Running for Executive Committee Chair:
Jessica Gambling
Jessica Gambling has worked in libraries for 20 years starting as a circulation clerk in the City of Orange before receiving her MLIS from UCLA and holding positions in the photography collections of The Huntington Library and the Los Angeles Public Library. In 2010 she took a position to establish the institutional archives of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where she continues to serve as Museum Archivist. Jessica is honored to have served as L.A. as Subject's Executive Committee Chair since 2021 and previously as Publicity and Outreach Lead. It would be a pleasure and a privilege for her to continue to serve this community as Chair for another term.
Running for Education Lead:
Stella Castillo
Stella Castillo is currently an Archivist in USC’s Digital Library where she creates metadata for digitized materials. In her previous role as the LA as Subject Community Archives Specialist, Stella collaborated with LA as Subject members to increase online discoverability and public engagement with Los Angeles archival collections using the updated LA as Subject Directory Portal. She also enjoyed leading the successful Virtual Talk-Shop series held online between March and September 2020 which bolstered LA as Subject’s community during the COVID-19 lockdown. Previously, Stella worked at Cal State Dominguez Hills and served as an LA as Subject Resident Archivist working on wide-ranging archival collections across the greater Los Angeles region. Stella holds a BA in the Study of Religion and an MLIS in Archival Management both from UCLA.
Running for Exhibition Lead:
Lulu Urdiales
Lulu Urdiales has worked at Self Help Graphics (SHG) for approximately 6 years, joining the organization as a curatorial intern for the Getty Foundation’s “Pacific Standard Time” (PST) initiative in 2017. In this role, she worked closely with the curators in the exhibition’s research, development, and implementation, gaining a complete understanding of an exhibition’s process. Her duties have transitioned from the Exhibition and Public Programming coordinator to Inventory and Exhibition coordinator in the past four years. Throughout this period, Lulu has worked closely with guest curators and SHG’s Director of Art Programs and Education in developing and implementing exhibitions, including coordinating the adjacent public programs that uplift the exhibition’s theme. In her current role as the archives steward and with an M.A. in Library and Information Science, she has the tools and understanding of storytelling through the inventory of prints, or any archival collection. The role as Exhibition Lead would allow Lulu to grow and experience new leadership challenges while offering unique and creative perspectives in the exhibition field for L.A. as Subject.
Running for Membership Lead:
Victoria Bernal
Victoria Bernal (she/her) is a biracial public historian, researcher and writer from Los Angeles who specializes in Southern California history. Victoria founded the @LAhistory twitter project, now with over 43,000 followers, in 2009 to raise social media awareness about the Los Angeles history. She presented her work at the 2016 Society for American City and Regional Planning History conference and also at Digital LA, a symposium hosted by the Huntington-USC Institute for California and the West (ICW). She has managed, researched and created online content for the ICW, Angel City Press, the Autry and the Los Angeles County Arboretum Library. In April 2022, Los Angeles Walks awarded Victoria the Ray Bradbury Community Walking Champion Award for all her volunteer work with the pedestrian organization, which included co-organizing a series of walks around the 1850 border of Los Angeles (approximately 26 miles). Her history articles and essays have been published on Curbed, LAist, KCRW and the Autry’s site and KCET’s Lost LA. For five years, she co-coordinated an L.A. History Happy Hour that brought together those working from difference disciplines (archivists, academics, librarians, preservationists and media makers) to build a community of those interested in the city's history. She graduated with a dual-masters in Global Media & Communications from USC's Annenberg and the London School of Economics.