Meet the NCECA Board of Directors

Meet the NCECA Board of Directors

2024 NCECA Board of Directors

  • President 2024-2026
    shojisatakenceca@gmail.com

  • Shoji Satake is an Associate Professor and area head of ceramics at West Virginia University School of Art & Design and Coordinator of the School’s ceramics in China program. He has taught at Indiana University, Hope College, and Central Michigan University. Shoji has served as one of the Directors-at-Large for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Board, he was one of the on-site coordinator (NCECA Pittsburgh 2018). He has conducted workshops, given lectures and exhibited nationally and internationally. His most recent activities have been included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, group exhibition at Red Lodge Cay Center, and induction into the International Academy of Ceramics (Official NGO of UNESCO). His residencies have included numerous locales in China, Japan, Canada, and in the United States. Shoji in addition to teaching, maintains an active studio practice with studios in West Virginia and Jingdezhen. When he is not actively engaged in the classroom or in his studio, he remains busy planning his next ultimate fly-fishing trip in pursuit of the giant trout or salmon.

  • Past President 2024-2025
    rhonda@nceca.net

  • Rhonda Willers is a visual artist, writer, researcher, and author of the book, Terra Sigillata: Contemporary Techniques. Focusing on fragility, space, and subtle strength, she works with repetitive forms and markings to elicit thoughts of memories, spiritual spaces, and rituals. Her diverse art practice includes ceramics, mixed media, drawing, painting, and time-based interactive installations and experiences. Rhonda earned her BFA degree from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls (ceramics & photography), completed post-baccalaureate studies at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, and earned her MFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her writing and work can be found in: Pottery Making Illustrated, Ceramics Monthly, and Ceramics Technical. She leads workshops focused on the making and using of terra sigillata. Rhonda was a senior lecturer of art for 11 years before becoming a full-time studio artist and writer. She actively engages in the ceramics community through her service as a volunteer working board member for NCECA. Rhonda lives and works in Rural Elk Mound, Wisconsin, with her husband, three children, and cats. Visit: www.rhondawillers.com to learn more.


  • Steward of the Board 2023-2026
    patsycoxnceca@gmail.com
    boardsteward@nceca.net

  • Patsy Cox is Professor of Visual Art and Head of Ceramics at California State University Northridge. She is an artist, educator and arts advocate. She is a former president of the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts and a Fellow of the Council.

  • Treasurer 2022-2025
    rsrakr@gmail.com

  • Rick Rogers holds an MBA from Ohio State University (1979) and a BA in Biology and Chemistry from Hiram College (1977). A consummate entrepreneur with an innate propensity for leadership, Rick began his career in 1980 as founder and president of Tribute, a software company based in Akron, Ohio. He assumed leadership of B. W. Rogers Company, a manufacturing and distribution company founded by his grandfather, in 1994. Over the course of twenty years, Rick expanded the family business from six offices in the state of Ohio to twenty-one offices spanning seven states. He assembled and led a diverse team of over 250 people, and it was through his ability to identify talent and cultivate a sense of creativity and independence in his employees that his company was able to thrive and contribute to the economic vitality of his beloved hometown, Akron, Ohio. Rick continues to give back to the city that allowed his business to flourish through his civic involvement with and contributions to a number of area charities, including Akron Children’s Hospital; the Akron Art Museum; the Intermuseum Conservancy Association, and the Boys and Girls Club of the Western Reserve. Rick is deeply engaged in the arts, and he is a leading collector of contemporary ceramics from Asia and the US and twentieth-century American and European design. In 2017 Rick created the nonprofit Curated Storefront. Through his leadership, The Curated Storefront has successfully secured and managed funds to launch an impressive array of arts initiatives in downtown Akron.

  • Secretary 2020-2026
    secretary@nceca.net

  • Alex Hibbitt is Professor Emerita and was formerly the Graduate Chair of Ohio University School of Art. She has exhibited widely in Europe and the US, including The Soap Factory, Minneapolis, The Witte Voet Gallery, Amsterdam, and The Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague. Awards include a McKnight Foundation residency award, An Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award and an emerging artist award from the Netherlands Foundation for Fine Arts, Design and Architecture.

