About LXIA
LATINX IN ANIMATIONEmpowering Diversity in Animation from Page to Post
Our Mission
Latino Film Institute + LXiA
Latino Film Institute (LFI) showcases, strengthens and celebrates the richness of Latino lives through the audiovisual event. We develop, activate, and support artists, creators, and executives through pathways and platforms for the expression and appreciation of their work.
LatinX in Animation (LXiA) represents a diverse group within the Animation, VFX, and Gaming industries dedicated to uniting a talented pool of innovators with a heart to create exceptional stories across multiple platforms.
We do so by organizing activities and events focused on networking, camaraderie, community service, education, communication, and professional development. LatinX in Animation will provide the resources necessary to promote and further develop creatives and decision-makers in the Animation, VFX, and Gaming industries.
Through these efforts, we hope to empower and promote the growth of Latinx diversity and minorities in all facets of the Animation, VFX, and Gaming industries by celebrating authentic stories that are About Us, Told By Us and Made By us.
Latino Film Institute Board of Directors
Edward James Olmos
Founder & Chairman
Bonifacio “Bonny” Garcia
Board President
Dr. Judith F. Baca
Board Member
Pilar Flynn
Board Member
Richard L. “Rick” Miller
Board Member
Jay Nomura
Board Member
Dr. Ana-Christina Ramón
Board Member
Steven Zubkoff
Board President
LXiA Leadership
Magdiela Hermida Duhamel
LXiA Founder & Co-Director
Bryan Dimas
LXiA Co-Founder & Co-Director
Angela M. Sánchez
LXiA Program Coordinator
Our Team
Michael J. Beall
Charter Member & Team Member
Jeannette Lara
Charter Member & Team Member
Alfredo Marun
Charter Member & Team Member
Maria Azellea
Team Member
Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster-Jones
Charter Member & Team Member
Michelle (Rincon) Eloren
Charter Member & Team Member
Angel Ruvalcaba
Team Member
Monica Torrez Rodriguez
Team Member
LatinX in Animation began in the Spring of 2018 when Magdiela Hermida Duhamel sought out to create a Latinx community for animation professionals.
History
LXiA (LatinX in Animation) began in the Spring of 2018 when Magdiela Hermida Duhamel sought out to create a Latinx community for animation professionals. The goal of creating this group was to build a community for Latinx professionals that work in all different areas and disciplines including production, technical, and artistic roles. The community would have the opportunity to network and come together to learn from each other’s experiences. The original LXiA group started out very small, with only 30 members from a single studio, and would meet once a month during lunch.
LFI Signature Programs
Powered By
EDWARD JAMES OLMOS
Founder
Born February 24, 1947, East Los Angeles, at The First Japanese Hospital to Pedro Olmos and Eleanor Huizar. Raised on Cheesebrough’s Lane, he attended Greenwood Elementary and Montebello Junior High. He then graduated from Montebello High School in 1964. After which he received an Associative Arts Degree in Sociology and Criminal Justice at East Los Angeles College in 1966. Olmos since then has gone on to receive many accolades from the City of Montebello, including the Alumni of The Year from Montebello High School in 2014, and Man of the Year Award from The Mexican American Opportunity Foundation in 2015.
He has achieved extraordinary success as an actor, producer and humanitarian. The Tony, Emmy and Academy Award® Nominated actor, is probably best known to young audiences for his work on the SYFY television series “Battlestar Galatica” as Admiral William Adama. Although the series kept the actor busy during its run from 2003 through 2009, it didn’t stop him from directing the HBO movie “Walkout” in 2007, for which he earned a DGA Nomination in the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television category.
Olmos’ career in entertainment spans over 30 years. In that time he created a signature style and aesthetic that he applies to every artist endeavor, often grounding his characters in reality and gravitas. His dedication to his craft has brought him attention across the industry, and with audiences worldwide.
Bonifacio “Bonny” Garcia
Bonifacio “Bonny” Garcia is the managing partner and a founder of Garcia, Hernandez, Sawhney & Bermudez, LLP. Mr. Garcia specializes in negotiations, collective bargaining, labor and employment, complex litigation and strategic counseling and planning. Garcia has extensive experience representing governmental entities including cities, school districts, community college districts and special districts, throughout the state of California.
Garcia began his legal career as a commercial litigator and spent more than 16 years handling complex litigation and real estate matters. He currently serves as City Attorney of the City of Delano, Special Counsel to the Ventura County Community College District, Palmdale School District, Pasadena Unified School District, and the Delano Mosquito Abatement District among others. Mr. Garcia also serves as a chief labor negotiator for other school districts and local governments throughout California.
