Our People
Meet the founders and board members
Board Members
Alicia Jean Vanderelli
2025–2027
Alica Jean (AJ) Vanderelli is an artist and former gallery owner located in Columbus, Ohio. Vanderelli earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a concentration in oil painting in 2008 from Columbus College of Art and Design, graduating Magna Cum Laude.
In 2014, AJ created an alternative art gallery and event space. The Vanderelli Room was a multipurpose space, housing a variety of art shows and performances. For a decade, The Vanderelli Room hosted several hundred arts related activities and events, while forming partnerships, hosting fundraisers, and organizing events for several non profit and grassroots organizations in Central Ohio.
In recognition of her contributions, The Free Press honored AJ Vanderelli with the 2023 Activist Artist Award. Vanderelli also received the All People Arts’ Community Award in 2019, Comfest’s 2019 Honored Artist Award, and The Michael B Coleman Franklinton Arts Leadership Award in 2018. To date, Vanderelli works with non profit organizations across Central Ohio to provide curation and exhibition support, art focused workshops, and community engagement activities. Vanderelli currently serves on the board for the Ohio Art League, The Returning Artists Guild and the Columbus Occult Society while continuing to create and exhibit her own art.
Lynette Santoro-Au
2023-2027
Lynette Santoro-Au has spent her career working for and with municipalities and nonprofit organizations. Her passion for creating opportunities, embracing diversity, and cultivating leadership has led her to a career in supporting others in their endeavors. As a board member and community volunteer, she finds this supporting role rewarding on many levels and recognizes how valuable everyone’s roles are to an organization. Knowing how important it is to create an environment of respect, accountability and trust, her work in the Charitable Law Section focuses on the development of strategies aimed at strengthening the nonprofit sector.
Rasheedah Crawley
2024–2027
Rasheedah Crawley is an entrepreneur and communications professional based in Columbus, Ohio. As the owner and operator of Franklinton Market and Luxe Skincare, she leads ventures that fuse commerce with local culture and artistry.
Raised in Columbus and surrounded by the arts, Rasheedah is dedicated to creating opportunities for artists in both small business and corporate environments, helping creatives thrive through strategic communications, partnerships, and community-minded initiatives. Her work centers on strategic communications, inclusive entrepreneurship, and community-building initiatives that empower creatives and communities to grow and thrive.
Allison Sponhaltz
2022–2027
Allison Sponhaltz is an artist, and an affordable housing and community revitalization specialist. Within housing she was responsible for the creation, preservation and management of affordable housing with a focus on Permanent Supportive Housing designed to support individuals and families transitioning from homelessness or imminent homelessness after institutional settings, including incarceration. Allison used the housing first approach as a foundation to build systems in which an array of support resources could be accessed by residents to create choice and build equity. After transitioning in 2019 to working as a full time goldsmith and independent artist, she has continued to work toward building equity in the community through the arts. She currently works as a goldsmith, is a part time instructor at Columbus College of Art and Design and serves on the board of MadLab, an independent nonprofit theatre centered on the creation of original work and furthering theatre though educational programming.
Allison strives to support decriminalizing economic status and physical and mental health status by lifting up the voices of affected artists in our community.
Jessie Glover
2023–2027
Jessie Glover is a theatre practitioner, historian, teaching artist, curator, and artist advocate. She was a co-founder of Wild Goose Creative, a community arts organization in Columbus that has hosted thousands of arts events and projects since 2006. Between 2015 and 2020, Jessie led Theatre of Conviction, a company of men making theatre at Marion Correctional (as a project of nonprofit organization Healing Broken Circles). Jessie co-founded Ohio Prison Arts Connection to support arts access and arts platforms for justice-impacted Ohioans. Recently, Jessie has co-edited an anthology about arts experiences in prison (publication pending), organized conversations around the state about the role of the arts and culture sector in investing in support systems for justice-impacted people, and collaborated to build a network to support arts experiences for young people proximate to the justice system in Franklin County. Jessie teaches theatre and arts administration at Otterbein University and, as an administrator at Antioch University, supports partnerships with public- and nonprofit organizations to expand access to higher education. She holds a PhD from the University of Minnesota.