Our Team
At Sovern, our team is a collective of people who work, learn, and build alongside one another. We come from different histories, lineages, and lived experiences, and it is this intersection of identities that shapes the heart of our work. Together, we cultivate a space where creativity, healing, and community care are not just ideas but daily practices.
We are united by a shared commitment to challenging the systems that have historically excluded and marginalized so many. Rather than positioning ourselves as experts, we approach our work with humility and accountability, knowing that liberation is a communal effort.
Nicole Sabourian
Nicole is passionate about upending power inequities in the arts landscape through her advocacy for emerging artists and curation of bodies of work with community accessibility and transformation in mind. As co-founder of Sovern LA, Nicole is an artistic director, curator and healing arts practitioner and advocate who colors outside the lines to cooperatively build new systems that support collective care and equity in and through her fields.
As a lifelong creative with a B.A. in Art History from Cornell University and 15+ years as an artist, healing arts practitioner and entrepreneur, artistic practice and spiritual practice living hand-in-hand guide her curatorial approach. She has curated and/or organized 16 solo and group exhibitions for Sovern which serve to anchor the personal and collective healing work that takes place within the center, alongside co-developing community offerings that explore each exhibition’s themes to foster dialogue, introspection and healing.
Co-Founder, Executive Director
Cinthya Silverstein
Cinthya is a visual activist, cultural worker, and photographer of 20+ years whose practice is rooted in Visual Studies and Visual Culture. As Artistic Director of Sovern LA, she works alongside her fellow co-directors to shape the center’s artistic vision and leads multidisciplinary programming and exhibitions that center healing justice. Her work at Sovern includes curating exhibitions, programming workshops and events, and supporting artists, curators, and practitioners in developing their offerings.
Cinthya holds a B.A. in Anthropology from UCLA and turns that training back on the discipline itself, challenging how culture has been defined, displayed, and owned. Her current photographic work explores how visual narratives in birth photography can resist medical violence and affirm the agency of Black and Brown birthing people.
Artistic Director
Nordia brings 7+ years of experience in programmatic development within the non-profit sector. With a M.A. in Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Eco-Psychologies, she grounds her practice as a scholar-activist in Afro-Caribbean traditions and the medicine of community. Her current work explores art-based responses to our current climate crisis.
Director of Advancement
Nordia Simmonds
Maia Ramirez-Beaver, is an Artist and Curator based in Los Angeles, with a passion for exploring the intersections of identity, memory, and culture. Through her multidisciplinary practice, Maia draws upon personal and collective narratives, often delving into themes of ancestry, heritage, and the stories that shape our present.
With a background in Fine Arts, Maia’s work often incorporates a blend of painting and photography, evoking a deep sense of introspection and connection to the past. She is particularly interested in how art can serve as an archive, a means to both preserve and reinterpret familial and cultural histories.
Gallery Coordinator
Maia Ramirez-Beaver
Nayeli Yazmin Rodriguez is a Chicana interdisciplinary artist and scholar rooted in the study of subaltern archives, decolonization, and ethnic studies. With a B.A. from New York University her work explores what she calls hidden archives of resistance: the mundane, ephemeral, and often unseen forms of resistance that reside within subaltern communities. Drawing from her familial archive, Chican@ aesthetics, and a rasquachismo sensibility, she engages Indigenous, Black, and Chican@ cosmologies in her artistic and academic work to reframe the narratives of subaltern peoples, emphasizing feeling, memory, and personhood.
2026 Getty Marrow Intern | Consultant
Nayeli Yazmin Rodriguez