Garcia has the highest “AV Attorney” Rating by Martindale-Hubbell for ethics and competence, and in 2015 he was named “Top Lawyer – Labor and Employment” by Corporate Counsel Magazine, American Lawyer Magazine and National Law Journal. He sits on the Board of Trustees for the Catholic Charities of Los Angeles Inc., and for the Advancement Project, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. Garcia is a graduate of Harvard Law School.
Dr. Judith F. Baca
One of America’s leading visual artists Dr. Judith F. Baca has been creating public art for four decades. Powerful in size and subject matter, Baca’s murals bring art to where people live and work. In 1974, Baca founded the City of Los Angeles’ first mural program, which produced over 400 murals and employed thousands of local participants, and evolved into an arts organization known as the Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC). She continues to serve as SPARC’S artistic director and focuses her creative energy in the [email protected] Digital/Mural Lab, employing digital technology to promotes social justice and participatory public arts projects. She is an emeritus Professor of the University of California Los Angeles, where she was a senior professor in Chicana/o Studies and World Art and Cultures Departments from 1980 until 2018.
Beginning with the awareness that the land has memory, she creates art that is shaped by an interactive relationship of history, people and place. Baca’s public artworks focus on revealing and reconciling diverse peoples’ struggles for their rights and affirm the connections of each community to place. She gives form to monuments that rise up out of neighborhoods. Together with the people who live there, they co-create monumental public art places that become “sites of public memory.”
Baca has stood for art in the service of equity for all people. Her public arts initiatives reflect the lives and concerns of populations that have been historically disenfranchised, including women, the working poor, youth, the elderly and immigrant communities throughout Los Angeles and increasingly in national and international venues.
Her most well-known work is the Great Wall of Los Angeles. It is located in San Fernando Valley, the mural spans half a mile and still is a work in progress engaging another generation of youth. The mural- making process exemplified community involvement, employing more than 400 youth and their families from diverse social and economic backgrounds, artists, oral historians and scholars. In 2017 the Great Wall of Los Angeles received national recognition on the National Registry of Historic Places by the US Department of the Interior.
In 2012, the Los Angeles Unified School District named a school after her called the Judith F. Baca Arts Academy, located in Watts, her birthplace. She is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the United States Artist Rockefeller Fellowship and over 50 awards from various community groups.
Pilar Flynn
Pilar Flynn is an Emmy-nominated producer on Disney/Marvel’s “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur” as well as on Disney’s “Elena of Avalor,” which follows Disney’s first princess inspired by diverse Latin cultures and folklore.
An adventurer herself, Pilar is a native of Chile and Ecuador and spent much of her life in countries throughout South America and Europe.
She began her animation career at DreamWorks where she co-produced the award-winning short, “First Flight,” and worked on the production of films such as “The Road to El Dorado,” “Sinbad,” “Spirit,” “Madagascar” and “Flushed Away.” Pilar then went on to serve as associate producer of the animated feature films “Mean Margaret” and “Astro Boy.” Most recently, Pilar co-produced the groundbreaking R-rated animated feature “Sausage Party” starring Seth Rogen.
Following her passion for innovative media, Pilar also wrote and produced “My Beastly ABCs,” a heartwarming interactive storybook named a Top Ten Kid App of the year by USA Today.
Richard L. “Rick” Miller
Dr. Rick Miller has taught at the elementary and secondary levels and has been an elementary and high school principal. In addition, Dr. Miller has served the last 27 years as a school district superintendent. Most recently he has served in the Santa Ana Unified School District and Riverside Unified School District.
The focus of his 40 year career as a school administrator has been on school reform and improved student achievement in diverse settings. He has also co-founded a collaborative assistance program for teachers and administrators and concentrated his organizational efforts on building more collaborative structures within our school organizations. A collaborative leader, Dr. Miller believes in working with parents, students, teachers, and the community to build rapport and create strategies and policies to ensure student success. He utilizes grass-roots efforts to inspire support for his initiatives. He implements new ideas as volunteer projects and pilots, using enthusiastic responses from teachers, students, and parents to catalyze growth. He has sought national, state, and community partnerships to further technology initiatives and help compensate for budget shortfalls.
He currently serves on a number of state and national advisory boards including: Consortium On Reaching Excellence in Education (CORE), Advisory Board; Latino Film Institute Youth Cinema Project, Advisory Board; SchoolCNXT, Advisory Board; and the Lancer Educational Housing Corporation, Board of Directors.
