Maria Gabriela Aldana is an expert community-based artist that organizes meaningful programs, workforce, and connections between people who otherwise wouldn't know one another. She has produced over a dozen outdoor murals, nearly two dozen bilingual short films, ten handfuls of exhibitions, another dozen family parades, and founded about five life-changing programs through the arts. This year, she is making new adult programs, digital embroideries, ceramic piñatas to memorialize animals that have died. Maria is best known for creating safe and sustainable spaces that support multiple cultures as she belongs to conflicting groups herself as a Hispanic powerhouse, Catholic, queer, and immigrant artist scholar.