WHO WE ARE
DEI Arts Consultants bring creative insight and practical expertise gained through a combined 60 years of experience working as entrepreneurs, artists, and administrators.
Our ability to leverage a robust and diverse network of professional and community relationships for each project and organization is what makes DEI Arts Consulting an effective advocate and resource for our clients.
Jeri Lynne Johnson
Founder and Principal
Liz Dreyer
Lead Facilitator
Jeri Lynne Johnson has spent a career creating innovative strategies and programs to dramatically improve community engagement, audience participation and cultural diversity in the arts and culture sector. As the Founder and Artistic Director of the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra, Jeri established a 21st-century model for American orchestras to find better ways of combining artistic excellence and organizational innovation with cultural diversity and meaningful community engagement. An active orchestra and opera conductor with an international career, Jeri uses her experiences on the podium to offer major corporations insights into creativity, innovation, and effective leadership practices, and organizational alignment for employees and management.
Liz Dreyer’s career has focused on helping people to see and do things differently; helping them work creatively towards possible solutions to problems they have previously found to be immovable. She does this by building practice spaces that are open, welcoming and safe enough to allow people to bravely lean into discomfort and risk. Throughout her career - from founding and leading a successful for-profit/non-profit hybrid to the process facilitation, design and trainings focusing on adaptive change and equity in the arts and culture field -- she creates spaces for clients, artists and participants to think, develop and evolve.
Erin McClarty
Workshop Facilitator
Erin McClarty’s professional expertise includes that of a business
coach, attorney, designer and community activator. As a social
impact architect, she helps clients take action and translate big
ideas into next steps. Her license to practice law is a unique
aspect of her interdisciplinary approach with clients. She has
worked for small and large nonprofits, run a business and
managed legal in Fortune 500 companies. Erin is a graduate of the University of St. Thomas and South Texas College of Law.
SIxto A. Wagan, Jr.
Workshop Facilitator
Sixto Wagan is the Project Director for the BIPOC Arts Network and Fund (BANF) a community-led collaborative fund and a resource network guided by arts leaders, arts practitioners, and funders. Previously, he founded the Center for Art and Social Engagement (CASE) in the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts at the University of Houston. At CASE, Wagan developed pilot programs, community partnerships, and research initiatives that centered creativity and community in impact conversations for 21st century cities. He led DiverseWorks, serving as Artistic Director, Co-Executive Director and Performing Arts Curator. Through his work as a producer, program designer, and facilitator, he has been recognized for his advocacy of artists, community-participatory empowerment actions, and investments in equitable distribution of resources and power.