Dr. Miller holds four academic degrees including a Ph.D.; Ed.Sp. (Education Specialist); M.Ed. (Masters in Education); and a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry. Dr. Miller has authored a number of professional articles and has presented regularly at state and national conferences. Rick has been recognized with a number of awards including: Mike Kneale Educational Excellence in Leadership Award; Community Service Award, Riverside NAACP; Honorary Doctorate of Letters, California Baptist University; Champion for Justice, Riverside County Fair Housing Council; and the 2008 Educational Leadership Award, University Council for Educational Administration, University of California Santa Barbara.
Dr. Miller is passionate about student learning and reduction of the learning gap between various student populations.
Jay Nomura
Bonifacio “Bonny” Garcia is the managing partner and a founder of Garcia, Hernandez, Sawhney & Bermudez, LLP. Mr. Garcia specializes in negotiations, collective bargaining, labor and employment, complex litigation and strategic counseling and planning. Garcia has extensive experience representing governmental entities including cities, school districts, community college districts and special districts, throughout the state of California.
Garcia began his legal career as a commercial litigator and spent more than 16 years handling complex litigation and real estate matters. He currently serves as City Attorney of the City of Delano, Special Counsel to the Ventura County Community College District, Palmdale School District, Pasadena Unified School District, and the Delano Mosquito Abatement District among others. Mr. Garcia also serves as a chief labor negotiator for other school districts and local governments throughout California.
Garcia has the highest “AV Attorney” Rating by Martindale-Hubbell for ethics and competence, and in 2015 he was named “Top Lawyer – Labor and Employment” by Corporate Counsel Magazine, American Lawyer Magazine and National Law Journal. He sits on the Board of Trustees for the Catholic Charities of Los Angeles Inc., and for the Advancement Project, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. Garcia is a graduate of Harvard Law School.
Dr. Ana-Christina Ramón
Dr. Ana-Christina Ramón is the Director of Research and Civic Engagement for the Division of Social Sciences at UCLA. Dr. Ramón is a social psychologist who has worked on social justice issues related to equity and access in higher education and the entertainment industry for over ten years. She is the co-principal investigator of the Hollywood Advancement Project and manages its graduate research team. She is the co-author (with Dr. Darnell Hunt) of the annual UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report series that the project produces. She is also the managing editor of LA Social Science, an e-forum that showcases the vibrant and cutting-edge knowledge generated within the Division of Social Sciences at UCLA. She co-edited a book (with Dr. Hunt) titled Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Racial Realities (New York University Press, 2010). On behalf of California Social Science Researchers, she also co-authored (with Dr. Hunt) amicus briefs in support of affirmative action that were submitted to the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals and to the U.S. Supreme Court. She was most recently the Assistant Director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. Dr. Ramón has a B.A. in psychology from Stanford, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Steven Zubkoff
Steven Zubkoff is Executive Chairman of Associated Financial Inc., a vertically integrated real estate investment trust and private mortgage bank. He has extensive experience in the valuation and securitization of asset-backed securities in the USA and Internationally. He began his career in the development and financing of affordable housing in the USA, South Africa and Mexico. He is a founder and Director of StudyNet Foundation, an online educational platform dedicated to creating and distributing quality academic digital content.
Rafael Agustín
Rafael Agustín is the 2016 Sundance Episodic Story Lab Fellow for his half-hour family comedy, ILLEGAL, based on his life as a former undocumented American. Agustín is also the co-writer and co-star of the national touring, award-winning autobiographical comedy, N*GGER WETB*CK CH*NK, which received acclaim from the LA Times, New York Times, Denver Post and won awards for its advancement of social justice in the arts.
In 2015, the LA Times gave Agustín the Emerging Leader Award at the annual Latinos de Hoy Ceremony. Also in 2015, Agustín was named Alumnus of the Year by Mt. San Antonio College, and contributed to a new book entitled “Portraits of the Dream: The Importance of Investing in Undocumented America,” which promotes Dream Act legislation in Washington D.C.
Rafael Agustín is the past Festival Manager of Edward James Olmos’ Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF).
Agustín received his BA and MA from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film & Television, and is an alumnus of the CBS Diversity Comedy Showcase.
Magdiela Hermida Duhamel
LXiA Founder & Co-Director
Bryan Dimas
LXiA Co-Founder & Co-Director
Michael J. Beall
LXiA Team Member & Charter Member
Michael J. Beall is a Screenwriter, lover of tacos, and teller of punny puns. To date, he has written for multiple studios including Nickelodeon, Netflix, Apple, Amazon, and PBS. He’s placed in Screen Craft’s Pilot Launch Competition as a Semifinalist and is a two-time Quarterfinalist in the Academy Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting Competition. Michael writes stories that are grounded in heart, leavened throughout with humor, steeped in heritage, brimming with heroics, and most importantly, filled with hope.
