Nancy Bless
Executive Director

Nancy is an arts administrator, curator and journalist with a wealth of experience in developing and managing statewide programs in the arts. As the program development specialist for the Ohio Arts Council for 11 years, she managed artists' residencies, forged artist-community collaborations throughout Ohio, and produced exhibitions, catalogs and videos. She also established and directed the council's Summer Media Institute, a graduate-level, hands-on program in film, video, photography and radio designed for Ohio teachers. Later, as curator at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin, and as gallery director of Women & Their Work in Austin, Bless organized numerous exhibitions and screenings. Recent projects include exhibitions in San Antonio and Tokyo, and "Third Ward TX," an hour- long documentary with Austin filmmaker Andy Garrison and KUHT-TV (PBS Houston). Nancy is the executive producer for Texas Folklife’s “Border Radio” series. She earned her bachelor's degree in art from Scripps College and an MFA from Ohio State University, and is a frequent contributor to national publications including Sculpture , Metropolis , ArtNews and the Independent Film & Video Monthly.

Lynne Margolis
Marketing and Development Associate

Lynne is a veteran music and arts journalist whose work has appeared worldwide via the internationally syndicated Christian Science Monitor and Web sites such as RollingStone.com. She also covers music, radio and arts for the Austin American-Statesman, Paste, Texas Music, Austin Monthly, American Style, the Austin City Limits Festival guide and other magazines (including covering the Andy Warhol Museum beat for Carnegie magazine and Texas chapter activities for the Recording Academy’s Grammy magazine), copy edits Texas Music magazine and the ACL Fest guide and writes artist bios for both locally and nationally known musicians. She’s a contributing editor to the encyclopedia, The Ties that Bind: Bruce Springsteen A to E to Z (Visible Ink Press) and her work appears in six MusicHound Essential Album Guides. After attending eight South By Southwests and several tapings of Austin City Limits, she finally moved to Austin from Pittsburgh at the end of 2003. Before that, she served as executive director of Pittsburgh Music Works, a music education foundation, taught college communication classes and traipsed around the country (and beyond) in pursuit of music, arts and travel stories. She also served as a frequent radio and TV talk show guest. She earned her bachelor of arts degree in journalism from Penn State University, then spent many years toiling at newspapers in Western and Central Pennsylvania. Before leaping into the freelance world, Lynne was one of a handful of writers selected to kick off the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review’s first staff-driven advertising campaign. This involved seeing herself on billboards. It was weird.

Sarah Rucker
Office Manager

Sarah organizes the office, coordinates tasks with the staff, and assists the executive director in efficiently producing successful programs. Originally from South Texas, Sarah moved to Austin in 2001. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in fine arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005. Her previous experience includes assisting with fundraising as a development associate at the Austin-based non-profit, American YouthWorks.

Becky Bingman
Apprenticeships and Education Coordinator

Becky coordinates Texas Folklife's Apprenticeship program and has been involved the arts and education community for 25 years. Before joining Texas Folklife, Becky worked with the Kentucky Collaborative for Teaching and Learning, where she organized artist workshops for teachers, and developed arts programming and curriculum materials for Kentucky Educational Television. She has a long-standing interest in indigenous and unschooled artists. As gallery director at Appalshop, the nationally known media arts center in Whitesburg, Ky., Becky exhibited regional artists and contributed to a documentary series on Kentucky folk artists. She also has co-curated exhibits for the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, the Zuni Nation, and the Speed Museum in Louisville. Also involved in the art of food (and a one-time restaurateur and caterer) she presented the foodways of Appalachia for the 500th anniversary of the Voyage of Columbus, held in Genoa, Italy. Becky earned her bachelor's degree in art education from Roger Williams College in Providence, R.I.

Linda Ho-Peché
Field folklorist

A graduate student in anthropology with a concentration in folklore and public culture at the University of Texas at Austin, Peché conducts Texas Folklife fieldwork and assisted with community residencies in Hidalgo County and Austin. Her experiences in public culture began in 1999 as a Texas Folklife work-study student; she documented artisans and theshe worked with the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage as a program assistant for the Smithsonian Folkife Festival and focused on a project titled El RÌo: Culture and Environment in the Rio Grande/rÌo Bravo Basin . She also has produced exhibits and programs for the Sauer Beckmann Living History Farm and the Republic of Texas Museum in Austin. Her academic interests include the United States and Mexico borderlands area, cultural representation and public culture.

Luis Zapata
Accordion Kings producer

Luis is vice-chairmanr of the Austin Music Commission and a veteran producer of local Austin music events. As marketing andsales manager for Roadstar Productions, he successfully promoted popular Austin city events such as the Old Pecan Street Festival, Mardi Gras, First Night, and the Republic of Texas Biker Rally. As an event manager, he has worked with Joan Jett, the Black Crowes, Stone Temple Pilots, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Motley Crue, Patti Smith, Los Lobos, Santana and countless other musical greats. He is also an advocate of Latin music in Austin, managing and producing Manuel "Cowboy" Donley, a local Tejano musician, for the last several years. Zapata received both his bachelor's degree in economics and his master's degree in Latin American Studies with a minor in musicology from the University of Texas at Austin.

Gene Fowler
Writer, researcher, actor and host/Border Radio

Gene's plays and performance art pieces have been seen in New York, San Francisco, Jupiter, Fla., , Baton Rouge, Washington D.C., Louisville, Albuquerque, Dallas, Chicago and elsewhere. He has performed and/or appeared professionally at venues as diverse as the Kennedy Center, Houston's Contemporary Arts Museum and the Crazy Water Hotel in Mineral Wells, Tx.. Fowler's nonfiction books include: Border Radio -- Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves; Crazy Water -- The Story of Mineral Wells and Other Texas Health Resorts; and Mystic Healers and Medicine Shows -- Blazing Trails to Wellness in the Old West and Beyond. He has written about such subjects as the excavation of a 17th-century French shipwreck off the Texas coast, rattlesnake folk medicine and Ernest Tubb for Texas Highways, Texas Co-op Power, the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications.  

Ginger Miles,
Radio artist and producer of the radio production/Border Radio

Ginger is radio producer of Texas Folklife's Border Radio: The Big Jukebox in the Sky and The Electronic Campfire. Originally from Abilene, but based in New York City for many years, she returned to Austin to produce Border Radio for national broadcast. Her radio documentaries and dramas have often brought her back to Texas. Her series Old Time Texas: On the Backroads was distributed nationally by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. She has sustained a long career as independent producer, writer and editor for public radio across the country, including two original radio dramas: The Day Buddy Holly Died and Moisha, recorded at the Museum of Modern Art's Warner Screening Room. Miles’ award-winning radio work has aired on NPR, and she has produced for the Smithsonian, Ellis Island and National Museum of the American Indian. Her Hometown Texas: To Mother With Love, received the top award for documentary from the Corporation from Public Broadcasting, and she has received numerous grants from National Endowment for the Arts.