Meet Our Team!

LEADERSHIP

**Sheri Gibb**

*Co-founder & Executive Director*

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Raised with the motto “figure it out,” Sheri Gibb, Executive Director, is best described as an intense dabbler. Her children have said she has a trailer hitch mounted on her backside, always willing and encouraging others to join her in her adventures. She loves teaching about the amazing experiences that you can have getting messy. She is a huge fan of abolishing the phrase “I can’t” and strongly believes that we are all capable of being artists.

Screen Shot 2020-02-28 at 12.15.02 PM.png — **Jen Lopez**

*Co-founder &*
*Program Director*

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Jen Lopez, Program Director, is the daughter of a Texas farm girl and a Cuban engineer, two cultures that appreciate a clever and creative approach to problem solving. Her art is a colorful fusion of found objects, mid-century modern aesthetics, and intentionally lumpy ceramics. She enjoys combining natural and industrial materials in unexpected ways, and appreciates scissors of both reasonable and unreasonable proportions. Jen encourages her students to play with materials and enjoy the process of making art.

**Margo Richards**

*Creative Director*

Margo Richards, Creative Director, has been involved in creating, selling or instructing art for most of her life. She has had many years of experience in managing volunteers, directing the Holladay Arts Council, accounting, fundraising and creating and balancing budgets, but is happiest when her work is helping children or creating her own art with her best friend. Making use of previously discarded items, her love of the arts and working with people in her community make this her perfect job. She lives in Holladay with her husband, she has two incredible grown children and last year became the grandmother of identical twin girls. Life doesn’t get much better than that.

Kacy Huston
Warehouse Manager

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Kacy is the Program Manager and VISTA Manager at Clever Octopus, a previous AmeriCorps NCCC and VISTA member. She grew up in North Western Pennsylvania. In 2016, she received her BFA in Jewelry Design from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. Her art is influenced by nature and garbage taking shape in 2D and 3D biomorphic forms. She likes spending her time outdoors, reading, and creating.

Carina Barajas

Creative Reuse Center Manager

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Carina Barajas, Creative Reuse Center Manager, has been with Clever Octopus since 2018. Carina graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts with an emphasis in Painting and Drawing, and minor in Arts and Technology, at the University of Utah’s College of Fine Arts.

AMERICORPS VISTAS & COORDINATORS

**Sophie Benson**

*Program Coordinator*

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Sophie moved to Salt Lake City from Portland, Maine to serve as Clever Octopus’s Program Coordinator as an AmeriCorps VISTA member. As an undergraduate, Sophie studied the evolution of human life on Earth and the potential for life to exist elsewhere in the universe at Harvard University. She is very interested in STEAM education, reinventing washed up lobster bait bags as purses, and drawing and painting pictures of faces.

**Alexandra Parvaz**

*Community*

Engagement
Coordinator

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Alexandra Parvaz’s strong passion for community empowerment, and bioremediation equals in intensity to her love of planting fava beans, facilitating chocolate-smelling compost, adjusting headsets, doodling, and ecstatic dumpster diving. She enjoys cultivating spaces and recruiting folks to formally and subversively build creative and nourishing wonderlands. She has earned BA & BS degrees and a Masters in Biology and Environmental Science at the University of Utah, cleaned and greased ball bearings with various non-profits, and lives for crunchy peanut butter.

Melanie Espinal
Communications Coordinator

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Melanie Espinal is a writer from Connecticut. Her passion for good storytelling that supports community members led her to explore the world of nonprofits and the ways in which she can promote creative equity. She is the type of person that will point to anything and say “how cute.” She received a B.S. in journalism from Southern Connecticut State University and is newly obsessed with her bike Andres, her jalapeño plant Alé and making coconut matcha lattes.

Ian Aper

Development Coordinator

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Ian is a local ski enthusiast who discovered his passion for creative waste management and fostering environmentalism in the tropical forests of rural Panama. Following the completion of a Biology degree at Utah State University, he served as an environmental conservation volunteer with the Peace Corps where he entered the world of environmental education; working alongside teachers to develop and implement environmental activities, inspiring youth, and turning trash into treasure. In his spare time Ian enjoys reading in a hammock, adventuring outdoors, and making candles in fun shaped jars.