Alfredo Marun
LXiA Team Member & Charter Member
Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster Jones
LXiA Team Member & Charter Member
Michelle (Rincon) Eloren
LXiA Team Member & Charter Member
Michelle (Rincon) Eloren is a first generation Mexican-American storyboard artist born and raised in LA. She’s currently storyboarding at Warner Bros. Animation on the preschool show, Bugs Bunny Builders. Previously she worked at Joe Murray Studio/Brown Bag Films for the PBS Kids show Let’s Go Luna! Aside from taking a few Concept Design Academy classes and doing a mentorship, she also has a bachelor of fine arts degree in Animation from Cal State University, Fullerton.
Doing what she can to incorporate her culture into her work, she especially strives to see it in children’s entertainment. She also believes that educating and informing both children and their parents that animation is a viable and lucrative career path, that animation can help break down boundaries, and that it has the potential to be an inclusive and diverse career path for BIPOC and underrepresented individuals. Her loves in life include her partner, her cat Iroh, folklórico, chips, boba, and lives for stories that involve magical girls.
Website: http://www.michellerinconart.com
Maria Azellea
At a young age, Maria Azellea realized there was a need to help diverse, new, and outdated companies who strived to be part of the social media shift in the new multimedia marketing world. From that need she established Menacing Marketing in 2013 with the focus of empowering the voices of these businesses. In collaboration with a variety of nonprofits and organizations, Azellea builds engaging platforms, memorable media content, and strong membership participation. Azellea has also created and is the owner of Hustle – N – Heart, a nonprofit virtual landing page that brings resources and information to aspiring professionals so they can have their own starting line as they begin their professional journeys.
As an animator, Azellea’s philosophy mission is, “To create new, innovative, and diverse media that empowers the next generation of creatives to tell their own stories.” This passion and drive led to her short film ”La Concha Mágica,” which debuted at San Diego Comic Con Children’s Film Festival.
Jeannette Lara
Angela M. Sanchez
Angela M. Sánchez brings over seven years’ experience in the nonprofit sector. With a background ranging from UCLA’s Alumni Diversity Programs to the philanthropic sector, Angela is thrilled to offer her acumen to LXiA’s efforts to build community within and for the Latinx professionals across animation, VFX, and gaming industries.
As writer and a Kidscreen Next Wave: Diverse Voices Fellow, Angela holds a deep appreciation for animation and stories that elevate typically underrepresented narratives. She has written and illustrated a picture book series, Scruffy and the Egg, about single-parenthood and homelessness. Her original action-adventure pilot placed as a Finalist in ScreenCraft’s 2020 Animation Competition.
Angela is a Los Angeles native and her writing has appeared in the comics essay/review site SOLRAD, Los Angeles Review of Books, LAist, and The Hechinger Report.
Angela Ruvalcaba
History
LXiA (LatinX in Animation) began in the Spring of 2018 when Magdiela Hermida Duhamel sought out to create a Latinx community for animation professionals. The goal of creating this group was to build a community for Latinx professionals that work in all different areas and disciplines including production, technical, and artistic roles. The community would have the opportunity to network and come together to learn from each other’s experiences. The original LXiA group started out very small, with only 30 members from a single studio, and would meet once a month during lunch.
By October 2018, the LXiA group had grown to over 50 members and that’s when Magdiela Hermida Duhamel and her Co-Founder, Bryan Dimas, knew it was time to reach out to the entire industry in hopes to keep growing the organization. They planned to host a single LXiA networking mixer and invited anyone who was interested. The response was overwhelming as they received over 70 RSVPs for our first event! Inspired by the networking event and seeing the need for a community for LatinX professional in animation, Magdiela Hermida Duhamel and Bryan Dimas again decided to continue to grow the organization by hosting monthly networking mixers.
By the end of 2018, LXiA held two more successful networking mixers that doubled as Q&A sessions with speakers Francisco Ruiz Velasco and Jorge R. Gutierrez. The LXiA community also grew to over 200 active members from DreamWorks Animation, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Disney Television Animation, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Netflix, Illumination Entertainment, Colleges, and many more.
In 2019, LatinX in Animation united with the Latino Film Institute (LFI), joining programs such as Youth Cinema Project (YCP) and Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF). Together with LFI, LatinX in Animation will continue its mission of strengthening a diverse animation community, showcasing diverse talent, and creating professional and educational programs.