OUR TEAM
OUTsider relies on the love labor of our dedicated board of directors and our mighty queer team.
STAFF
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Curran Nault
Co-Artistic Director
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Laura Gutiérrez
Co-Artistic Director
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Bobette Mathis
Director of Operations
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
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Sarah Schoonhoven
President
Sarah Schoonhoven (M.M.) (she/her/hers) is a strategic event designer, project manager, and program coordinator at UT Austin, where she works to create programming for instructors at the faculty, staff, and graduate student level and strives to center the full, radical inclusion of LGBTQA+ students and instructors in her work. She serves as Co-Chair of UT’s Presidential LGBTQIA+ Advisory Committee, as the Membership & Outreach Chair of the Texas Exes Pride Alumni Network, and as a past chair of PEFSA, UT’s LGBTQA+ staff/faculty association.
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Molly Routt
Vice President
Molly has been hanging around OUTsider in various queerpacities since 2015 and brings a background in film production, nonprofit program management, and talent development. At work, she gets excited about helping organizations be strategic about their workforce learning and development, especially when it comes to equity and inclusion. At play, Molly gets excited about dance protests and learning Spanish.
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Bobette Mathis
Director of Operations
Bobette began her festival and nonprofit career with The Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival (aGLIFF) in 1996 serving on the board as secretary and president as well as managing the festival box office and fundraising events until stepping down in 2005. In 2013, she joined Curran Nault, PJ Raval, Paul Soileau, Annie Small, and founder and former aGLIFF Artistic Director Scott Dinger in creating OUTsider Film & Arts Festival and continues to serve on the board, as Director of Operations, and festival site manager.
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Laura Gutiérrez
Co-Artistic Director
Laura G. Gutiérrez (she/her/ella/they/elle) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at The University of Texas at Austin and, when not teaching on all things related to culture, researches and writes about Latinx and Mexican performance and visual art. This deep commitment to contemporary art and culture-makers enables Gutiérrez to occasionally collaborate with artists.
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Curran Nault
Artist in Residence Director, Artistic Director EmQueerItus
Curran Nault is the Founder and former Artistic/Executive Director of OUTsider (2013-2022). Previously, he was the Artistic Director of aGLIFF (the Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival) (2011-13) and the Co-Founder and Director of Programming of AAAFF (the Austin Asian American Film Festival) (2007-11). Nault is also an Assistant Professor in Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin.
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Ellie Erickson
Treasurer
Ellie has played bass in outsider bands for many years and now plays in a new project called Hey Jellie, with her former band mate from Erase Errata, Jenny Hoyston. She has 13 years experience managing nonprofits and holds an MBA from UC Berkeley.
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PJ Raval
Media and Digital Archive Director
PJ Raval (he/him) is a queer, first generation Filipinx American filmmaker whose documentary work includes CALL HER GANDA (2020 Excellence in Documentary NLGJA Association of LGBTQ Journalists), BEFORE YOU KNOW IT (PBS) and Trinidad (Showtime). His provocative collaboration with queer performance artist and human pissoir, CHRISTEENE, has been described as “something you desperately wish you could un-see” (Hollywood Reporter) MmmHmm…PJ is a Guggenheim Fellow, member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and a founding member of OUTsider.
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Rolando Sepulveda
Creative Designer
Bio coming soon
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Jessica Smedlund
Accessibility Director
Jessica Smedlund is a SHRM certified Human Resource professional at UT Austin with experience working in nonprofit and film. She spent five years working for a nonprofit that provides diverse programs for adults with various types of disabilities and helped champion their mission to allow these individuals unlock the door to their full potential. Jessica also worked as a film/video production coordinator where she developed a regimented workflow for managing the moving parts of production.
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Jacob Wilson
Hospitality Director
Bio coming soon
Advisory Board
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Eugene Alvarez
Company Manager, Ballet Austin
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Ron Berry
Founder/Artistic Director, Fusebox
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Nao Bustamante
Performance Artist & Professor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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Del Ray Cross
Poet & Editor, Shampoo Poetry
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Ann Cvetkovich
Professor of Women’s & Gender Studies/English, University of Texas at Austin
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Madge Darlington
Founder & Artistic Director, Rude Mechs Theater Collective
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Will Davis
Theater Writer/Director
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Heyd Fontenot
Visual Artist & Director, Central Trak
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Ernesto Foronda
Filmmaker & Programmer, Sundance Film Festival
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Silas Howard
Musician & Filmmaker
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Daniel Alexander Jones
Interdisciplinary Theatre Artist & Professor, Fordham University
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Peter Knegt
Senior Editor, Indiewire
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Marne Lucas
Visual Artist
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Sandra Martinez
Entrepreneur & Community Organizer
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Travis Mathews
Filmmaker
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Chale Nafus
Founder/Director of Programming, Austin Film Society
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Hoang Tan Nguyen
Experimental Artist & Professor, Bryn Mawr
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Masashi Niwano
Festival Director, CAAMFest
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Gretchen Phillips
Musician
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Andee Scott
Choreographer, Dancer & Professor, University of South Florida
Founding Members
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Annie Small
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Bobette Mathis
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PJ Raval
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Scott Dinger
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Curran Nault
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Paul Soileau
Board Alumni
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Kimberly Alidio
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Alex Barron
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Elissa Bouillion
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Laura Brown
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Cassidy C Browning
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Jay Byrd
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Tarik Daniels
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Bug Davidson
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Asher Ford
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Michael Anthony Garcia
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Siri Gurudev
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Ashley Hicks
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Jonathan Itchon
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Stephen Markel
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Chale Nafus
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Masashi Niwano
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Jesse O'Rear
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Drew Riley
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Dana Sayre
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Beth Schindler
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Joshua Tadeo
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Megan Tillman
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Felice Trirogoff