Lei Ahsing
VTS Trainer, Aiea, HI
Em Miller (they/them) served VTS as Operations Manager beginning in 2015, and as Director from 2023-2024. Em continues to support the VTS organization as a seasoned Trainer. For Em, being part of a team that teaches learner-centered facilitation in order to support the development of critical thinking, visual literacy, communication, and collaboration skills, requires a personal commitment to self-reflection, deep listening, and continued engagement with perspectives beyond their own. In the past four years, Em has focused VTS’s organizational design to more deeply support Queer and BIPOC practitioners through the creation of the VTS Trainer Fellowship Program, a paid, on-the-job mentorship pathway aimed at bolstering the community and sustaining the practice of VTS.
Em’s vision and experience are rooted in constructivist pedagogy, with specific attention to group dynamics and learning environment design. Em has worked as a Reggio Emilia Master Teacher and elementary classroom teacher; a museum educator and coordinator at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati; co-established the first Education Department at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York City; and is an education consultant to artists and institutions. Em holds a Bachelors degree in Early Childhood Education and a minor in Recreation Management from Ohio University (2008) and a Masters degree in Arts and Cultural Management from Pratt Institute (2016). Em is currently a member of the 2023-24 NYC cohort of the Core Certificate Program through the Institute for Non-Profit Practice, a program that equips nonprofit, public, and social enterprise leaders with the skills, knowledge, and networks they need to make strategic, mission-driven decisions and effect meaningful change at their organizations.
As an artist, Em explores human and inanimate connections, communication, and modes of intimacy through facilitation, performance, video, and play grounded in learning environment design and relational aesthetics. They are a daily runner and walker, and find comfort among chosen families in Brooklyn and across the country. Em is present in Lenapehoking, the traditional lands of the Lenape and Canarsie people.
Contact Em: emiller@vtshome.org
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