Jacques is executive director of George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts (GRFA) and currently lives in New Orleans where he serves as House Counsel for Rodrigue Studio, his father's art gallery. As executive director of GRFA, Jacques publicly advocates for an arts-integrated education system through all media and oversees the Foundation's annual Scholarship Art Contest for Louisiana high school students and "George's Art Closet" (a program that gives art supplies to schools across Louisiana). Additionally, GRFA launched Louisiana A+ Schools (LAA+) in 2012, the first whole school arts-integrated school network of its kind in Louisiana. The National A+ Schools Consortium currently includes 120 schools in North Carolina, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Jacques graduated from Louisiana State University in General Business Administration and received his law degree from Tulane Law School in 2007.

José Antonio Bowen is Algur H Meadows Chair and Dean of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University. Bowen has taught at Stanford, Georgetown and Miami Universities and the University of Southampton, England. He has written over 100 scholarly articles, edited the Cambridge Companion to Conducting (2003), received a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship, and contributed to Discover Jazz (Pearson, 2011). He is an editor of the 6-CD set, Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology (2011), and has appeared in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the United States with Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby McFerrin, Dave Brubeck, Liberace, and many others. He has also written a symphony (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 1985), a film score, and music for Hubert Laws, Jerry Garcia and many others. Bowen is currently on the Editorial Board for Jazz Research Journal, the Journal of the Society for American Music, the Journal of Music History Pedagogy, and Per Musi: Revista Acadêmica de Música. He is a Founding Board Member of the National Recording Preservation Board for the Library of Congress and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) in England. Bowen has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, USA Today, US News and World Report, and on NPR for his book Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology out of your College Classroom will Improve Student Learning (Jossey-Bass, 2012). Stanford honored Bowen as a Distinguished Alumni Scholar in 2010.

www.josebowen.com
www.teachingnaked.com

Pat Fellows often starts his days in the dark, riding his bicycle toward the Mississippi River light, or striding into it on one of his runs, in preparation for the triathlons that are his passion. Most people miss the opportunity to start their days like this, clutching instead at bed covers and drawn curtains.
But Fellows isn't the type of guy to miss anything. That's an attitude he carries with him, no matter what he does.

Over the past ten years, Fellows has been busy creating a multi-platform wellness enterprise based in Baton Rouge and the southern United States. In 2007, Fellows founded Rocket Racing with fellow triathlete Susan Hayden. A thousand racers a year participate in the organization's races, which include women's-only triathlon series Rocketchix, the Dirty Duathlon, the Star Hill Half Marathon and the Golden Fliers 5 and 10 mile races. He’s also a Running Sales territory manager for Mizuno, Inc., and has seen steady improvements in his sales since he took the job in 2008. In addition, his Baton Rouge-based restaurant, FRESHJUNKIE, is his most successful food venture yet.

Born in 1971 in Dearborn, Michigan, his family moved to Long Beach, Mississippi, a small fishing town beside the shimmering Gulf of Mexico, when he was six years old. It was here that Fellows became a swimmer, and figured out that he liked the taste of the win. He’s driven by a passion to bring himself and others closer to their true potential, whether he's providing folks with nutritious, delicious, unique meals, inspiring them to compete in athletic events they might never have thought possible, or introducing them to high quality running gear.

Fellows also pursued a career in music during his days at LSU, and spent time playing rock and roll in Austin before deciding he didn't want to be a rock star―at least not in the traditional sense. He still likes to jam and has on his list of goals to learn piano before he turns 40.

In 2002 (just seven days after his daughter was born), Fellows launched Rocket Fajitas―his first restaurant at Main Street Market. After achieving modest success, he decided to open a second restaurant near LSU in 2003. The restaurant, even with its prime location, didn't catch on. He had one "Hail Mary" play left, and that was to revamp the Main Street Market restaurant. He draped Rocket Fajitas' Main Street Market location in blue tarps, rolled up his sleeves and got to work with a new level of focus. FRESHJUNKIE was born. "Two things, seven ways, that was it," he says, describing that original FRESHJUNKIE menu. FRESHJUNKIE’s first day was a success, and the first week was the best Fellows had seen in all his years as a restaurateur.

Fellows graduated high school from St. Stanislaus College in 1989, and then came to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. It's the city he still calls home, and where he lives with his wife, Jeanne, and kids Paige, 10, and Ian, 8. "When I die, I want to have changed people in a positive way," Fellows says. "I want to know that I prepared my kids for whatever their world will deal them. I want people to say, 'Hey that guy helped me out.' That's really all you can ask for."

A native of West Virginia, Mary Stein has lived in Baton Rouge since her college days at Louisiana State University. She has worked as a special collections librarian at New Mexico State University and a reference librarian at LSU.

Stein joined the East Baton Rouge Parish Library in 1984 and worked for many years in the Adult and Teen Services departments. She became the Library's Assistant Director of Administrative Services in 2004, where she works with public programming, grants, training, public relations, collection development and materials acquisition, and the Library's website and computer system.

Raymond A. Jetson is the pastor of the Star Hill church in Baton Rouge, La. This progressive congregation of 1,500 members is continually recognized for its impact on the local community. As pastor, Jetson has challenged the group to become “spiritual entrepreneurs” in order to develop innovative approaches to community needs. One of the hallmarks of the church is its intentional strategy of mobilizing and deploying the human resources of the congregation to address critical issues impacting the community.

He has a breadth of experience in the public sector and human services arena. From April 2006 through December 2009, Raymond served as CEO for the Louisiana Family Recovery Corps in the coordination of local, state and national efforts to connect people and families with the resources needed to return, recover and resume their lives after surviving disastrous situations. Prior to joining the Recovery Corps, Jetson was the deputy secretary for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH). In this capacity, he provided leadership for the state’s largest agency. Raymond served as the state Representative for District 61 in the Louisiana House of representatives for 15 years. While in the Legislature, he served on the Health and Welfare, Appropriations, and Joint Budget Committees.

During 2010, Jetson served as a Fellow with the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard. In September 2010, he hosted 17 colleagues for a social innovation workshop. The result of the event was the creation of Better Baton Rouge, an initiative focused on “citizen-led innovation.” In 2011, Raymond was one of seven selected to return to Harvard as a Senior Advanced Leadership Fellow.

Jetson served as chair of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Transit and the Baton Rouge Transition Coalition charged with leading the effort for transit reform in Baton Rouge.

His many years of public service and experience have made Raymond a resource for major media outlets across the country. Jetson has served as a source for media outlets including USATODAY, The New York Times, NBC Nightly News, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Jetson earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the New Orleans Theological Seminary. He and his wife Tammy are the proud parents of J'Erica Nicole and Jeremy Louis.

Dr. Tracy Stephenson Shaffer is Associate Professor in the Communication Studies Department at Louisiana State University where she researches and teaches courses in performance studies and film. Dr. Shaffer is a past chair of the Performance Studies Division of the National Communication Association and was the 2009 recipient of the Southern States Communication Association’s Performance Studies Division “Scholar of the Year” Award. Dr. Shaffer’s work has appeared in Text and Performance Quarterly, Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, Theatre Annual, and Cultural Studies <-> Critical Methodologies. She is co-author (with Ronald J. Pelias) of Performance Studies: The Interpretation of Aesthetic Texts (Kendall-Hunt, 2007), and serves as the producing director of the HopKins Black Box, an experimental laboratory theatre at LSU, where she also directs original live performances. Her most recent productions, “The Life and Times of King Kong” (2007), “Nonfiction Zombie” (2009), and “The Adventures of Little Red Riding Hood” (2011), examined various meanings and uses of particular “monsters” in popular culture.