Jan Hanvik, Founder
Mr. Hanvik holds a BFA in Dance from the City College of the City University of New York, and an MA from New York University’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He was twice awarded Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowships, in El Salvador, in dance, and in Uruguay and Argentina, in arts management. He has been a panelist and
consultant to such organizations as the US Department of State, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Ford Foundation, the Compton Foundation, the JM Kaplan Fund, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and others. His overarching goal is to bring people in the arts and the non-arts worlds together, and to bring people together from all of the Americas, and beyond, through the arts.
Mark B. DeGarmo, Dance Director
Mark B. DeGarmo, Ph.D., B.F.A. is a dancer/performer, choreographer/writer, educator/lecturer, and researcher/learning theorist who has choreographed and performed over 100 original works. He has performed, taught, presented, and researched in 13 countries, including Argentina, Canada, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, England, France, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Russia, Slovenia, and USA.
He currently serves as Founder, Executive and Artistic Director of Mark DeGarmo Dance AKA Dynamic Forms, Inc., celebrating its 31st Anniversary as a New York City nonprofit charity in 2018. He is a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellow (Peru), American Cultural Specialist (Ecuador), White House Millennium Artist Program National Finalist (USA), and Martha Hill Dance Fund Mid-Career Awardee (2015).
Dance Teacher Magazine celebrated his educational and artistic accomplishments with its June 2017 cover feature article. 2016 New York press deemed DeGarmo “brilliant” and “a gladiator in various arenas.” His “evidence-based” embodied cognition dance and literacy education program was called “a national model” by National Endowment for the Arts peer panels.
Merin McDivitt, Binational Liaison
Merin McDivitt is a nonfiction writer, educational consultant, and travel guide based in Mexico City. Originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, she graduated from the University of Michigan with an honors degree in International Studies and Spanish in 2018, completing a thesis on sustainable tourism in Holguín, Cuba. She has also lived in Lima, Perú, where she interned for Rainforest Expeditions in ecotourism, and in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she provided travel and cultural coverage for local English-language publication The Bubble.
Subsequently, she moved to Mexico City with the Fulbright-García Robles Binational Internship Scholarship, and later worked as Communications Outreach Coordinator for the Mexican Fulbright Commission. Merin manages the website The Gringa’s Guide to Mexico City in order to encourage foreign visitors to engage with Mexico’s cultural, artistic, and historical riches in greater depth, and occasionally leads small group tours with this mission in mind. She is currently studying a Master’s of Fine Arts degree at Bennington College in Creative Nonfiction, with the goal to publish a book on her home, a superblock of public/government housing in Mexico City.
José Alberto Velázquez
Born in Michoacán, Mexico, Prof. José Alberto Velázquez has participated from an early age in the traditional dances of the P’urépecha peoples. He has taught classes in Mexican folk dance at the undergraduate level as well as to different companies. He has won various awards both as an individual and as a director for his dancing and has collaborated with various indigenous groups across the Americas. At Crossing Bridges, José opens all doors to the P’urépecha communities and to their 4 ecotourism parks.
Ramón Merino
Ramón Merino is a visual artist, graphic and editorial designer, and producer and cultural promoter from El Salvador. Throughout his career as a Visual Artist he has dabbled in various disciplines such as: graphic design, photography, illustration, editorial design, advertising, production and promotion for dance, music, painting and cultural events, video art production and post-production. His work has been exhibited in Central America, Mexico, the USA, Canada, Cuba and Germany and published in various catalogs. He serves as Crossing Bridge’s resident photographer and beautifully captures the essence of Patzingo.
Victoria Yañez
Vicky Yañez is the accountant for Puentes y Redes, S.E.C., in Mexico. Of indigenous Otomí descent (from Tenango, Hidalgo) on her mother’s side, she was born and raised in eastern Mexico City, where she now lives with her husband, Jorge, and son, Rodrigo.
