business School.

Karen Garrett In her role as Program Director, Grantmaking, Karen oversees LINC’s grantmaking in its Creative Communities and Artography programs. Prior to joining LINC, Karen was the Senior Program Assistant and Exhibit Coordinator at the Nathan Cummings Foundation for seven years. Karen’s responsibilities included coordinating the efforts of the Program Assistants at the Foundation, maintaining the grantmaking procedures manual, processing and monitoring grant requests, coordinating and participating in Arts and Culture grantee meetings and interfacing with the Arts and Culture Education Team of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees. As the Exhibit Coordinator, she was responsible for three in-house exhibits a year at the Foundation, all representing social justice issues. Before joining the Foundation in 2000, Karen served in several capacities on the staff of the dance company, Urban Bush Women. She began her tenure as the Office Manager and then served as the Company Manager and Interim Director. She was also fortunate enough to be Faculty/Participant Coordinator for the Company’s groundbreaking Summer Dance Institute at Florida State University, which is now an annual event in Brooklyn, NY. Garrett is a graduate of Marymount Manhattan College where she received a BFA in Dance.

Risë Wilson As Program Manager for LINC’s national programs, Risë focuses on artist space, health insurance, and health care for artists. Risë is the Founder of The Laundromat Project, an emerging social enterprise that mounts public art projects in neighborhood laundromats as a way of making art more accessible--physically, financially, and conceptually--to communities of color living on low incomes. The long term vision for the organization is to build an art center attached to a laundromat that it owns and operates. After conceiving the idea for The Laundromat Project in 1999, Risë focused both her academic and professional careers on bringing the organization to fruition. In addition to graduate work at NYU, Risë pursued a practical education in non-profit arts administration by holding positions in both large-scale and grassroots cultural institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, the Painted Bride Art Center, and Art Sanctuary. As an artist, Risë works in the genre of printmaking. As an administrator her work has spanned strategic planning, fundraising, community outreach, and art education. Periodically she serves as a consultant to other non-profits in these areas. Most recently she served as a Research Consultant for The Ford Foundation, supporting the work of its Media, Arts and Culture unit. She has also taught at Parsons, the New School for Design, helping product design students apply their creative talents to the public sphere. Recognized as one of the "World's Best Emerging Social Entrepreneurs," Risë is a 2008 Douglas Redd Fellow in art and community development; a 2004 Echoing Green Fellow; and a 2002 College Arts Association/NEH professional development fellow. Risë holds a BA in African-American Studies from Columbia where she was a Kluge Scholar, and an MA in Africana Studies from NYU, where she was a Maccracken Fellow. Before leaving the corporate sector to enter the field of non-profit arts, Risë worked for Procter and Gamble in Customer Business Development.

Parita Patel As LINC’s Program Coordinator, Parita works across the Creative Communities, Artist Space and Health Insurance for Artists programs, as well as conducts research and handles information requests on behalf of the Executive Director. Prior to joining LINC for the second time, Parita served as the Research & Grants Manager for Cable Positive, the former AIDS action organization of the cable and telecommunications industry, and oversaw the development and implementation of Living Beyond Belief, their direct service youth division. Previous to that, Parita held a position on the program team for the W. J. Clinton Foundation and American Health Association’s childhood obesity initiative. Parita studied European Union policy at Corvinus University in Budapest and holds a BA in Public Policy and Social Change from Bentley University, where she also minored in business and law.

Ryan Breaux As LINC’s Project Assistant, Ryan provides administrative support to LINC’s grant making programs, including Space for Change. Ryan began his tenure at LINC as an intern in January 2009, and quickly became an integral member of our team. Ryan’s previous experience includes serving as Gallery Staff at SUPERFRONT—a not-for-profit project space for experimental architecture in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn—where he was responsible for grant writing and maintaining daily gallery operations. In addition, he has interned at several architecture firms in New York City, such as Eisenman Architects and Acconci Studio. Ryan received his Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Cincinnati in Ohio.