The Culture Keepers is a storytelling project and media platform that offers a unique look into the practices, lives, and communities of Bay Area artists and creatives.
The Bay Area’s global reputation rests on culture, but the people who create and sustain that culture are underfunded, displaced, and often invisible to mainstream institutions including philanthropy. The platform makes the Bay Area’s cultural ecosystem visible – to itself, to new patrons, and to a broader audience. It is an invitation to think about how each of us tends to or keeps the culture we want to see in the world.
The project features a diverse group of culture keepers from across the Bay Area—across disciplines, communities, and lineages—who have been selected to showcase a range of artistic and cultural practices the region holds.
Half of the Culture Keepers are chosen by anchor institutions or cultural hubs. We invite them to choose a set of artists who help define and anchor their organizations’ important cultural practice. These organizations integrate cultural affirmation, nourishment, and celebration into their core missions.
We pair the Culture Keepers with leading storytellers, journalists, writers, and filmmakers who are trusted and beloved in their communities to produce stories in various mediums – film, audio, photos and written word. Our resident storytellers operate with respect, reverence, humility, and a deep sense of responsibility for how stories travel.
Together, these multiplicities of voices are the heart of The Culture Keepers, the people whose relationships, practice, and stories give this platform its meaning.
Our stories and our cultural memory are how we heal and understand each other, how we celebrate, and how we bring much‑needed discourse to our world. When we support those who tend to and keep our culture, we help ensure that future generations inherit living traditions, shared stories, and communities rooted in dignity and belonging. This is the medicine we need right now, and together we can make sure the people and organizations providing it have what they need in return.
Vanessa Camarena-Arredondo
Vanessa manages the Cultural Self-Determination portfolio at Tao Rising, a single-family philanthropic office based in San Francisco. Prior to her current position, she was a program officer at the Akonadi Foundation, a racial justice funder focused on Oakland, CA. She began her professional journey in philanthropy at the San Francisco Foundation where she served as the Arts & Culture Multicultural Fellow. She has a background in community organizing in her hometown of East Los Angeles and ran Studio Grand, a multidisciplinary arts space in Oakland, CA. For many years, she performed with Las Bomberas de la Bahia, an all-women Bay Area-based ensemble that performed Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba. Vanessa seeks to build philanthropic partnerships that champion and support Bay Area arts and cultural work grounded in repair and equity. She has a degree in Latina American Studies from Cal State LA.
Jean Melesaine
Jean Melesaine is an Indigenous director, filmmaker, and photographer deeply rooted in both the Bay Area and Samoa. Her creative journey began as a formerly incarcerated teen when Silicon Valley De-Bug handed her a camera—an act that transformed her life. Over the next decade, she harnessed the power of film to support families navigating the criminal legal system, helping them tell their stories through a groundbreaking community organizing model called Participatory Defense, developed by Alex Covarrubias. This work has reshaped courtroom dynamics and helped prevent countless unjust sentences.
Guided by relationships, lineage, and the transformative power of storytelling, Jean continues to document the beauty, resilience, and struggles of Black, Indigenous, Samoan, and immigrant communities in the Bay Area and beyond. Jean is a proud aunty and daughter. Her late mother, Sopo Masina Matai’a, migrated from Moamoa, Samoa to San Francisco, and her late father, Moaseni Tito Leasiolagi, came to Oakland from Salani Faleali’li in the Atua District of Samoa. In 2025, Jean graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts with a degree in Film and Production and was honored as a Leading Edge Fellow by the Rosenberg Foundation.
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Jacob Pritzker
Jacob Pritzker, founding donor of The Culture Keeper’s Project, comes to this project with a deep reverence for artists, creative practice, and the people and institutions that help to uphold the Bay Area that we know and love. The vibrant and diverse creative culture in the region drew him here after an upbringing in Chicago steeped in that city’s unique culture and house music scene. In December of 2019, he launched The Space Program, a residency that provides artists with the space, time and materials necessary to help them elevate and refine their practice. He studied sculpture and human rights at Bard College, and is a founding board member of The Libra Foundation, which is an organization that partners with groups working towards justice and equity that center the voice and experiences of those disproportionately affected by systemic oppression. He is committed to ensuring that community-rooted artists have access to the resources, connections, and spaces they need to create, perform, and display their work.
Alex Haber
Alex Haber (he/him) has over a decade of experience in philanthropy at both local and national organizations and brings a transformative and trust-based approach to his work with donors and grantees. He currently serves as philanthropy advisor at Tao Rising, a single-family philanthropy office in San Francisco, where he helps family members hone their values and approaches to giving and supports them in developing program priorities and strategies. He has worked with the family to launch new initiatives supporting regenerative agricultural practices, migrant justice, and cultural power. In his previous position as philanthropic advisor at RSF Social Finance, he worked with clients to more than double annual grantmaking during his tenure and helped to found the Pawanka Fund, a participatory funder collaborative supporting indigenous self-determination around the globe. Prior to RSF, he held positions in the program department at San Francisco Foundation and in grants management at Tides and served as the steering committee chair for the Bay Area chapter of Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy. Alex holds a BA in comparative literature from Cornell University and was a 2018-2019 RSF Integrated Capital Fellow.
Bilen Mesfin
Bilen Mesfin Packwood is the founder and principal of Change Consulting, an award-winning full service social change communications agency based in Oakland, California. She is a trusted strategic advisor to leading changemakers. Change Consulting is the communications partner of choice for leaders driving racial and social justice. For 16 years, the award-winning agency has partnered with organizations and leaders on the frontlines of creating a just, inclusive world.
Prior to founding Change Consulting, Bilen advanced communications efforts for then San Francisco District Attorney Kamala D. Harris. She has a Master’s in Journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in English from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Awards and recognitions include: One of 2024’s women to watch by NASDAQ; California Black Women’s Trailblazer Hall of Fame Awards in 2023 and 2024; 2025 Silver Stevie Award for Best Female Entrepreneur; 2025 Gold Anthem Community Voice Award and a Silver Anthem Award as a Business Leader in the Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging category; and 2025 Honorable Mention for Executive of the Year at Ragan Communications’ PR Daily Awards. Bilen has been featured in The Root, Blavity, NASDAQ, Motherly, Her Money, KQED and more.
William Ramirez
William Ramirez (he/him) is a graphic designer and front-end web developer with more than 15 years of experience. A transplant from the D.R., William holds a Graphic Design and Illustration degree from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo. Previously, William worked as a graphic designer and web developer with the Design Action Collective where he helped established during the start-up times from 2006 until this year. He was one of the founders of the award-winning independent arts & culture magazine, La Vaina, as well as having worked for commercial companies, non-profit organizations, and independent artists.