Francisco J. Pérez Ortega
Francisco J. Pérez Ortega, specializes in mergers and acquisitions, real estate and infrastructure projects, and financial transactions. In June 2001 he attained his Law degree from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City with recognition for academic excellence. During 2001 and 2002 he attained a Post Graduate Degree in Commercial Law from Escuela Libre de Derecho in Mexico City. In June 2003 he attained a Masters Degree in Business and Law from the University of Northwestern in Chicago, Illinois and subsequently became part of a foreign associates program in Fulbright & Jaworski LLP (currently Norten Rose Fulbright) in the city of Houston, Texas. Prior to the organization of PBP Abogados, he was part of the law firms Gonzalez Calvillo, S.C. and Forastieri Abogados, S.C., becoming a partner in the latter for more than 5 years. He is the founding partner of PBP Abogados.
Ana Sofía Colado Merino
Ana Sofía Colado is an art lover and museum enthusiast born and raised in Mexico City. Sofia is currently an Art History student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and has focused her studies on museum management and exhibition planning. Throughout her professional preparation she has traveled abroad with the purpose of learning about different countries and their museum system, with the hope of helping Mexican museums to achieve a high level and experience for spectators.
PUENTES Y REDES S.C. BOARD MEMBERS
Gabriela Maldonado Miquelerena
Gabriela has a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from the University of Nueva Esparta in Caracas. In Barcelona she decided to venture in film production and made a Master in Line Production at the ESCAC (Escola Superior de Cinema I Audiovisuals de Catalunya) from where she has the opportunity to work at Escándalo Films. There, she performed several tasks related to the audiovisual production that can be emphasised: Post- Production secretary at Mar Coll’s Tres dies amb la família and Elena Trapé’s Blog, Producer of the animated series Arròs Covat, production consultant and supervisor of the ESCAC thesis short films. She now lives in Mexico where she has produced a couple of short films and the first fiction feature film of the recognised documental director Natalia Almada: Everything Else premiered at Rome Film Festival, New York Film Festival and at Morelia International Film Festival. In the past 3 years she has produced Matías Meyer’s Modern Love, Rodrigo Fiallega`s Ricochet and Rodrigo Plá ́s The Other Tom.
John Burstein
John Burstein is founder-director of the Galería MUY, an independent arts space in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, devoted to the promotion of contemporary art of the Maya and Zoque peoples of Chiapas. Having studied semiotics and cultural anthropology at Harvard College in the 1970s, and social development and international relations at Columbia University in the 1980s, Burstein affiliated with and founded several civil society organizations in Chiapas and Mexico City devoted to issues of Indigenous collective rights, sustainable development in Indigenous communities, and binational Mayan migrations. Burstein specialized in native literatures (working in Tsotsil-Maya) early in his career and since 2014 his has been an activist curatorial practice in the visual arts, exploring areas such as art and politics and art and Indigenous epistomologies.
Alejandro Yoshii
Alejandro Yoshii is a multidisciplinary artist working with painting, drawing and installation. He earned an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design (2014). His work has been exhibited throughout the US and Mexico including Governors Island Art Fair, The Kitchen, Art Mora Gallery, Tenri Cultural Institute, Emoa Space Gallery, the 5th National Biennial of Visual Arts Yucatan and the 13th Northwest Biennial of Visual Arts.
Yoshii has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center, Chashama Studio Program, and NYFA’s Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program. He currently lives and works in Baja California Sur, México.
Alejandro Yoshii es un artista multidisciplinario que trabaja con pintura, dibujo e instalación. En 2014 obtuvo una Maestría en Bellas Artes en Parsons School of Design. Su trabajo ha sido presentado en EU y Mexico: Governors Island Art Fair, The Kitchen, Art Mora Gallery, Tenri Cultural Institute, Emoa Space Gallery, 5ta bienal de artes visuales de Yucatán y la décimo tercera edición de la bienal de artes visuales del Noroeste.
Alejandro ha sido artista en residencia en el Vermont Studio Center, Chashama Studio Program y el programa de mentoría para artistas inmigrantes por NYFA. Actualmente vive y trabaja en Baja California Sur, México.