Meet the Mentors
Mike Hawkins
Youmedia Coordinator/Lead Mentor
Mike Hawkins (aka Brother Mike) is the heart and soul of YOUmedia. The Associate Director and Lead Mentor for Digital Youth Network, Brother Mike came to DYN with eight years’ experience working in the classroom at Carter G. Woodson on Chicago’s South Side. Brother Mike specializes in spoken word and hip-hop. In 1999, he co-founded a performance group called Poetree Chicago, which brought spoken word and hip-hop together to venues and communities throughout Chicago. The group was selected for the Illinois Arts Council’s Traveling Artist Roster, creating positive, uplifting material that could inspire and educate. In 2004, the group produced its first album, Positive Pollution.
As a DYN mentor, Brother Mike has worked across media, from spoken word to radio to graphic design. Most notably he helped develop a multi-media arts class called “iRemix Records,” in which sixth-grade students analyze and critique the music industry while learning how to create their own music. Students take on multiple roles as producers, artists, managers, designers, and videographers, with the goal of creating a CD and presenting their work to a larger audience. Brother Mike is the creator of such projects as Change Society, which engages students in media creation with a focus on civic engagement, and Lyricist Loft, which provides a pathway for students to showcase their work to a public audience.
“Students have the power to participate in the media, to react to the media, to create the media, to be the media. With this newfound power, our youth don’t have to simply be fed what the media presents; they can join in the process, to provide a broader more and relevant perspective, while at the same time defining themselves in new, and powerful ways. This idea of redefinition can influence the birth of a new youth cultural renaissance.”
Read about Brother Mike at The Remix Renaissance and at Mentoring to a New Beat.
More Info about this mentor
Taylor Bayless
Librarian
Taylor Bayless is a librarian and Chicago native. After finishing a BFA in Cinema Studies at New York University, Taylor decided to leave the entertainment world behind to become a librarian. In 2008 she graduated from the School of Information at University of Michigan with an MSI in Library and Information Services. Taylor believes in supporting all media in the library setting; making connections between books, movies, music and more. Taylor is a former collegiate swimmer and a film geek of the highest order and will always keep those movie recommendations coming (especially in the realms of animation and German cinema).
More Info about this mentor
Marcus Lumpkin
Librarian
The only times you won't see Marcus Lumpkin riding his bike to work at YOUmedia are on the days he's in the middle of a good book. That's when he takes the L, so he can eek out a bit more precious reading time.
Marcus joined the YOUmedia mentor staff after working at the Chicago Public Library’s South Chicago Branch. And he biked to work there, too. At the South Chicago Branch, Marcus created children’s story times, developed afterschool programs, and served local organizations by extending the Library’s services and resources to neighborhood schools and organizations. In the past, Marcus taught preschool and substituted in Chicago Public Schools.
Marcus studied at Wayne State University in Detroit and completed his English literature degree at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
In YOUmedia, he puts that background in literature to work by leading teens in the library's Teen Volume book discussion. Marcus reads furiously to keep up with the teens at YOUmedia and their varied interests. Marcus identifies most with gamers, fiction readers, and cyclists.
Cycling is a great way to start a conversation with Marcus, but he will probably end up talking to you about what he’s reading. He has a passion for learning, literature, and the library.
More Info about this mentor
Jennifer Steele
Mentor
Jennifer Steele is a native of Connecticut. She is a teaching artist for various organizations around the city of Chicago including Hands On Stanzas, Camp of Dreams, and Young Chicago Authors. In her previous lives she has also worked with the Hill-Stead Museum and the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, and served as co-editor for the Columbia Poetry Review 21. Her poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Caduceus, Warpland Journal, and Beltway Quarterly Online.
She received her B.M. from Howard University and her M.F.A. from Columbia College Chicago. Although she remains a resident of Chicago, she will always be an east coast girl at heart.
More Info about this mentor
JoVia Armstrong
Music Mentor
From Detroit, Michigan, hails percussionist JoVia Ljiljana Armstrong. JoVia began studying percussion as a high school freshman. By her senior year, she was section leader in the symphony orchestra, the symphony band, the concert band, the percussion ensemble, and the jazz orchestra. Throughout the week and weekend, she was a percussionist in the Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestra, the Wayne State University Honors Band, and the Charles Post Military Band.
She enrolled at Michigan State University as a percussionist performance major, where she continued to perform and study orchestral percussion (including four-mallet marimba/vibraphone). She studied African Cuban percussion and drum set with performer and educator Francisco Mora-Catlett, African drumming and dance, Latin jazz, and also Korean drumming. She transferred to Columbia College Chicago and earned a B.A. in Music Business.
