Our Staff

DIANE LUBY LANE

Diane Luby Lane-Founder, Executive Director is Founder/Executive Director of Get Lit-Words Ignite, Los Angeles’ leading nonprofit presenter of literary performance, education and teen poetry programs, and the Get Lit Players, an award-winning classic teen poetry troupe, who perform for over 10,000 teens each year. Get Lit partners with the Magical Poetry Blimp, the official project of California Poet Laureate, Carol Muske-Dukes. Lane is author of Words of Women, a compendium of original monologues for women published around the world and has appeared in numerous films, television shows, and national commercials. Her critically acclaimed one-woman show, Deep Sea Diving (AKA Born Feet First), has toured high schools and colleges across America with poet Jimmy Santiago Baca. In recognition of her work as an educator and creator of Get Lit’s ground-breaking literacy curriculum, Lane received the James Patterson Page Turner Award for promoting literacy and the KNX Hero Award. In 2012, Lane was honored as a recipient of the Presidential Lifetime Volunteer Service Award.  www.dianelubylane.com

MIMI CHEUNG

Mimi Cheung, Program/Project Manager runs the business operations and programs for Get Lit. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and minor in Philosophy from the University of California, Riverside. After graduating, she began her career in finance at Wells Fargo Bank as a Personal Banker/Investment Consultant. She later transitioned into a role as the leader of her team in sales operations at Merrill Lynch/Bank of America for over 5 years. Mimi came to Get Lit to follow her passion as an avid reader and arts enthusiast.

JON KELLAM

Jon Kellam, Acting Artistic Director is currently co-artistic director and co-founding member of Zoo District Theatre, a resident director and member of the Actors’ Gang, and a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre LA three critically acclaimed theatre companies in Los Angeles. He was on the arts faculty at the L.A. County High School for the Arts for 8 years and is a regular adjunct professor at Cal State University, and periodic guest teaching artist at UCLA, USC and Occidental College. In 1992 he taught at Playwrights Horizons in NYC. He received a B.A. Summa Cum Laude in theatre at Lawrence University. He completed the professional acting program at Circle In The Square in NYC. Jon trained with New Crime Productions in Chicago, and the Actors Gang, two theatre companies specializing in a contemporary derivative of Commedia dell’ Arte. In the summer of 2008 Kellam received a Surdna Fellowship to study ‘clown’ based on the pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq and Yves Lebreton, with Philip Radice of Altelier Teatro Fisico and Andrea Casaca artistic director of Teatrocart in Torino and Castelfiorentino Italy.

GISELLE JONES

Acting Director of Education

Giselle Jones, acting Director of Education, is heading up the Classic Slam Program, a historical and progressively integrative experience for over 16 regions throughout the Los Angeles area.  She has taught several highly successful Get Lit-Words Ignite In School classes and is thrilled about her current position which enables her to help Get Lit reach over 2,500 teens through Get Lit’s Classic Slam Program.  As a first generation Jamaican Canadian from Toronto, Ontario, she has a B.A. in Psychology from The University of Western Ontario, an Associates Degree from The American Academy of Dramatic Arts NYC, and is a graduate of The New York Shakespeare Festival’s Shakespeare Lab at The Public Theater.  She was hand-picked by former Julliard professor, Denise Woods, to teach Express Yourself, a course at the Harlem Educational Activities Fund, to assist high-aptitude Harlem teens in gaining admission to their college of choice through optimizing their communication skills.  She has trained at-risk youth in job readiness through Los Angeles City College.  Giselle has used her acting skills to collaborate with psychologists and police sergeants to train NYPD recruits in sensitively handling emotionally disturbed people and employs the use of role play to train UCLA’s medical students in the complexities of patient interaction and care.

KIM MORENO

Kim Moreno, Program Associate, is an artist and published poet. She has an inherent passion for prose and self expression and said that ‘I have found what I have been looking for’ the first time she joined the Get Lit team. Kim comes to Get Lit with three years experience in the online networking scene and of course an enormous love and passion for poetry and literacy. Kim has been writing since she can remember and uses her artistic eye to create Get Lit’s newsletters, posters, flyers and more.

DARIO SERRANO

Dario Serrano, a native of Lincoln Heights, entered the poetry scene through his local poetry club at John Marshall High School. Following his acceptance into Get Lit- Words Ignite, Dario has performed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., the Bowery Poetry Club in New York, USC with California Poet Laureate Carol Musk-Dukes, at Tim Robbin’s venue, “The Actors’ Gang” and many more! Dario’s poetry covers topics ranging from family, love, culture and imagery that compliment his love of word play. There is not a single poem that defines Dario’s work but rather a myriad of poems that make up who Dario is. Currently Dario attends East Los Angeles College where he is a nationally ranked member of Poetry Interpretation in Speech Forensics. He teaches poetry to gifted students at an elementary school and is a teen poetry mentor/event coordinator at Get Lit.

