​Anne Hillman
​

Project Director & Host/Producer
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Dana Hilbish

Advisory Board Member
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Itzel Yarger-Zagal
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Art Selection Committee
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Susy Buchanan
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Editor

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Cassandra Debaets
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Advisory Board Member
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Erica Purruq Khan

Advisory Board & Art Selection Committee

Jason Lessard

NAMI-Anchorge Executive Director & Project Advisor
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Cecilia Karoly-Lister

Art Selection Committee & Art Show Curator

Erin Willahan

Out North Executive Director
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M.C. MoHagani Magnetek

Advisory Board Member & Poet-in-Residence

Anne Hillman
Anne is the project's director as well as the host and producer of the podcast and the website manager.

For the past 14 years she's primarily worked in public radio around Alaska reporting on social justice issues such as incarceration, houselessness, and mental health treatment. She has the honor of learning from many people's lived experiences, which shapes how she interacts with the world. Mosaics is her dream project. Anne is the one to come to with any comments and concerns, and she would love your feedback and ideas.

​When not working, she's playing outside, talking to strangers, or procrastinating. She lives on traditional Dena'ina lands in Anchorage with her wife, their pets, and a garden full of kale-loving slugs.

Cecilia Karoly-Lister
​Cecilia is an interdisciplinary painter who was raised on Dena’ina land in Anchorage by women and dogs. Her work explores the tanglings between narratives on home, queerness, and consumption. Cecilia has curated shows in the past for the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) in Boston, Western Washington University in Washington state, the Alaska Humanities Forum, and Out North. Her interest in Mental Health Mosaics stems from a life both mired and blessed by familial neurodivergence, addiction, and personal mental health struggles, as well as a firm belief that there is a crucial lack of open and informed discussion on these topics in arts institutions. Cecilia is currently pursuing her MFA at SMFA, and is delighted by the opportunity to help shape an exhibition of incredible artists in her hometown.

M.C. MoHagani Magnetek
M.C. MoHagani Magnetek (pronounced: emcee mahogany magnetic) resides in Anchorage, AK at her Wonder Woman Wonderdome aka Camp Magnetek. 

​She is a prolific writer who is cooler than ice water, highly educated in Anthropology, English, Creative Writing and Forensic Science. A Coast Guard veteran, Community Organizer and a Human Rights Advocate who is world renown, nationally recognized and locally accepted as the undisputed people’s champ because she believes poetry is therapeutic. 

Some of her published works include “Shhh Be Quiet” Building Fires in the Snow (2016). “Acrimonious Black Woman Sparks Climate Change Debate with the President” Alaska Women Speak (Spring, 2019). “Girlfriend, What’s Your Recipe for Lemonade” Woman Scream: The International Poetry Anthology of Female Voices (2020). Her first novel: “The Mad Fantastic, 2098” (2020)

Her list of accolades also include jumping over five cars on her bike and chaining herself to a tree for justice, equality and respect for all people. Selling laundry detergent pods to crusty children and dusty adults who all just want to be fresh and clean is her favorite pastime. 

In addition to serving on the advisory board, you can hear MoHagani's poetry in many episodes of the podcast.

Dahsuri (Dash) Togi

Advisory Board Member
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​Indra Arriaga

Art Selection Committee & Out North VP

Meda DeWitt,
​MA, TH

Advisory Board Member
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​Meda DeWitt, MA, TH
​Meda’s Tlingit names are Tśa Tsée Naakw, Khaat kłaat, adopted Iñupiaq name is Tigigalook, and adopted Cree name is Boss Eagle Spirit Woman “Boss.” Her clan is Naanyaa.aayí and she is a child of the Kaach.aadi. Her family comes from Shtuxéen kwaan (now referred to as Wrangell, AK.) Meda’s lineage also comes from Oregon, Washington, and the BC/Yukon Territories. Currently she lives on Dena’ina lands in Anchorage, Alaska with her fiancé James “Chris” Paoli and their combined family of eight children.

Meda’s work revolves around the personal credo “Leave a world that can support life and a culture worth living for.” Her work experience draws from her training as an Alaska Native traditional healer and Healthy Native Communities capacity building facilitator. Meda believes that at its core, Alaska Native culture is one of wellness, and that traditional holistic practices are integral to the reclamation of her peoples’ identity. Meda works globally as a cultural consultant and Indigenous facilitator, providing in-person and distance delivery trainings on traditional health-based practices through partnership with tribes, health corporations, educational instructions, and communities. She is currently the Executive Director of Alaskans Take A Stand (c3).

