Our Board
Ignacio Medina (he/him)
Ignacio Medina, Board Member, Returned Resident:
There are many people/things that have inspired me to become the person I am today and art is paramount.
I can recall how poetry, short story and film began to soften my once hardened heart.
I spent over two decades incarcerated, and will honor the darkest of moments because
“Discovering my true voice through art unlocked my mind, body, and soul”. Today, I can only work to indicate the keys for others to unlock their artistic sides.
Viollette Menefee (she/her)
Viollette Menefee, Board Member, a native of the Chicago area, is enjoying living her new-ish life in Santa Barbara with her husband and two dogs. In her free time she enjoys writing, studying French, volunteering, playing tennis, golf and jazz drums, and having dinners with good friends. She is passionate about justice reform for incarcerated youth and lowering recidivism rates.
Katherine Van Allen (she/her)
Living up and down the West Coast in her adult life, Katherine started her career as a social worker in LA County helping elderly people and their caregivers before moving to Seattle to pursue additional education and now back to her native Portland, Oregon. Katherine now works as a technical salesperson, sitting on the Women@ Sprout Social Leadership team. In her free time, Katherine enjoys getting outside, traveling, eating new things, and spending time with her partner and one-eyed French Bulldog, Oreo. She is passionate about prison reform, dedicating time to the Books to Prisoners project and promoting awareness about systems of injustice in our current prison system.
My cousin Patrick is incarcerated in Eastern Oregon at EOCI. He is serving out two of Oregon's mandatory minimum sentences for an armed robbery fueled by his heroin addiction. Since being incarcerated, Patrick has graduated from PSU, acts as an educator in the bee-keeping and master gardening programs offered through local universities, and has participated in Guide Dog training during the beginning of his sentence. He also teaches mindfulness and meditation to those who are in solitary confinement.
Johnny Kovatch (he/him)
Johnny Kovatch is the founder of Unlock the Arts. He is a recipient of an Established Artist Fellowship in poetry awarded by the California Arts Council. He previously taught expressive writing within six California state prisons.
His poetry has appeared in Barrow Street, Sou'wester, SOLO, The Los Angeles Review, Oakland Renaissance and Why to These Rocks, an anthology celebrating fifty years of the Community of Writers. His chapbook, Visiting, was a finalist for The Headlight Review Chapbook Competition at Kennesaw State. His commissioned work appears in PEN America's:The Sentences That Create Us. His novel, 59 Hours, was published by Simon & Schuster.
Mylrell Miner (he/him)
Mylrell Miner, Board Member, Returned Resident:
I grew up in the small city of Pittsburg CA, located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Raised mostly by my mother alongside my twelve siblings, we always struggled to make ends meet, but my mom always managed to keep a roof over our head. I never had any positive role models growing up and I always found myself being in the wrong crowd, I started getting locked up around fourteen years old, spending most of my teens inside Juvenile Hall. That is where I discovered my love for storytelling, which eventually became something like a savior to me and since then being a part of the film industry has been my goal in life.
My hopes are to take my passion for filmmaking and for giving back to my community, and help give opportunities to people with some of the same disadvantages I started with; I want to pass the same type of opportunities I was blessed with on to other at-risk youth and the formerly incarcerated, so that the help I was extended, transcends to others, and a positive impact can continue to be made.