  • Exhibitions Director 2023-2026
    exhibitions@nceca.net

  • Adam Chau works primarily in ceramics and operates a studio in Cold Spring, NY. After receiving a BFA degree (MECA, 2010) in studio ceramics, he decided to pursue more industrial ways of production while keeping traditional craft paradigms by receiving a Masters in Design (SAIC, 2013). His main body of work, Digital Calligraphy, investigates the hybridization of handcraft and digital technology. He has exhibited and lectured internationally including the Salone di Mobile at Rossana Orlandi in Milan, Italy and the NADA art fair in New York City. Publications on his research into ceramic technology include Ceramics Monthly, Studio Potter, and Ceramics Technical. In 2018 he was awarded the NCECA Emerging Artist Fellowship and in 2019 became a member of the International Academy of Ceramics.

  • Collaboration & Engagement Director 2021-2027
    heidi.nceca@gmail.com

  • Heidi McKenzie is a Toronto-based ceramic artist. In 2009, Heidi left a 20-year career in arts management and production to apprentice in her father’s ancestral home with India’s foremost studio potter, Mini Singh (a student of Bernard Leach). Heidi returned to Canada and completed her Diploma at Sheridan College in 2012 and subsequently her MFA in Curatorial Practice and Art Criticism at OCADU in 2014. In 2011 Heidi received the Emerging Artist Award at Toronto Artists Project, and in 2012 exhibited at the Toronto International Art Fair. In 2013, Heidi was funded by the Ontario Arts Council to create in Jingdezhen, China and in Bali, Indonesia. In 2014 Heidi completed a residency at Guldagergaard International Centre for Ceramic Research. In 2017 Heidi received OAC funding to work in Sydney Australia, to apprentice with Master Mitsuo Shoji. Heidi has exhibited nationally and internationally, including biennales and Romania, Hungary, Australia and at NCECA (Milwaukee, Portland,Cincinnati). Her work is currently touring Europe and Scandinavia as part of the “best of” exhibitions with Cluj Biennial and Guldagergaard. She is the recipient of a 2017 and 2019 Craft Ontario Awards, Best in Show Ontario Artists Association Biennial Award in 2017, Canada Council Explore and Create Visual Artist Grant, and Toronto Arts Council Grant to Mid-Career Artists. In 2020, she was an inaugural recipient of the NCECA Helene Zucker Seeman Curatorial, Research, and Critical Writing Fellowship for Women.

    Heidi’s work, Postmarked, on growing up at the margins in the Maritimes, was recently acquired by Global Affairs Canada to be placed in embassies internationally. Heidi curated/exhibited/moderated on ‘Decolonizing Clay’ at the Australian Ceramics Triennale in 2019, and recently presented at the World Indian Diaspora Congress in Trinidad August 2020. Heidi’s work seeks to reinvigorate modernism through abstraction and engages issues of race, identity, belonging, as well as body and healing. She is an advocate for BIPOC and marginalized artists, an active arts journalist and ceramic arts reviewer.


  • Governance, Advocacy & Policy Director 2021-2027
    mkinnord.nceca@gmail.com

  • MaPó Kinnord grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She received her first training in ceramics through Cleveland’s Quaker-founded alternative high school, the School on Magnolia. She apprenticed with several production potters before receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1984. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Ohio State University in 1994. Arriving in New Orleans in 1995, she now serves as an Associate Professor of Art at Xavier University. A well-respected educator, Kinnord has taught workshops at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine and the Penland School of Craft in North Carolina, as well as the Kambe no Sato Arts Center in Matsue, Japan. She has researched the traditional and contemporary art of Ghana and has produced video documentation of the traditional pottery, kiln building and ceramic architecture of Northern Ghana, West Africa.

