“My personal vision is to create opportunities for Indigenous Peoples that support their traditional values through art, culture and identity.”

Ron is a traditional pueblo potter from Isleta and Taos Pueblo in New Mexico. He is a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and is an international award-winning artist. He also has a bachelor’s degree in Indigenous Liberal Studies from IAIA. His expertise includes 20 years of community and leadership development, specializing in the area of building sustainable economic and leadership development in Indigenous global communities.

Pace Winkels (He/Him) joined Artspace in 2022 as the National Advancement Manager.  The son of a musician and costume designer, Pace has been steeped in the Minneapolis artist community and understands the importance of fostering and housing the arts across the globe.  After receiving his BA in writing for TV and Film at DePaul University,  Pace returned home to Minneapolis and began work at an accessibility company, creating audio description for television and film.



When he's not working, Pace enjoys a wide variety of horror films and is an avid practitioner of Muay Thai. He's also the father to the light of his life - his pitbull, Imelda Mae.

Woman, daughter, wife, mother, aunt, godmother, athlete

Dr. Macridis is a social researcher with more than 12 years of experience and expertise in design, implementation, and evaluation of public health promotion research, programs and policies, using quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodologies to understand complex social problems through a socio-ecological lens. She serves as a project manager for KAI’s research and evaluation (R&E) service line, including managing KAI’s task order contracts with the Indian Health Service (IHS) to conduct a national evaluation of the IHS 4-in-1 program and to design and implement a national cross-site evaluation for the Community Opioid Intervention Pilot Projects (COIPP). She also manages KAI’s Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies (MACP) contract to evaluate grantees for the Native Arts and Cultures program and is the current project manager and evaluator supporting the Artspace Pathways Program. Dr. Macridis is skilled in project management, with a track record of managing projects ranging in scale from local to national. She offers skills in knowledge translation and synthesizing evidence to share with a variety of audiences, with an exceptional ability to develop technical reports, peer-reviewed publications, oral presentations, fact sheets, and infographics. She has had several grant applications funded, on topics including increasing physical activity and active living, active modes of transportation, and Indigenous community mobilization training for diabetes prevention. She has held teaching assistantships at McGill University (where she taught about participatory research in health) and at Queen’s University (where she taught about basic human nutrition, program design and implementation, and the study of alcohol and drug problems). Dr. Macridis holds her doctorate of philosophy in health promotion from McGill University, as well as her master’s of science in health promotion and her bachelor’s in health studies from Queen’s University.

Equity, Altruism, Engagement, Community, Creativity, Gratitude, Humility.

Sharon has been a consultant to nonprofit arts and human service organizations for over 30 years providing training, consulting and facilitation in the areas of strategy development, assessment and evaluation, and major project implementation.  She has facilitated workshops regionally and nationally on topics in related to organizational capacity-building, strategy development and community engagement. 

Clients have included national organizations, regional service organizations seeking to build arts and culture capacity; and local private and public organizations in rural, suburban and micropolitan areas seeking to develop cultural plans or build capacity. Clients have also included many artist-led organizations and organizations serving underrepresented artists.

Between 2008-2018 she built and led ArtsLab, a capacity building program of Arts Midwest dedicated to developing the core leadership skills and management capabilities of community-based arts organizations and regional arts and culture networks throughout the Upper Midwest.  

Sharon has taught in the University of Minnesota’s Arts and Cultural Leadership graduate program as well as the St. Mary’s University’s graduate program in Arts and Cultural Management, in the areas of nonprofit management, strategic planning and program evaluation. 

She holds an MPH in community health administration and an MSW in human services administration, both from the University of Minnesota, as well as a BA in environmental biology. She is a certified facilitator, trained through the Minnesota chapter of the Institute of Cultural Affairs.  She is an accomplished pianist, is passionate about the concerns of our natural world, and loves to trek through woods and mountains.