JoVia played Cajon (box drum) for the “Tour of the Americas 2004.” The group performed original and traditional songs of Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Argentina. JoVia has performed with various artists such as British recording artist Omar, Chilean artist Joe VasConcellos, Philadelphia native RES, Alison Crockett, Angela Johnson, Maysa, Rahsaan Patterson, Eric Robeson, Gordon Chambers, Warren Hill, Conya Doss, Yolanda Johnson, flautist Nicole Mitchell, saxophonist David Boykin, Maya Azucena, bluesmen Billy Branch and Ron Prince, Althea Rene, Brian O'Neal, Lola Morales, Blackman & Arnold, Level Rizon, Cello, Nadir, Ed Stone, Painted Pictures, Wendell Harrison, Pamela Wise, BSTC, Mathias, Inohs Sivad, and Heather Moran. She has opened shows for such acts as Talib Kweli, The Executioners, Kindred the Family Soul, Thomas Mapfumo, Gerald Albright, and The Bad Plus. She has had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Amp Fiddler, Angela Johnson, Frank McComb, Trey Anastacio, Jazzhead, and Michael Franti & Spearhead.
To further her musical studies, she developed a hobby of writing music and audio production. This hobby soon turned into career as she is now writing and producing for various artists including her jazz group Musique Noire based in Detroit. They have been nominated for several Detroit Music Awards in 2009 and 2010 for Outstanding World/ Jazz Group and Outstanding World/ Jazz Album. JoVia was nominated for an individual award- Outstanding World/ Reggae Musician. She released her debut album Fuzzy Blue Robe Chronicles in 2009.
More Info about this mentor
Carolina Gonzalez
Video/Animation Mentor
Carolina was born in Colombia and moved to the United States in 2000. She began to explore art at Broward Community College in Florida, where she discovered art as a tool to communicate in times where words could not. In 2007, Carolina received a presidential merit scholarship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she completed a BFA with emphasis in film video and new media. In her interdisciplinary art practices, she combines different mediums to make films and tell personal stories that reflect communal ones. Carolina’s films explore diaspora, belonging, and the meanings of place.
Carolina is inspired by immigration, nationality, and identity. Her films include: Down to Earth (2007), Dear (2008), and a part from The Story (2009). Her works have screened in different venues in Chicago and Florida, including the Gene Siskel Film Center. In 2009, she received The Gelman Travel Fellowship to research and produce an experimental documentary in Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile. As a teaching artist, she has participated in different fine arts and media programs in Florida, Chicago, and Mexico City. As a teacher, Carolina aims to inspire students to leave the spectator’s role so that they can actively engage and affect their own realities.
More Info about this mentor
Nigless Tognoni
Graphic Design Mentor
With a background in theater and design, Niq comes to DYN with a passion for the collaborative artistic and education process. Working as the marketing chair for an educational theater company in Chicago, as well as on marketing committees for other theaters and filmmakers, Niq has learned to draft images that portray information, sell a product, and stand alone as their own art pieces.
Niq’s interest in the arts stemmed from an upbringing rich in art museums (touring some of the finest museums in the country) and animation, including frequent trips to an actual studio where he watched teams of people working together to bring an artistic vision to life. He has worked in a number of artistic mediums including (but not limited to) performance, sculpture, installation art, collage, story and poetry, and songwriting and performance. He's excited to join DYN as a mentor and for the opportunity to collaborate through digital mediums with so many other young and innovative artists.
More Info about this mentor
Ayana Contreras
Radio Mentor
Ayana works in sound. Before coming to the Digital Youth Network as an audio production mentor, she hosted Chicago Public Radio’s “Global Overnight” program (culling news from voices around the world). She was also a host/producer at Vocalo.org (which feeds a Chicago radio station with user-generated audio pieces). She is a sound designer, having worked on projects presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art and a variety of plays.
Ayana’s passions also revolve around sound: She collects records (LPs & 45s) and enjoys discovering (and telling) the stories behind them, especially those recorded locally. She often produces the audio into sound-rich podcasts. Ayana can be found DJing righteous soul, funk, jazz, and otherwise raucous 45s at clubs, taverns, and a bakery around Chicago. She also loves teaching young people how to produce their own podcasts and radio-ready audio pieces that reflect their issues, their stories, their struggles, and their successes.
Ayana’s influences include her collection of old Ebony Magazines, audio producer Dmae Roberts, overheard CTA conversations, the ever-changing color of Lake Michigan, audio engineer Bruce Swedien, the syncopation of Gwendolyn Brooks’ work, and the get down.
More Info about this mentor
Sean Owens
Digital Music Mentor
Sean is partner, chief engineer, and executive producer of Lounge Fidelity Recordings. His musical journey began when he played in various punk rock outfits, and it evolved into playing trumpet in jazz bands during his high school days. Through this he met up with local producer Don T and became a part of an electronic outfit called 84 Glyde.
Working with 84 Glyde, they blurred the lines between acid house, jazz, ambient, and downtempo. In 1999, Sean met up with local musicians and producers and started the Trolllodos Ensemble. They were a group of accomplished jazz musicians, composers, electronic artists, DJs, and emcees who came together to experiment with variations of electronic and acoustic sound, improvisation, and higher communication.
Sean continued to experiment with sound scapes and found sound, creating pieces for improvising piano, sound environments for independent film, and various psycho-acoustic experiments. As a DJ, Sean has played in and around Chicago and the Midwest, focusing on creating a musical journey that blends classics with the new music of today. Since 2007, Sean has been working as a teaching artist with local nonprofits, teaching music production, sound design, and music engineering to elementary and high school youth.