Aki Shibata is a behavioral artist, educator, facilitator, and community organizer from Tokyo, Japan, now based in Minnesota. In her artistic work, she develops intersections for people in public spaces to discover their authentic selves and to nurture compassion for all. Her work is about finding a sense of belonging and finding ways to let people meet their inner peace.

Aki brings 15 years experience in art education and anti-oppression work in K-12 youth programming, within science centers, and within colleges. She spent seven years at the museum and led the NSF-funded project LinCT, a collaboration between STEM Education, the Kitty Andersen Youth Science Center, and the IDEAL Center along with various external partners. After finishing that project, Aki worked in the IDEAL center as a Specialist until leaving the museum for a position at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design Building out the Teaching Artist program.

Travis joined the professional development team in 2006 , and is currently Senior Project Lead. Professionally, he is particularly interested in challenging and reconstructing the beliefs, attitudes, and values that undergird STEM and advantage some groups of students and ways of knowing over others in our educational systems and society at large.

Travis began his career at the museum after graduating with honors from Macalester College with a Bachelor of Science in Geology and a Physics minor and earning his masters in Geological and Environmental Sciences from Stanford University. He was a Youth Program Manager in the Kitty Andersen Youth Science Center, the museum’syouth development program, where he worked with youth traditionally underrepresented in STEM careers. At this time he also worked as a Earthscapes Outreach Teacher, collaborating with researchers at the University of Minnesota's National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics to translate their work into experiences for students and teachers.

Travis has been a contributing author on multiple grants and served as co-designer and facilitator for many programs for educational leaders. These include PAGE, funded by the National Science Foundation; Nexus: A Statewide Professional Community for District-Level STEM Leaders, funded by the Medtronic Foundation; and Science House and the museum’sEducator Resource Center, funded by the 3M Foundation. As an adjunct faculty member at Hamline University, he has been an instructor of record for many school-level, teacher-focused summer institutes.

Alia Carter defines herself as a learning designer, who is passionate about creating equitable learning experiences for people to learn more about their world and how they connect to it. She has over 15 years of informal and formal STEM teaching experience including leading science engagement at the McWane Science Center and out-of-school culturally-connected computing experiences at Duke University. She has also taught computing, math, and science to elementary and middle school students at a Jewish Day school in Alabama.

Alia utilizes her positionality and her love for STEM to create more equitable learning spaces for all. She is committed to helping people learn how to better "be" together so we can "do" better together.

Demetrios Vital is passionate about teaching and learning. He has worked in museum collections and exhibitions, Jewish education, and Holocaust and genocide education and pedagogy. As the child of Greek Jewish Holocaust survivors who were resettled in Minnesota during the Greek civil war, Demetrios is passionate about facilitating the kind of deep learning that aspires to disrupting oppression, countering genocide, celebrating diversity, and building community.

In addition to his role in the IDEAL Center, Demetrios is involved in education and anti-racism in the Jewish community. He is an artist, calligrapher, and practices the art of restoring Torah scrolls and related ritual Hebrew manuscripts.

Demetrios spends a lot of time with his kids, with whom he shares one of his deepest joys: dinosaurs! As a child, Demetrios' family brought him to the museum’s Dinosaurs & Fossils galleries, which paved the way for a preternatural desire to illustrate dinosaurs. Demetrios is grateful that he can, in turn, bring his children to the museum. Together, they make art, play dinosaurs, shape their family history, and envision a more just future.

Mary Perez (she/they) is an educator and consultant, committed to liberation through anti-oppressive praxis in systems change and community building. They joined the IDEAL Center in 2022, bringing a lens of racial justice and healing that they have cultivated in their studies and personal experience.

Mary has taught in middle and high school classrooms in Maryland, Tennessee, and California. With The Institute for Anti-Racist Education, she served as a program manager, providing support for anti-racist professional development for schools, educators, and teaching artists.

During their graduate studies in race and religion, they focused on the intersection of anti-racist education and religious literacy in formal and informal learning spaces. This led them to consulting work in religious literacy with Boston Children’s Museum.

Mary draws on their own experience as a queer, mixed-race, gender-expansive person to understand the complex dynamics of power and oppression, and community and liberation. She and her partner live in Minneapolis with their pup, Cam. She cultivates healing and joy through music-making, journaling, being near water, and deep listening to friends, birds, and silence.