About LXIA

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

Alfredo Marun

LXiA Team Member & Charter Member

Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster Jones

LXiA Team Member & Charter Member

Michelle Rincon

Michelle Rincon is an LA-born storyboard artist based in Pasadena, CA. She’s currently storyboarding at Joe Murray Studio and Brown Bag Films for the PBS Kids show Let’s Go Luna! where she has done all sorts of jobs ranging from storyboard revisionist to assisting with the show’s pipeline as a production coordinator. She also has a bachelor of fine arts in Animation from Cal State Fullerton.

Doing what she can to incorporate her culture into her work, she especially strives to see it children’s entertainment. Her loves in life include folklórico, chips, boba, and lives for stories that involve magical girls.

Website: http://www.michellerinconart.com

Maria Azellea

Jeannette Lara