VOL. 16 LOST/FOUND

Junko Nagao is a systems thinker, fundraiser, and organizational development strategist whose passion is to create a more trust-filled world. She combines 20 years of professional experience with an ancient spiritual practice, more recently known as light language, to align individuals with their own humanity and solve some of our most pressing social, environmental and economic challenges. She recently launched a podcast, Return to Wonder, to help demystify and de-stigmatize this powerful application of energetic activation. As a recent NM resident, she creates events as a board member of Harvard Alumni in IMPACT, and leads the NM chapter of Alumnae-i Network for Harvard Women. She loves to propagate plants, growing a jungle whenever possible, and is currently curating a list of best places to eat and make friends in Santa Fe.

Charlotte McKernan is an architect at DNCA. Her work explores placemaking through interdisciplinary research and design. She was raised in Santa Fe, and completed programs of study in Japan and Switzerland. She loves getting lost in places, in thought, in her work, in research, in good books, and in companionable silences. Her background is in communications, computer programming, and environmental research.

Beth Johnston (she/hers) is an interdisciplinary artist and educator making work around | about | amidst | from within the climate crisis. Beth’s work investigates and challenges inherited ways of knowing and is indebted to Latinx, Black, Indigenous, Queer and other voices aligned in acknowledging that the climate crisis is rooted in settler-colonial legacies. Grounded in research on environmental justice, Beth’s work explores temporal chasms, climate data encounters, the decolonization of nature, and how to visualize the imperceptible. Her work blurs traditional boundaries between photography, sculpture, performance, video, and activism, often building conversations across mediums. Beth has exhibited in Colorado, Rhode Island, and New York. She received an MFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design in 2022 with a self-designed concentration in NatureCulture studies. Beth lives (and works) in the high mountain desert of the Southwest in Salida, Colorado with her partner and two dogs (Thyme and Grey).

Chicago-born kelechi agwuncha is an Igbo-American video artist, filmmaker, and sound artist who uses a surrealist approach to create a set of interventions and reconstructions upon sports and bodily movement that become rehearsals of play. Using techniques of expanded cinema they construct black imagery alongside live rhythms of theatrical and musical performances; this is otherwise known as VJing or video jockeying. Drawing from their former life as an athlete, kelechi’s work is often concerned with observations and ecstatic interventions upon gestures, spaces, and local histories of Black athletes, musicians, and African diaspora. Their work has been exhibited in spaces including OpenTV, Black International Cinema Berlin, MoMA PS1, Pitchfork Music Festival, Bulk Space Detroit and Chicago Architectural Biennial. They recently received an MFA in Visual Arts at University of California.

Daniel Quat began his passion with photography at 8 years old with his brownie
camera. After completing his BA education from Columbia University and Goddard College,
he continued honing his skills at Apeiron Photo Workshops in upstate NY,
apprenticing under the landscape photographer Paul Caponigro. For almost two decades
in New York City, Daniel ran his own successful commercial photo studio specializing in
advertising, catalogs, corporate portraits and annual reports. He has been published in
many national and local magazines.

In 2005 Daniel transplanted to Santa Fe, where he became known for compelling portraits
and his ability to warm up a crowd for event photography. When he’s not shooting or
editing, he loves to horseback ride, dance (Nia), read mysteries, and hike the beautiful hills
of Santa Fe with his Bijon, Xander. His other loves include his partner, Dawn, and his sweet
Bengal cat, Makela.

Gina Hessburg is an author and a creative on a mission. With over twenty years of experience in art buying and production management for corporations, advertising agencies, directors, and photographers, Gina has a prowess for creative solutions. Applying inventive problem solving skills to her personal life as well helped Gina survive and thrive through extraordinary challenges.

Eric Sirotkin mixes his experience as a lawyer, film producer, author, and peacemaker to contribute to the Ubuntu movement: transforming individualistic thinking to the collective consciousness. Eric is the Founder of the Ubuntuworks Project, which helps both people and countries navigate their conflicts in a way that enhances health and well-being.  Over the years his peacemaking activities have taken him around the world, including India, Peru, Cuba, South Africa, Japan, North and South Korea, Vietnam, France, Netherlands, Canada, and China. He contributed to dialogue on the new Constitution in South Africa, was a UN sponsored election observer at President Mandela’s election and coordinated an international monitoring Project of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It was through this experience that he learned about the wisdom of ubuntu. In the United States he has defended protesters arrested for challenging U.S. militarism and foreign policy, sanctuary workers helping families flee U.S.-sponsored violence in Central America, and workers who have lost their jobs or been harassed due to discrimination and retaliation for race, age, sex, disability, or whistleblowing. He helped found the New Mexico Human Rights Coalition, Ashland Culture of Peace Commission, the National Lawyers Guild Korean Peace Project, and now the Ubuntuworks Project. He is also the Executive Producer of the award-winning film Committing Poetry in Times of War. He is author of Witness: A Lawyers Journey from Litigation to Liberation, and Surviving and Thriving at Work: What Every Employee Needs to Know but is Afraid to Ask. He lectures nationally and internationally on ubuntu and peace and justice issues.

Dani Katz established her reputation as one of Los Angeles’ edgiest literary talents by way of her bold voice, her expanded perspective, and her mastery of language, having published hundreds of articles in the LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Vice, Teen Vogue, LA Yoga, Reality Sandwich, and Santa Fe Reporter, among many others.

Her broad spectrum of practical experience and formal studies (including a master’s degree in journalism), combined with a pronounced passion for the metaphysical, inspired Katz’s ever-deepening fascination with the energetic frequencies of words. Devoted to understanding how language programs the subconscious mind, and creates the world as we know it, Katz’s impassioned investigations lead her to develop Quantum Languaging — a method of deconstructing and perfecting the myriad ways, whys, and hows words shape our every human experience.

Katz is the author of the critically-acclaimed Word Up: Little Languaging Hacks for Big Change, Pop Propaganda: An Illustrated Guide, and the forthcoming title, The Language of Betterarchy. She also penned the #1 bestseller, Spirit Hacking, for Shaman Durek. She has been awarded a number of writing residencies, including stints at Santa Fe Art Institute and Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and has traveled the world teaching and speaking about how language programs our every experience of reality. Katz works as a Quantum Languaging consultant, supporting high-performing needle-movers and game-changing organizations in optimizing their communications in service to greater impact, efficacy, harmony and profit, while guiding the individuals involved to empower themselves, actualize their potential and evolve the world for the infinitely more wonderful.