Meet our Board of Directors
Community Engagement’s Board of Directors is made up of accomplished artists and business professionals who are highly experienced in the areas of community building, group therapy, and artistic programming:
JONATHAN B. WEBB - CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD
Jonathan Webb, chief philanthropy officer and president emeritus of Affordable Housing Access, has over 35 years of experience in the development of residential real estate. He began his career with American Development Corporation. Later, as a Development Manager with Forest City Enterprises, Webb produced low- and moderate-income senior housing financed or insured by HUD, as well as conventionally financed apartments. In addition, he has extensive experience in the development, acquisition and rehab of affordable for-sale housing throughout Southern California.
In 1999, he co-founded Project Access, Inc., (www.Project-Access.org), a nonprofit whose mission is to provide on-site education and other social services to low-income residents of affordable rental communities. Webb continues to serve as Board Chair.
In 2007, Webb received United Way's Dan Donahue Award for his support of children and youth of Orange County. In 2011, he was a recipient of the Bank of America's "Local Hero" award and an honored participant in the Orange County Community Foundation's "On Purpose" project celebrating non-profit leaders.
Most recently, Webb was honored with WISEPlace's 2019 Lukens Legacy Award for his efforts to provide housing and hope to homeless women in Orange County.
He is a member and past treasurer of the Grand Central Art Forum Board of Directors, a member of the Grand Central Art Centers Director's Circle, and is also an advisory board member of the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art.
Webb is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and Golden Gate University School of Law.
KIM COLEMAN
Kim Coleman (b. 1976 N. Ireland, lives in London, UK) is an artist using expanded moving image, light, and photography to create works that consider dependencies and relationship dynamics between bodies. Her solo and collaborative works have been staged at Tate Britain; The Institute of Contemporary Art London; Frieze Projects (London); The Showroom (London), Jerwood Visual Arts (London); the Athens Biennale; Serpentine Screen (London); Minneapolis Film Festival; Palais de Tokyo (Paris), and Edinburgh Art Festival.
Coleman's work with lighting and moving-image led her to design EU/World tours for rock banks such as Django Django and Franz Ferdinand. She recently developed a major moving image projection for Nelson's Column in London's Trafalgar Square for Extinction Rebellion (XR).
Coleman co-founded artist-run Embassy gallery and Annuale festival of artist-led spaces in Edinburgh. She volunteers for the Koestler Trust Art in Prisons, and teaches at various Higher Education institutions. Coleman is currently studying for a doctorate in Fine Art at Reading School of Art.
Amanda Leigh Evans
Amanda Leigh Evans is an artist, educator, and cultivator seeking a deeper understanding of our social and ecological interdependence. She makes clay objects, gardens, books, websites, videos and sculptures, and participates in collaborative systems. From 2016 to 2021, Evans lived and worked as an artist-in-residence in a 120-unit affordable housing apartment complex in East Portland, OR. There, in collaboration with her neighbors, she cultivated The Living School of Art, an intergenerational art collective and alternative art school (this project was sponsored by Community Engagement). Since 2014, she has been a core collaborator at the King School Museum of Contemporary Art (KSMoCA), a contemporary art museum inside a public elementary school in NE Portland, OR.
Evans holds an MFA in Art and Social Practice from Portland State University and a Post Bac in Ceramics from Cal State Long Beach. She has presented work and publications at MOCA, the Portland Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Craft, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. She is the recipient of Artplace America, the Arlene Schnitzer Visual Art Prize at PSU, the Metro Creative Placemaking Grant, and the Precipice Fund. Currently, Evans is teaching ceramics and social practice as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA and lives and works in the Pacific Northwest. www.amandaleighevans.com
Madeleine Spencer
Madeleine Spencer has worked as a therapist doing group and individual therapy with children and adults, as well as incarcerated youth ages 13-17. A resident of Santa Ana, she is currently completing her doctoral dissertation in Community Psychology, Ecopsychology and Liberation Psychology from Pacifica Graduate School.
Spencer regularly acts as a Learning Facilitator for the Humanities Department at Santiago Canyon College. Working within the Santa Ana community, she built the advocacy coalition known as Project Homelessness, a group that has successfully advocated to open the emergency shelter known as the Courtyard, pass SNAP EBT in Orange County, and continues to work on the right to rest and decriminalization of the homeless.
Working with the Santa Ana Collaborative for Responsible Development, Spencer created and successfully legislated for the passage of Santa Ana's Progressive Transparency Law in 2013. She continues this work fulfilling further implementation in the establishment of Santa Ana's first citywide Strategic Plan in 2014. She also worked with the Building Healthy Communities Equity for All working group where she helped to build the coalition that advocated for and won the 2015 unanimous passage of the city's Wellness Resolution. Spencer began her own consulting firm, Diamond Heart Enterprises, in 2014.
Spencer graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy & English from Chapman University in 2008 and received her master’s degree as a Marriage and Family Therapist in Depth Psychology in 2011.
AGATA SURMA
Agata Surma is a Polish-American artist best known for her sensual paintings of women enveloped by rich and lustrous abstracts made of paint and varied embedded textures. She grew up in Orange County, California with her artistic father and a constant smell of oil paint around the house. Her adventure with art began at a local college, where she completed all the advanced painting, life drawing and mixed media courses under the watchful eye of a local celebrated artist Prof. A.J. Sagen.
With a master’s degree in International Development from Cambridge University, UK, Surma worked on resolving conflicts around natural resources in Africa. In 2010, she funded and organized a community development project with an indigenous group of Guna Indians in Veracruz, Panama, a low-income neighborhood near Panama City. In 2012, Surma returned to painting full time. She spent six years in Panama working in her art studio and promoting arts and culture with her husband and fellow artist, Hector Guillen. Together, they co-founded and managed a local art space for emerging artists.
Surma’s artwork has been exhibited internationally, and can be found in private collections in Europe and the Americas. Surma moved to New York with her husband in the Summer of 2017. Most recently, she participated in Scope NY 2020 art fair with Kass Gallery. She is currently focusing her energies on raising money for those in dire circumstances through art and movement challenges.
EDUCATION
2009 – Master’s degree in International Development Studies, Cambridge University, Queens College -Cambridge, UK
2007 – Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Sciences University of California – Berkeley, CA
2003 – Associate of Arts degree from Santiago Canyon College, Orange, and Santa Ana College - Santa Ana, Orange County, CA