  • Programs Director 2024-2027
    programs@nceca.net

  • PJ Anderson is an early career ceramic artist from Thompson, Manitoba, Canada. She is an artist of both Afro-Jamaican and Metis heritage that she references during her explorations of Multi-Cultural identity, Canadian Identity, Environmental Issues, and Digital Social Justice. She is currently a Graduate Candidate at the University of Manitoba. Pj has explored Ceramics internationally as Resident Artist at the University of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa, where she had previously visited as a Zulu ceramics’ researcher, and New Mexico where she studied both ceramics and weaving. Her work has been shown in South Africa, in China as a finalist in the International Ceramic Magazine Editors Associations (ICMEA) Emerging Artist Competition and the United States. Pj has lectured at the University of Manitoba, the University of Kwazulu Natal, National Clay Week and others.


  • Director at Large 2022-2025
    michelle.nceca@gmail.com

  • Michelle Castro is a ceramic artist whose practice addresses social issues. From Midwestern State University she received a BFA with emphasis in ceramics and a minor emphasis in graphic design. She recently earned her MFA at Florida State University. Castro spent the spring of 2021 as an Artist in Residence at Midwestern State University concurrently with her studies at Florida State University and was an instructor of record, virtually, teaching Beginning Ceramics. In March of 2020 she was elected to the Board of NCECA, (National Council On Education For the Ceramic Arts), as the Student Director at Large, 2020-2022. Prior to the pandemic she dedicated seven years participating in Empty Bowls, which raises money and awareness for the Food Bank of Wichita Falls, Texas. She has received The Ceramic Merit Award, The President’s Award of Art, Rotary Club Scholarship, and a scholarship awarded by the Wichita Falls Alliance of Arts and Culture. This summer she is planning to participate in Smoother Pebble, a collaboration between physicists and engineers at CERN, (European Council for Nuclear Research) France/Switzerland and artists from Florida State University.

  • Director at Large 2025-2027
    grace.nceca@gmail.com

  • Grace Han is a ceramic artist originally trained in South Korea. She received her BFA from Dankook University, where she specialized in traditional Korean ceramic techniques and skills. She received her MFA from the University of Manitoba, where she currently teaches ceramics as an Assistant Professor.


  • Director at Large 2023-2026
    yesha.nceca@gmail.com

  • Yesha Panchal was born in Gujarat, India, and moved to the United States when she was sixteen. She works predominantly in the medium of ceramics, creating both pottery and sculptures that appreciate the beauty of nature that often goes unnoticed. She earned her BFA with a concentration in ceramics at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA in 2017. She is an instructor at the Hudgens Center for Art and Learning in Duluth, GA, and works out of her home studio.


  • Student Director at Large 2024-2026
    paat.nceca@gmail.com

  • Alex Paat is an Ilocano-American potter from Columbus, Ohio, with roots in the Northern Indiana clay community. Currently pursuing an MFA at Rochester Institute of Technology, he has been shaped by experiences as a studio assistant, adjunct professor, and factory worker in the ceramic materials industry.


  • Student Director at Large 2023-2025
    carletta.nceca@gmail.com

  • Born and raised in the South, Carletta Williams has formed a strong connection to the region’s motifs and daily life while being Black. Her current collective of work reflects the present society while reckoning with the events of the past. She sets out to recreate moments of celebration and gathering, while focusing on tangible and intangible pieces of African American Culture. Williams obtained her BA in Studio Art from Wesleyan College and is currently a MFA candidate at the University of Arkansas.


  • Onsite Conference Liaison 2024-2025
    2025 Salt Lake City
    horaciorodriguez.nceca@gmail.com

  • Originally from Houston, Texas, artist and educator Horacio Rodriguez studied at Glassell School of Art where he majored in photography before discovering a passion for ceramics. He went on to graduate from the University of the Redlands in California before traveling throughout Latin America and the Caribbean immersing himself in the language and culture of his ancestors. The following Rodriguez immersed himself in work with immigrant communities in the East Side of Houston.

