Where vibes are high, you can bet Graham Berry won’t be far. When he’s not volunteering to build big art or eating fire, he’s usually chronicling the experiences created at events that were inspired by the community and ethos in Black Rock City. With his trusty Masters of Communications from the University of Southern California and his Instagram moniker @FestivalWriter, Graham tirelessly works to share the stories of the creative heroes of the day. Through sheer dedication and an iron will, he fills his daytime hours generating editorial content as the voice of Do LaB. Outside the office, he moonlights as a freelancer for various culture and events focused publishers like Fest300, LA Weekly and Burn After Reading Magazine. He has also written extensively on the powerful culture that Burning Man catalyzed in festivals peppered throughout the default world, including Lucidity, Enchanted Forest, Envision and Lightning in a Bottle.
Gustavo is the Education Project Manager for Burning Man Project and has a Bachelor's degree in social anthropology, and a Master's in both human development and instructional design. In his previous life, Gustavo worked as a trainer for Public Health and Human Services organizations and helped professors build courses at UC Berkeley. He has helped to launch Burning Man Hive, designed and produced online courses therein, and he currently supports learning design projects at Burning Man Project.
A founding member of the Burning Man Board, Harley K. Dubois brings to bear over 15 years of project management, art and city planning experience. As the City Manager of Black Rock City, Harley oversees both the Playa Safety Council and Community Services departments, ensuring that the citizens of BRC are happy and safe, including ingress, life on playa, and egress. She originated theme camp placement, the Greeters, Playa Info, Burning Man Information Radio, and has kindled the development of all other Community Service teams. Harley also created and maintains a comprehensive training and self-development program for the Burning Man staff, fostering the concepts of volunteerism and cross-departmental communication. Harley is a founding member of the Black Rock Arts Foundation, where she chairs the grants committee and acts as the foundation's liaison with the Burning Man Project. She is fully engaged in program development and works closely with the Executive Director and other staff members in conducting day-to-day operations. Harley has an extensive education and history in the visual and performing arts, has been a fitness director and a San Francisco fire fighter.
Heather White, Managing Director, Burning Man Project
In 2004, Heather ventured to the playa and joined what would become the Random Pizza Experience, a scene ripe with interactive cooking and pizza delivery that spanned the next eight years. In 2012, she joined Burning Man Project as the Volunteer Coordinator and today, Heather manages infrastructure, systems and partnerships that support the Project’s mission. She is also part of the Program team collaborating on new projects and events. After years in media production, Heather supported creative service organizations with strategy and operations. Throughout her career, she has also partnered with artists on media projects and opportunities for artists to create ancillary income.
Ian Rowen, PhD is a human geographer who has forgotten the 50 U.S. state capitals and an artist who’s never bothered to draw, which makes him uniquely unqualified to serve as one of Burning Man’s international Meta Regionals. Read more of his diversions at ianrowen.com.
Iris Yee first set foot in Black Rock City in 2008, fueling her
curiosity about innovative and diverse creative communities across the
world. Raised in New York, she spent the next four years living in
China and exploring much of Asia. Passionate about media and technology's potential to grow a better understanding of the world, she has worked with Media Mecca and the Regional Network. Iris will be highlighting regional Burning Man communities, their art and culture in the Burning Blog.
Irmandy Wicaksono is a transdisciplinary electrical and textile engineer, artist, and designer. By applying an artistic approach to technological textile design and experimenting with various functional and non-functional fibers and fabric architectures, Wicaksono augments knitted textiles with sensory and computation capabilities that bridge and merge the physical and digital worlds to evoke memories and novel experiences. In the age of functional materials, digital fabrication, and immersive technologies, his approach redefines and reinvents textile purpose as a responsive skin, challenging materiality and the blurring dualities between material and immaterial, real and virtual.
Jane Lyons (a.k.a Lioness) believes it takes a special kind of crazy to drive the foundation years of a Regional Burn, and she classes herself among those crazy dreamers and (over)doers who are sweating it out around the Regional Burn globe.
After her first Nevada Burn in 2009, Jane spent five years knee-deep in the development of Australia's Burning Seed and its community. She built and managed Seed's Communications Team for many years, helped kickstart Melbourne Decompression and ran a range of other local events.
But her Burner communities and collaborations stretch beyond the confines of her country. She helped build Temple of Transition in 2011; has worked on other big art projects on and off playa (including the Temple for Christchurch); and has run theme camps and built art at Nowhere, Kiwiburn, Burning Seed and Italian Burning Weekend. She now spends her time supporting Burning Man's Communications Team.