Staff
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Danielle Brazell
Danielle Brazell transitioned Arts for LA from an ad-hoc steering committee comprised of local executive arts leadership to a highly visible arts advocacy organization serving the greater Los Angeles region. Under her stewardship, Arts for LA has become a formidable coalition advancing the arts in the largest county in the county. In addition to surveying candidates seeking election in Los Angeles County, Arts for LA built a custom online communications infrastructure that allows for greater exchange of information and resources among the arts and arts education community. With strong input from the field, Arts for LA crafts a biannual Policy Framework to guide the region’s collective advocacy efforts. Ms. Brazell’s twenty years of experience include work as the director of special projects for the Screen Actors Guild Foundation and as the artistic director of Highways Performance Space. She has been honored with numerous grants and awards, including the 2000 Getty Fellowship, a 2009 CLEAR Communications Fellowship sponsored by the James Irvine Foundation, and a 2010 SHero Award from California State Senator Curran D. Price. A graduate of Leadership LA and Leadership California, Ms. Brazell was recently awarded the James Irvine Foundation Fund for Leadership Advancement Grant to help her and Arts for LA transition its operations into its next phase of development. She serves as vice chair of Californians for the Arts, on the Arts for All Executive Committee, and represents Arts for LA on the Policy Committee of the California Alliance for Arts Education.
ADVOCACY FIELD MANAGER: Abe Flores
Abe Flores, advocacy field manager for Arts for LA, organizes and liaises with arts advocacy teams throughout LA County. He leads advocacy workshops to create networks of arts advocates and increase local capacity to effectively advocate for the retention of arts programs and infrastructure. Abe graduated from California State University, Los Angeles, in 2011 with an MS in public administration. In 2006, he received his BA in political science from Cal State Long Beach. He served as the executive assistant at the Learning Rights Law Center, a nonprofit law firm dedicated to education equity, where he assisted in day-to-day management and worked with parent groups. He then worked as the deputy campaign manager in a candidate’s run for Montebello USD Board of Education. Abe interned with the Los Angeles County Arts Commission’s Arts for All initiative, where he facilitated a data-collection project that mapped arts provision equity in the County. He is the first in his family to graduate from college, a proud parent of a five-year old boy, a music lover, and lives with his family in Boyle Heights.
DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT: Charles Flowers
Charles Flowers graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vanderbilt University and received his MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon. His poems have appeared in Gulf Coast, Barrow Street, Indiana Review, and Puerto del Sol. Flowers is the founding editor of BLOOM, a journal for lesbian and gay writing Edmund White called “the most exciting new queer literary publication to emerge in years." He served as Associate Director of the Academy of American Poets, Executive Director of the Lambda Literary Foundation, and, most recently, as Deputy Development Director at the ACLU of the Southern California. After twenty years in Tennessee and twenty years in New York, Charles now calls Los Angeles home, with his husband and two dogs.
DEVELOPMENT & COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER: Charlie Jensen
Charlie Jensen manages Arts for LA's communications and membership programs and assists with development activities. He holds BAs in film studies and cultural studies & comparative literature from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in creative writing from Arizona State University, where he also did graduate work in nonprofit management. He is a founding member of the consulting think tank and enclave Radar Collective and has worked in the corporate, nonprofit, and higher education sectors over the last fifteen years. He is the author of a poetry collection, The First Risk, and three shorter chapbooks of poems, most recently The Nanopedia Quick-Reference Pocket Lexicon of Contemporary American Culture. In 2007, he received a state arts grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts in support of his work. He started writing poetry at age 13 when a poet did a weeklong residency in his 8th grade classroom on Washington Island, Wisconsin, and he hasn't stopped since.
SPECIAL PROJECTS COORDINATOR: Gretchen Reyes
Having graduated from the University of California, Irvine in 2010 with Bachelors in Art History and English, Gretchen had kept herself professionally immersed in the happenings within several Los Angeles arts organizations for two years after college. These include the Getty Museum Multicultural Internship Program, Torrance Art Museum, Watts House Project, the Museum of Latin American Art, and the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk. She has also received Getty scholarships with the California Association of Museums and the American Association of Museums. Initially starting as an adminsitrative intern with Arts for LA, she gradually upheld her position in providing administrative, website, events, and membership support for the organization. While simultaneously continuing her work with Arts for LA, Gretchen currently resides in Chicago, Illinois pursuing her Masters in Arts Administration and Policy at the School of the Art Institute. One of her many lifetime goals include paving and managing a space where kids and adults can enjoy accesible and afforable arts and dance education.
