Jen Delos Reyes is a creative laborer, educator, writer, and community arts organizer. She is the director and founder of Open Engagement, an international, annual conference on socially engaged art. She is the associate director of the School of Art and Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Prior to her work in Chicago, Delos Reyes worked within Portland State University from 2008-14, where she created the first flexible residency art and social practice MFA program in the US. During her tenure with the Portland Art Museum (2009-14), she produced a series of programs and integrated systems to reinvigorate the idea of the museum as a public space. She is the author of I’m Going to Live the Life I Sing About in My Song: How Artists Make and Live Lives of Meaning, a book exploring the artist impetus toward art and everyday life. Delos Reyes served as a Center Exhibitions & Public Interpretation LOI panelist in 2015 and a panelist in 2018.