Aaron Finbloom, Executive Director of Big Questions
Aaron Finbloom is a philosopher, artist and pedagogue. He is the co-founder of The School of Making Thinking (SMT) and the founder & director of The Deep Play Institute (DPI). His practice involves expanding transformative inquiry through games, performance art and structured play. With training in Circling, Authentic Relating, and Psychodrama, he also facilitates experimental individual and group sessions inspired by these practices. Finbloom has presented works internationally at venues which include: The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Gallery 151 (New York), Maschinenhaus Kulturbrauerei (Berlin), UNAM (Mexico City), and MainLine Theatre (Montreal). He holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities & Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal, and is currently teaching Philosophy at the City College of New York and The University of Portland. finblooming.com |
Khuyen Bui, Director of Paradox
Khuyen Bui is an author, speaker and well sought after guide who specifically works with purpose-driven leaders, community builders and coaches to level up their impact. Graduated cum laude from Tufts University studying Computer Science and Philosophy, he thrives in bringing analytical rigor into his fascination with human messiness. Khuyen enjoys writing & storytelling and has won several awards, notably Peter Drucker Challenge and The Moth Boston. His first book, Not Being - The Art of Self-Transformation, is about how our sense of self shifts from a separate entity into a wider sense of togetherness. He is currently based in Vietnam, pioneering this new yet ancient way of living, working and playing together, incorporating many modalities such as writing, coaching, contact improvisation, poetry, meditation and circling. His eyes lit up upon beautiful questions. Find him at khuyenbui.com |
Natalia Stroika, Vice President of Existential Games
Natalia Stroika (she/her +/-) is an Existential Game Maker/Destroyer. She is the creator of Ludic Liberation, a practice of collective play aimed at revealing & releasing our internalized limitations. You can read more about the Ludic Liberation philosophy at www.ludicliberation.com, join a monthly Ludic Liberation Lab to help R&D new liberatory game mechanics, read The Lab Report of past experimental results and existential game theory, or work with Natalia directly on tuning up or redesigning your Personal Existential Game (PEG). Natalia has a Doctorate in Learning Sciences and training in Transformational Social Therapy and the Warm Data Lab process. Natalia lives in so-called South Philadelphia and as mummer with the Vaudevillains New Years Brigade, she has been a hoagie, a tree, a rainbow, a butterfly, a feral cat mother, a fish, a planet, and a pterodactyl. |
Netta Sadovsky, Relational Experimentation Specialist
Netta Sadovsky, MFA, LSW (she or they) is an artist and therapist living in Philadelphia, PA. She provides group and individual counseling specializing in alternative sexualities and relationship structures at West Philly Therapy Center, and is a teaching artist at Center for Creative Works. Netta is a student of Internal Family Systems, Tavistock Group Relations, Relational Psychodynamic Therapy, Mindful Facilitation, Theater of the Oppressed, and Psychodrama, and makes artwork that borrows from and experiments with these practices under the moniker Suso Phizer. |
Sarah Ledbetter, Embodied Hospitality Director
Sarah is a dancing writer and a body-based psychotherapist whose work has been presented or published nationally and internationally at such cool spots and publications as the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Film, the Berlin Black Film Festival, Earthdance E|Merge Interdisciplinary Arts Residency, the Body Mind Centering Conference, floromancy, Fourth River, Right Hand Pointing, and R and R Literary Magazine. Her main interest is how the fiesta of being in a body flows reciprocally into creative, social, site-specific, and therapeutic process. She is currently based in Nashville, Tennessee and Skull Valley, Arizona where her body-based creative and psychotherapeutic practice is anchored and winged. |
Abraham Avnisan
Abraham Avnisan is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is situated at the intersection of image, text and code. Using a host of emerging technologies including 3D scanning, augmented reality and virtual reality, he creates applications for mobile devices, interactive installations and technologically mediated performances that seek to subvert dominant narratives through embodied encounters with language. Abraham is an Assistant Professor of Emerging Media & Technology and Media & Journalism at Kent State University. |
Anique Vered
Anique Vered is an interdisciplinary researcher, curator and development practitioner renowned for the capacity to connect unexpected partners on unprecedented projects to mobilise impact. Through research-creation, public programming and participatory development innovations, I work at the intersection of community and network building, spaces of experimental learning and co-creation, decolonisation, and social innovation to unleash a new kind of networked agency. With fifteen years experience in communities and organisations across Australia, North America, Asia, the Middle East & North Africa, and Europe; recent projects include co-curating a Forum on Egalitarian, Sustainable Communtarian Organization for Art and Culture with Filipino artists and activists, as well as research and content for Diversity Arts Australia's Creative Equity Toolkit. |
Lina Moreno
Lina is a Latin American artist and educator based in Montreal. Currently, they are dedicated to providing project management support to strengthen the design of emergent processes within organizations. Lina holds an MA in Art Education from Concordia University and currently works as Head of Organizational Process Design at inPath. |
Netta Sadovsky
Netta Sadovsky, MFA, LSW (she or they) is an artist and therapist living in Philadelphia, PA. She provides group and individual counseling specializing in alternative sexualities and relationship structures at West Philly Therapy Center, and is a teaching artist at Center for Creative Works. Netta is a student of Internal Family Systems, Tavistock Group Relations, Relational Psychodynamic Therapy, Mindful Facilitation, Theater of the Oppressed, and Psychodrama, and makes artwork that borrows from and experiments with these practices under the moniker Suso Phizer. |