Welcoming Ellen Sebastian Chang. Resident Director and newest member of the Board.
We are thrilled to announce Resident Director, Ellen Sebastian Chang is the newest member of the EB PREC Board of Directors. Current resident owners nominated Chang in February 2021. Chang secured consent from 789 residents, before accepting the nomination in March 2021. Chang was elected to the Board in a closed election in April 2021.
The resident director represents the interests of resident owners. Responsibilities include, but are not limited to overseeing EB PREC staff activities and accepting several fiduciary duties to preserve the cooperative’s health. The full list of responsibilities related to this role are in the EB PREC bylaws.
“My life’s journey is one that seeks understanding across cultures, historical narratives and imaging an interdependent collaborative world in relationship with all life forms. I use the heart of my imagination to build equity, dignity and value from a perspective of life and love that will at best end white supremacy (and all its maskings) or at least circumnavigate its harmful scope.”
A Bit More About Ellen
Ellen Sebastian Chang (she/her), is a storied figure in the performing arts, as a director and arts educator whose career spans 45 years. Her current projects include an ongoing collaboration with AfroFuturist Conjure artist Amara Tabor Smith and the Deep Waters Dance company’s House/Full of BlackWomen, a multi-year site-specific dance theater work that addresses the displacement, sex trafficking, and the creative well-being of Black women and girls in Oakland, California.
She has worked as an arts educator for 42 years: with technical direction/design classes at the Urban School of San Francisco, Magic Theaters Young California Writer’s Program, as an artist in Bay Area Public Schools via Young Audiences of Northern California and for the past 14 years with The World as it Could Be Human Rights Education Arts Program. She is currently teaching with Girl’s Project a program facilitated with East Side Arts Alliance.
Sebastian Chang was the cofounder and artistic director of Life on the Water, a national and internationally known presenting and producing organization at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center from 1986 through 1995. In the past five years she has collaborated with the HBO production "Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley"; Maya Gurantz "A Hole in Space (Oakland Redux)"; Sunhui Chang and Maya Gurantz "How to Fall in Love in A Brothel; Campo Santo and Ben Fisher’s “Candlestick” and served as the proud co-owner and general manager of FuseBOX Restaurant, created by chef Sunhui Chang in West Oakland, California.
She is a recipient of awards and grants from Creative Capital, MAP Fund, A Blade of Grass Fellowship in Social Engagement, Art Matters, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, NEA, Creative Work Fund, California Arts Council, Mazza Foundation and Zellerbach Community Arts Fund.
Read more about our elections process on the documents page in our bylaws and the EB PREC elections process.
