Board Members

Latin American Cinemateca of Los Angeles Board of Directors

 

Claudia Cabrera
Assistant to the director of Marketing and Public Relations, White Memorial Medical Center.

 

Michael Diaz

Is the Founding President of the Latin-American Cinemateca of Los Angeles. Actively involved in a number of groups working to preserve Los Angeles history and culture, he is a former board member of the Los Angeles Conservancy and past Commissioner of the Los Angeles Historical Records & Landmarks Commission. He is the founder of the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Preservation Association and currently serves as chair of the Lincoln Heights Historic Preservation Overlay Zone. He is the recipient of a Los Angeles Emmy for producing a bilingual-educational series.

 

Susana Hernández Araico, Ph.D.
With a Ph.D. from UCLA, Susana Hernández Araico is Professor Emerita of Spanish and Latin American literature at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. A Visiting Professor at various universities in North America, and Europe, she also served as Director of the Spanish Summer Institute at UCSB for several years. She has published extensively in Europe, Canada, Latin America and the United States on Hispanic Baroque court theater both of Spain and its American viceroyalties. She has specialized particularly on Calderón, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Peruvian de las Llamosas. She serves on the editorial board of several professional journals and has served as an officer in a number of academic organizations. She currently serves as Historian on the Board of Directors for Hispanics for L. A. Opera (www.hispanicsforlaopera.org), under the patronage of Plácido Domingo, and also as Commodore for the Women Sailing Association of Santa Monica Bay (www.wsasmb.org)

 

Jesse Lerner, Ph.D.
Is a writer, director, editor and cinematographer whose films have screened nationally and internationally in the prestigious Sundance Film Festival and in museums from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has also worked as a curator and programmer of film festivals from the Guggenheim in New York to CONACULTA in Mexico City. As a Professor of Media Studies at Claremont College in Claremont he is actively involved as an educator, advocate, analyst and participant in the world of film and video.

 

Gilda M. Pettit
Vice President
Wells Fargo Capital Finance

 

Dr. Hugh Watts
A graduate of Princeton University he took his M.D. at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Watts serves on the advisory board of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund and has been a frequent visiting teacher in Gaza, and the West Bank. He is also active in the Silver Service Children’s Foundation in Buga, Colombia where he works and teaches twice a year.