People

Juli is a visiting lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of New Mexico. Juli is a facilitator for SonderWorx, a reality-based training organization working in empathetic communication, verbal de-escalation, and peaceful conflict resolution. She sits on the board of the New Mexico Arts and Justice Network. Juli is a founding member of Tricklock Company and The Revolutions International Theatre Festival. 

Juli was born in Houston, Texas and studied theatre at UNM. She has attended advanced trainings in physical theatre with Gardzienice Theatre Practices in Poland, corporeal mime and Grand Guignol at the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre, and clown and bouffon at the Manitoulin Conservatory for Creative Practices in Canada. Juli loves to travel, swim, study birds, witness theatre, and practice hot yoga. She finds great joy in teaching and learns from her students every day. She is married to the love of her life and frequent artistic collaborator, Aaron Hendren who is a writer, musician, and filmmaker.

While at the NHCC Elsa co-founded Circo Latino Summer Institute as well as dozens of other projects and programs.  She has been co-facilitator of the Cultivating Women’s Leadership retreat through Bioneers, and a co-founder of the Women Leading Change initiative. A certified life coach and member of the Kellogg Foundation funded Coaches for Equity and Transformation cohort, Elsa also served as an Artistic Director and Core Artist of Tricklock Company and is a member of the Sofia Center’s Wild Leadership facilitation team.

Elsa is a consultant, facilitator and teacher of various local, national, and international workshops, symposiums, and retreats. Her mission is love and her passion is to connect and conspire with the widest range of collaborators. Elsa utilizes the wisdom of play, creativity, and the physical body to support leaders of all ages toward personal, community, and broader social liberation. Her latest creative endeavor is a project with POC artists investigating the impact of white supremacy culture on climate change, supporting national level artists to create locally inspired climate solution actions.

Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Elsa is the daughter of her Cuban immigrant father and her Puerto Rican mama. She is the proudest tía to four awesome nephews, Zen, Amadeus, Faustino, and Galileo and loves going on adventures in nature with these brilliant, kind, compassionate, creative, hilarious, imaginative boys.

Elsa is on sabbatical for the duration of her appointment at the City of Albuquerque.

Current and past clients include artEquity, the Center for Cultural Innovation, City of Albuquerque, Mariposa Strategies, National Black Theatre, New Mexico Black Leadership Council, and Penumbra Theatre.

While in New York, NY, Dafina was previously a program officer on the arts team of Bloomberg Philanthropies. She also served as the Director of Communications & Conferences for Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national service organization for not-for-profit theatre. Prior to joining TCG, Dafina served as the Associate Managing Director of Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul, MN. She held numerous leadership positions at global public relations agency GCI Group (now Cohn & Wolfe), and consulted with the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts on marketing and community engagement initiatives.

Dafina is an alumna of the Kennedy Center’s International Arts Management Fellowship in Washington, D.C. and a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. She serves on the board of the National Performance Network (NPN) and is a certified Zumba® instructor based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.