The CAC emerged as a key recommendation from the Architecting Sustainable Futures gathering hosted by Shift Collective in 2018. In November 2022, we hosted the Community Archives Collaborative Convening in Austin, Texas. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, NHPRC, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, this gathering invited 52 attendees from 18 different community-based archives to come together and strategize about the future of the CAC.

AVP is currently stewarding the development of the CAC. Now, with continued support from Mellon Foundation, we have formed a seven-person Steering Committee that is making key decisions about the CAC’s structure, finances, mission, vision, values, and long-term planning. Throughout 2025, the CAC will be hosting community programs; workshops and publications. You can contact the CAC at hello@communityarchivescollaborative.org

Steering Committee

My name is Andrea Domínguez (she/they). I am a Xicana educator and memory worker and I was born and raised in Kumeyaay Lands (Tijuana-San Diego). My academic background is in Chicana/o Studies and Native American and Indigenous Studies. I also hold a MLIS degree with a specialization in archival studies from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Prior to serving as a Community Archives Collective Steering committee member, I was a recipient of the UCLA Community Archives Lab Fellowship (2022-23). My work as an information professional addresses grind culture as an epistemic justice issue, and seeks to disrupt it by restoring grief as a sacred practice. On the road to becoming a future elder and ancestor, I hope to make way for joyful, celebratory memory-making practices that are grounded in care, kinship, and love.

Joan Ilacqua is a professional lesbian in Boston, Massachusetts. By collecting oral histories, preserving archival records, and sharing personal stories, Joan works to connect our past to the ongoing fight for equality for all. She is the Executive Director of The History Project: Documenting LGBTQ+ Boston and serves on the Massachusetts State Historic Records Advisory Board and the Boston 400th Anniversary Commemoration Committee. She earned her master’s degree in Public History from UMass Boston and her BA in History and Sculpture from the University of Puget Sound. In her spare time, she designs subversive cross-stitch patterns and reads queer romance novels with her wife and cats. You can check out her work at ilacquajoan.com.

Emilia Kandagawa (they/them) is a Hawaiian national of African-Native American descent. They are a popular educator, researcher, transformative justice advocate, and culture bearer. Emilia has been an officer of Ka Lei Maile Aliʻi since 2008 and earned degrees in Political Science, Anthropology, and Land-Based Indigenous Education. Their work is dedicated to nurturing the cross-pollination of social, environmental, and political liberation movements across the Hawaiian Kingdom and abroad. Currently, they are helping weave contemporary stories of kinship, solidarity, and the continuity of Hawaiian internationalism through the launch of the Richard Kekuni Blaisdell Hawaiian National Archive.

Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, MA, is an independent scholar, documentarian, multimedia content creator, oral historian, and community archivist whose projects focus on 20th-century social movement history, gender, education, and culture. She received a Bachelor’s in Afro-American Studies from Harvard University and an MA in History from Stanford University. She has spent her 30+ year career bridging the divide between academic institutions and communities by developing and participating in projects that have public history components and incorporating narrators themselves in the process. Among other projects, Angela is the founding director of The OCS Project LLC, an academic research project that recovers, preserves, and shares the oral and documentary history of the Oakland Community School, the Black Panther Party’s flagship educational program. She partners with the University of California, Irvine Humanities Center to direct a summer fellows program. Most recently, she was a photographic and oral history consultant for Comrade Sisters Women of the Black Panther Party (Stephen Shames and ericka huggins, 2022), author of the book companion guide, the Comrade Sisters Women of the Black Panther Party Discussion and Resource Guide, and co-organizer of the Comrade Sisters book tour. Her writings have appeared in peer-reviewed books, journals, and public-facing publications such as Vibe Magazine, Colorlines, Souls, Ms. Magazine, and Black Youth Project. Additionally, she is a producer for the arts-based BOMB Magazine Oral History Project and a consultant for film and research projects.

Bacilio Mendez II is an associate attorney with Bledsoe, Diestel, Treppa & Crane LLP in San Francisco, California. Prior to joining Bledsoe, Bacilio served the people of Arizona, California, Nevada, and Washington as Assistant Regional Counsel within the Office of General Counsel of the Social Security Administration and Special Assistant United States Attorney within the United States Department of Justice.

In addition to being an Honors JD/MBA and Dual LLM graduate of Golden Gate University’s (GGU) School of Law, Ageno School of Business, and Braden School of Tax, Bacilio holds a Master’s of Library and Information Science from Pratt Institute’s School of Information in Manhattan, New York, and a Bachelors in Modern Dance from Oberlin College, in Oberlin, Ohio. 

While a student at GGU, Bacilio served on the Law Review and Environmental Law Journal and founded the Tax & Estate Planning Review and Race, Gender, Sexuality, & Social Justice Law Journal. During his studies at Pratt, Bacilio was inducted to Beta Phi Mu, the Library & Information Studies Honor Society. At Oberlin, Bacilio was a Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Scholar in dance history.

Hannah Whelan is the Documentation and Archives Director at Texas After Violence Project. 

Hannah believes deeply in the affective, testimonial power of personal records, and is interested in personal archiving, posthumous rights in records, and archival methods that can be used to subvert the tactics of surveillance and silencing that occur through state-maintained archives.

Aside from her work as an archivist and researcher, Hannah loves cooking, walking around looking at flowers and plants, and sending her friends unsolicited playlists.

Hallel Yadin is an archivist and writer based in New York City. Hallel has been an organizer of the Prison Library Support Network’s reference-by-mail project since 2020, and has been involved with several community archives, including Brooklyn’s Interference Archive.