CHRISTINE SPINES

Christine Spines, Director of GET LIT LA, is a Los Angeles-based journalist who has spent the past fifteen years covering pop culture, most recently as a Senior Writer at Entertainment Weekly. Previously she served as the Los Angeles Bureau Chief of Premiere Magazine and the West Coast Wrier-at-Large for Glamour. In addition to writing daily blog posts for Word & Film, she currently teaches journalism at Emerson College and writes for a variety of print publications including Film Comment, The Los Angeles Times, and Cosmopolitan.

JENNIFER MANDEL

Over the last ten years, Jennifer has counseled over 450 students through the college application process, designed college admissions programs for other educational organizations, and works directly with national non-profit College Summit as a Director of College Counseling. Jennifer currently has her own college advising practice where she works with a caseload of students each year to help them apply and get into the colleges of their choice. Jennifer holds a master’s degree in education from UCLA and a bachelor’s degree from UC Irvine.

MIKE LAYNE

Mike Layne, Development Officer has been developing and administrating private, state, and federal grant programs for the past 10 years. He graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Classical Liberal Arts from St. John’s College (also known as The Great Books Program) and a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the University of Alaska. He also served as an appointed Commissioner on the City of Redlands Cultural Arts Commission from 2007-2011. During the past 10 years, Mike has worked extensively with non-profits, municipal governments, and tribal organizations throughout Alaska and California.

Our Consultants

DRAPER GROUP

The Draper Group is working with Get Lit on the organization’s with our Core Development needs, which includes Board Development, the creation of a long-term Strategic Plan, and a Sustainability Plan. Draper Consulting Group offers clients a multidisciplinary team with extensive knowledge and experience working in philanthropy, local and regional government, nonprofit management and direct services, fundraising, program development, and finance. Staff members draw on their varied backgrounds and understanding of complex social problems, group dynamics, and management issues faced by grantmakers and nonprofit organizations. They stay current with trends in the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors, and we use the most current and effective methods in our work. Their collaborative approach results in creative solutions to meet the diverse needs of each client.

RICHARD HANSEN

Mr. Hansen is a partner in the law firm of Hansen Seto, LLP, a limited liability partnership of professional corporations. He is a member of State Bar of California (Business Law and Intellectual Property Sections); Los Angeles County Bar Association (Member, Business and Corporation Section); American Bar Association (Member, Section on Business Law) and the U.S. District Court, Central District of California. He also serves on the Advisory Board for the Association for Women in Technology, and is a member of the Technology Council of Southern California (previously, Software Council of Southern California) (founder and Board of Directors & Executive Committee 1991-1997 and 2000-2006) and Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity. He has been listed in Who’s Who in American Law, Who’s Who in American Business and Standard & Poor’s Register of Corporate Directors and Executives.

DAVE HOWARD

Since 2004, Dave Howard, Get Lit’s Website Administrator has been an online writer, social media expert and blogger whose work has been featured on numerous sites such as MSNBC.Com, Wall Street Journal.com and USA Today TV. In addition, he has contributed to the official sites of David Alan Grier, Chuck “Iceman” Liddell, the AVP and dozens of others. He currently writes creative content for Disneyland.com. His portfolio can be viewed at DavidEHoward.com.

BRIAN D. JONES, CPA

Brian Jones, CPA, is the founder of JONES|GROUP CPAs & Advisors and has been the Managing Partner since its inception in 2003. Brian has expertise providing financial statement audit, review and compilation to clients in multiple industries, including quick service restaurants, education, janitorial, construction, professional services, retail, distribution, and non-profit. He and his firm also provide business consulting, tax planning, negotiations for the purchase and sale of businesses, valuations and litigation support services.

He has been a panelist at regional and national franchising summits and lectured on financial statements presentations, profitability analysis and operational compliance. Brian holds a B.S. in Accounting and a M.S. in Information Systems. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Colorado and Arizona Societies of CPAs. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of The Alumni Association of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

CAROL MUSKE-DUKES

Carol Muske-Dukes, Artistic & Cultural Advisor is a Professor of Literature at the University of Southern California. Governor Schwarzenegger recently appointed her Poet Laureate of California. Muske-Dukes is actively involved in overseeing the curriculum’s rotating selection of poems and in recruiting revered poets to participate in Get Lit’s programs. She is the author of seven books of poems, four novels and two collections of essays. Her most recent book of poems, Sparrow, was a National Book Award finalist. She founded the PhD in Creative Writing & Literature program at USC. And she is former poetry columnist for the Los Angeles Times, as well as reviewer and Op Ed essayist for the New York Times. She is a regular blogger for the Huffington Post and is published and anthologized widely. She is the Founder of Magical Poetry Blimp, an innovative way for K-12 students and educators to experience poetry online. www.carolmuskedukes.com