Education includes a BA in Liberal Studies: Southeast Women’s Rites of Passage summa cum laude (2017) and Master of Arts Program (MAP) in Traditional Healing Program Development (2019), both at Alaska Pacific University, earning the MAP Student of the Year. Meda is currently attending Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi: Indigenous Studies doctoral program (2021 - in-progress.)

Cassandra Debaets
After having experienced trauma, homelessness, addiction, recovery, and then getting housing and support from a Housing First pilot program, Cassandra went to Portland Community College in 2010 in order to try out life and success after active addiction and homelessness. After dropping out of school and coming back from a significant trauma relapse, Cassandra worked on becoming a certified alcohol and drug counselor. She began peer mentoring for Outside In, the nonprofit that helped her in her recovery. While there, she helped to develop another burgeoning Portland non-profit that gives marginalized youth a place to use their collective voice, called Outside the Frame. She decided she’d rather be better able to use her story than most clinicians are allowed, so with a lifetime of experience, a few years of college, and ten years strong in addiction recovery, she set out to make peer mentoring a career.

Cassandra has lived in Alaska since December 2015, and has worked in the peer recovery community in Alaska for three years. She is a late diagnosed neurodivergent person who struggles with her symptoms, but believes in the awesome power of stewardship, integrity, inclusiveness, intersectionality education and awareness, community, identity, paying it forward, service, and advocacy.

​Cassandra enjoys video games, forests, oceans, mountains, meadows, bad puns, colors, music and sounds, pondering, reading, cinema, philosophizing, daydreaming, imagination, laughter, cartoons, learning, trivia, the macabre, art (ALL art,) animals, and stuff. ​​

Dahsuri (Dash) Togi
Talofa!
Dahsuri (Dash)is a LGBTQIA+ individual born and raised in American Samoa currently residing in Anchorage Alaska. She is the Anchorage Youth Task Force Coordinator, an Americorps VISTA, an entrepreneur and national youth advocate. She believes in implementing authentic youth voices to inform and expand youth services as well as decriminalizing stereotypes around homelessness.

​Dash dedicates her life to serve and amplify youth voices partnering with Covenant House Alaska, Alaska Humanities Forum, Spirit of Youth, Anchorage Youth Development Coalition and many other organizations in the community.  She hopes to use her platform to encourage more young people to fight and strive for success. She asks herself every day “are you going through it or are you growing through it?” Live your truth and do the damn thing! 

Dana Hilbish 
Dana Hilbish is a gardener who is driven by the changing of seasons, a good neighbor who values others, and a thoughtful mentor for people on the journey of recovery. Dana discovered her true self and allowed herself to heal while going through treatment for alcohol misuse at Hiland Mountain Correctional Center. Though she was incarcerated for 21 years, she says the worst prison she endured was being trapped by abuse and addiction. She believes that we need to see people for their whole selves, not just for the labels that are attached to them. She brings to Mosaics a wealth of lived experience and deep insights.

Erica Purruq Khan
Erica is an Alaska Native Iñupiaq and Pakistani born and raised from Utqiagvik, Alaska. Erica’s pronouns are she/they, whereas it derives from the idea that our names are gender less. Her Iñupiaq siñi’s are Purruq and Masu and Erica’s family on the North Slope are the Panningona’s. She received her Associates from her tribal community college at Ilisagvik and continued to earn her Bachelor’s in Ethnic Studies at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. 

Erica serves on the board for Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, SILA, and is currently on several collaborations projects with Bright Shores Creative Decolonization, LLC, as a multi-medium artist. She currently works with Special Education Service Agency supporting students and educators statewide. 

“I’m currently thinking of different versions of myself — mostly past versions of myself in the work that I do, to help guide me in the direction of mental health and wellness in the communities that I serve. Some of those ways are working with our senses, whether that's visualizing versions of ourselves, feeling things, or simply being on the land. My vision is to be inclusive of everyone’s thoughts — in that, we honor that a thought comes from somewhere, we should celebrate our diversity.”

Tavra. That is all.