LEADERSHIP
Leadership Team
Pathways was founded through a collaboration between Arts BC, the BC Museums Association (BCMA), the Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance (GVPTA), and the Rural Arts Inclusion Lab (RAIL). Today, the program continues in a trust-based co-leadership model led by Arts BC, GVPTA, and RAIL, building on that shared foundation.
Carla Stephenson | Director |
Rural Arts Inclusion Lab
Carla’s work sits at the intersection of arts, systems change, rural innovation and amplification. She is the founder of the Rural Arts Inclusion Lab and the Executive Director of Renascence, a non-profit society in Ymir BC. She and her husband of 27 years Shawn founded the Tiny Lights Festival. Carla is a member of the Arts BC Insight team and an alumna of the Positive Deviants Fellowship.
Elliott Hearte | Executive Director | Arts BC
Elliott Hearte is an artist, arts consultant, and administrator with a background in equity in the arts and cultural management. Elliott has worked across Canada in leadership roles in the creative industry, and has had the privilege to work with artist run centres, festivals, distributors, equity seeking groups, and arts service organizations, across disciplines in urban and non-urban communities.
Photo credit – Ervin Wong CBC
Kenji Maeda | Executive Director | Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance
Kenji’s (he/him) experiences are diverse and grounded in his passion for the arts, education and building community, and influenced by his Uchinanchu heritage. Based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, he is the Executive Director of the Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance, Project Director for the Sector Equity for Anti-Racism in the Arts, and an arts and culture consultant.
Ryan Hunt
Alongside the rest of the Leadership Team, Ryan Hunt helped to co-develop and co-found the Pathways program. While he is no longer directly involved in the formal leadership of the program, Ryan supports the Leadership Team with program sense-making and visioning. He aspires to use his position of privilege to push back against the colonial institutions and systems of power that continue to oppress and fight for a brighter, liberated future.