    In 2010, Rodriguez received a travel grant to study ceramics in Japan, and subsequently enrolled in the graduate program at Montana State University where he earned his MFA in Ceramics in 2016. Rodriguez received the Morales Teaching Fellowship from the University of Utah and relocated to Salt Lake City where his practice as an independent artist continues to be based. His work is widely exhibited and he is a frequent visiting artist and lecturer.

    Rodriguez is a Projecting All Voices Fellow at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute of the Arts, where his focus is on curating diverse and underrepresented voices in the arts.

  • Onsite Conference Liaison 2023-2025
    2025 Salt Lake City
    antra.nceca@gmail.com

  • Antra Sinha graduated with BFA & MFA from MS University of Baroda in India. She was then an apprentice to Ray Meeker and Deborah Smith at Golden Bridge Pottery (GBP), starting in 2002, where she worked for a decade. An award from Japan Foundation took her to Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park in 2008. She accomplished a large-scale sculpture which brought her a commission for a 60-inch sculpture for a hotel in India.

    She moved to Utah when she received a STEM scholarship in 2015. At the time, she joined Utah State University for 2nd MFA in Ceramics. She continues to live in Logan with her husband, and works as a Gallery Coordinator and Art Instructor for USU. She is interested in the geometry in nature, which includes humans. She engages in cultural explorations through interaction and research. She has also spent several hours at different times at Room of Silence at The Brandenburg Tor in Berlin, Germany.

    Her first rendezvous with NCECA was with its exhibition catalogue and journal that her mentors Ray Meeker and Deborah Smith brought back to the studio in India in 2003. They were part of a panel at an NCECA conference.

    She received NCECA’s MultiCultural Fellowship and joined her first conference in Kansas City, when NCECA celebrated its 50th anniversary. She is excited to be a facilitator of bringing culturally diverse individuals to the clay community and NCECA. Please visit www.antrasinha.com for further information.

  • Onsite Conference Liaison 2024-2026
    2026 Detroit
    ebi@baralaye.com

  • Ebitenyefa Baralaye is an ceramicist, sculptor, designer, and educator. His work explores cultural, spiritual, and material translations of objects, text, and symbols interpreted through a diaspora lens and abstracted around the aesthetics of craft and design. He received a BFA in ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in ceramics from the Cranbrook Academy of Art.

    Baralaye's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at Friedman Benda Gallery (New York), David Klein Gallery (Detroit), Shoshana Wayne Gallery (Los Angeles), the Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco), and the Korea Ceramic Foundation (Icheon). Baralaye has participated in residencies at the Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, the Hambidge Center, and the Elizabeth Foundation Studio Program. Baralaye's work was featured in the "Objects: USA 2020" exhibition and catalog. Baralaye was an AICAD fellow at the San Francisco Art Institute from 2016 - 2018. He is currently an assistant professor and the Section Lead of Ceramics at the College for Creative Studies. Baralaye resides and works in Detroit, MI.


  • Presidential Appointee for
    Special Project Advisor:
    Green Task Force
    gallowaynceca@gmail.com

  • Julia Galloway is a potter and professor living in Missoula, Montana. Her studio work is currently focused on making individual metaphorical urns for each of the endangered species in the United States. She hopes that by using her skills as a potter, she can make visible these unseen species.


  • Exofficio Appointees
    Presidential Appointee for
    Special Projects
    lydon8@gmail.com


  • Advisor for future exhibitions, collectors tour, and special projects, in 2022, Kate Lydon retired as Director of Exhibitions at Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Over more than 35 years she oversaw the installation of exhibitions at the Strip District and Lawrenceville locations and at the BNY Mellon satellite gallery in downtown Pittsburgh. She has participated in all decisions regarding exhibition development, selection of work, touring of exhibitions and development of public programming. Kate received dual

    degrees in Art History and French at Denison University and a Master's Degree from the Archival, Museum & Editing Program at Duquesne University. She has participated on jury panels and served on the Board of Governors of Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts and the Board of Directors of The National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts as On-site Liaison.