ABOUT THE LAP
The Sally and Don Lucas Artists Residency Program (LAP) is a creative incubator and cultural producer dedicated to investing in artists and their work. We support visual artists, composers, writers, performers, scholars, and others from around the world to undertake critical investigations of contemporary issues, and to create and present new and experimental works.
Established in 1939, Montalvo Arts Center is home to the third oldest residency program in the United States. In 2004, Montalvo recommitted to its support of artists and opened a new, state-of-the-art facility, relaunching as the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Residency Program. The residency is dedicated to providing artists with a flexible and expansive space in which to create, encouraging the creative process, risk taking, collaboration, and time to develop new work, while offering opportunities to share ideas and projects with other artists, as well as through public programming and partnerships.
Listen to our new podcast You Can’t Eat Art by Marcus Curatorial Fellow Clara Kamunde. Steaming now on Spoitfy!
OPEN
ACCESS: MARCH 27, 2025 @ 7PM
DENISE YOUNG WHEN WE ARE SEEN
Join us for an evening in conversation with author Denise Young about her book When We are Seen: How to Come Into Your Power – and Empower Others Along the Way (Winner of the 2025 Libby Awards for Best Business Book), moderated by Keith Yamashita.
ABOUT THE BOOK
From one of the first and few women of color to reach the C-suite in Silicon Valley, Apple’s former chief of HR and first VP of inclusion and diversity, comes a heartfelt story of growing up Black and female in a world with little regard for either and a practical road map for embodying the best in yourself and emboldening others along the way.
“You will enjoy reading this book and benefit as a business leader but mostly as a member of the human race.”—Ron Johnson, business leader Apple, Target, JCPenney
For her work as a co-creator of the Apple Store cultural experience, Denise Young has been deemed by leadership experts as one of the most emotionally intelligent leaders of her era. In this stirring narrative, part-memoir, part blueprint for action, she shares her vision of what it means to be truly seen at our places of work. As a “first and only” woman of color in boardrooms and leading roles across the Bay Area’s booming tech industry, Denise was a trailblazer in a business that was never built for her. The first black and female senior executive under both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, Denise was often in “the room where it happened.” But within a white male-centric professional culture, she still had to work harder, smarter, and differently to be heard.
In When We Are Seen, Denise shares insights on using your own story, empathy, and intuition to unlock the potential in yourself and others. Her story serves as both solace and strategy for anyone who has ever felt left out, unseen, or ostracized; anyone interested in upending cycles of exclusion; and for those interested in reclaiming our agency in the ongoing quest to thrive and belong.
Denise argues that bringing your truest self to work—from wearing your beloved locs to sharing your artistic passion—and, in turn, holistically seeing the attributes others have to offer is not a passive experience; it is a specific skill we can and should build. And the result is a deeper understanding of what it means to be inclusive and powerfully human on the job.
MEET THE AUTHOR
After more than a two-decade career at Apple in a series of executive roles, including the company’s first Black chief of human resources and first VP of inclusion and diversity, Denise Young then served for three years as executive-in-residence at Cornell Tech in New York City. Denise has been named a “Most Powerful Woman” by Black Enterprise, an Ebony “Power 100,” and one of the “100 Most Influential in Silicon Valley” by Business Insider, and she has been featured in Fortune’s “Most Powerful Women” issue. She currently advises organizations on culture, leadership, and inclusive environments. A practicing performing and recording artist, Denise is an advocate for artists, for living a creative life, and for the unleashing of all that can happen when we see and are seen.
MEET THE MODERATOR
Keith Yamashita has dedicated a life to creating a world that’s more creative, more beautiful, more just, more inclusive. He is a co-founder of The Institute for Moral Imagination (TIMI). In past lives, Keith founded SYPartners (a transformation consultancy), the kyu collective (one of the world’s largest creative collectives), and This Human Moment (an online community working through the suffering of the pandemic to find a new humanism on the other side). Keith holds an M.A. in Organizational Behavior and a B.A. in Quantitative Economics from Stanford University.
UPCOMING OPEN ACCESS
Denise Young When We Are Seen
In Conversation With Keith Yamashita
Hello, Goodbye, Hello
Thu, March 27 • 7pm • $10 (free for Montalvo members)
Hello, Goodbye, Hello documents the multifaceted role the Lucas Artists Program (LAP) at Montalvo Arts Center has played in the work and thinking of the artists who have resided here. In prose, poetry, and art, more than thirty contributors reflect on how the LAP has, over the past twenty years, supported the creative process, and fostered critical conversation and experimental models of artistic production.
Join us for a book reading and conversation with Denise Young, author of When We Are Seen: How To Come Into Your Power —And Empower Others Along The Way
Thu, April 17 • 7pm • $10 (free for Montalvo members)
Join Donna Conwell, former Associate Curator of the Lucas Artists Program and Chief Editor, in conversation with Kelly Sicat, Lucas Artists Program Director, and other contributing authors who will be discussing artist residencies and how they support the creative economy.
From one of the first and few women of color to reach the C-suite in Silicon Valley, Apple’s former chief of HR and first VP of Inclusion and Diversity, comes a heartfelt story of growing up Black and female in a world with little regard for either and a practical road map for embodying the best in yourself and emboldening others along the way.
For tickets and more information, visit montalvoarts.org/lit
Designed by award-winning design studio Content Object, Hello, Goodbye, Hello features the voices of notable artists, curators, and culture workers, including former US poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera; the internationally recognized artists and curators of Raqs Media Collective; interdisciplinary artist, dramatist, and Bessie Award recipient Alva Rogers; President/CEO of Artist Communities Alliance Lisa Funderburke; and curator, researcher, and co-editor of Contemporary Artist Residencies Taru Elfving.
Representing an important contribution to emerging discourse about the role of artist residency programs in our cultural life, Hello, Goodbye, Hello explores the unique