Dr. Maribel Álvarez, PhD is based at the University of Arizona as an associate professor of anthropology and an associate research social scientist at the Southwest Center. She is also the folklorist and program director of Tucson Meet Yourself, the largest folklife public event in the Southwest that presents more than 300 traditional artists and folk communities and annually attracts more than 100,000 people. She is credited with transforming this iconic forty-year-old organization, which now offers an annual Ethnographic Field School and several cultural documentation projects. Álvarez writes on poetry and food, the visual culture of bordertowns, stereotypes and materiality, folklore and musical innovation, intangible heritage and pedagogy, and is the author of one of the leading monographs in circulation about the “informal arts” as a measure of creative placemaking and vitality. She is a trustee of the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center, a faculty for nine years with the Leadership Institute for emerging arts leaders presented by NALAC (National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures), and served as a consultant for five years to various Ford Foundation initiatives focused on arts and changing demographics, including the grantmaking initiative “Artography” under Leveraging Investments in Community.