DreamHour Speaker Series

Maria M. Williams took notice of the lack of opportunities for Black artists in San Antonio. She took action and began her journey in art advocacy in 2019 with an initiative called the Art of Four, which was a team of four Black artists joining to obtain opportunities and exposure. The need to have a physical space for the Black artists in San Antonio quickly grew. Equipping her 13+ years of event planning, Maria opened In the Eye of the Beholder art gallery in September 2021. What started as a small initiative of 4 has now grown into a collection of 40+ artists. Maria also does work for the community outside the gallery, working as San Antonio’s district 2 art commissioner.

Dr. Keely is a pathbreaking certified trauma and mental health trailblazing professional in the BIPOC Faith-Based community. She is the founder and CEO of Kick Start Your Life™with Dr. Keely! and The BIPOC Mental Wellness Collective a global mental wellness coaching, counseling and consulting company. She has won numerous awards, inductions, and acknowledgements for her service to uplifting humanity from the local, state, and federal level. https://keelypetty.com

In 2003, Willie Ng founded Blue Armor Security Services, Inc., and serves as owner, President and Chief Executive Officer. Willie is leading, guiding and overseeing the performance of the organization. Willie sets the direction and drives the company’s strategic plans and vision, and he leads business development and fiscal operations. Willie determines the company’s overarching goals and initiatives. 

With an innate ability for law enforcement and public service, Willie Ng has been serving in Law Enforcement since 1993. Recently, Willie served in the roles of Chief Administrative Officer and Chief Criminal Investigator with the Bexar County Criminal District Attorney’s Office, where Willie lead multiple teams working closely with local and deferral law enforcement agencies to successfully prepare criminal cases for prosecution in Bexar County. 

Willie ng served the Bexar County Criminal District Attorney’s Office from January 1, 2015 — December 31, 2018. Prior to joining the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office as Chief Criminal Investigator, Willie served the city of San Antonio with the San Antonio Police Department (SAPD) for 22 years. During his time with SAPD, Willie began as a Patrol Officer patrolling all areas of San Antonio,  then served as a Detective Investigator where he investigated various criminal offenses in the Repeat Offenders Program (ROP) and Financial Crimes Unit. Prior to retirement from SAPD, Willie worked with the United States Secret Service where he was deputized as a Special Federal Deputy Marshal and served within the unit for over seven years. Willie’s in-depth training as a law enforcement professional ranges from Hand-to-Hand Combat & Self-Defense, Hand-Written Forgery, Counterfeit Currency & Credit Card Fraud, to Lie Detection, Narcotics and Emergency Management training by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Willie is a certified Trainer for Active Shooter and Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response from Texas State University. Willie has a Master Certification in Law Enforcement by the State of Texas. Willie was deputized Special Federal Deputy Marshal with the United States Secret Service. 

In addition to public service and economic development, Willie is tireless ih his efforts towards non-profit work. Willie provides community support and consulting to business leaders, entrepreneurs, law enforcement and various local and national organizations. Willie contributes his time serving on various boards, to include but not limited to, currently serving as Board Member of the San Antonio Education Partnership (SAEP), Board of Director for Child Advocates of San Antonio (CASA), Co-Founder of the Maestro Entrepreneur Center and Maestro Leadership Development, among others. Willie is a member of the Criminal Justice Reform Committee of the Texas Associations of Business (TAB) with headquarters in Austin, Texas, where he was worked in conjunction with the team to create and implement the initiative Texas House Bill 918 which went into effect in January 2020. 

Willie has a Baccalaureate (Bachelor’s) in Criminal Justice from Wayland Baptist University, a Master’s in Public Administration (MPA) from St. Mary’s University, and Willie is currently working on his dissertation to finalize his Doctorate (PhD) in Organizational Leadership from the University of the Incarnate Word. Willie received the ASIS International Award for Exemplary Service to Business and Law Enforcement (2016), and in 2017, Willie received the award for Professional Achievement by the Texas Commission of Law Enforcement (TCOLE) for his service and accomplishments in law enforcement since his career began in 1993. Willie is an award recipient at the University of the Incarnate Word (UIW) Dreeben School of Education in Recognition for Academic Excellence (April 2019). 

As a consummate public servant, Willie regularly speaks about education initiatives, business leadership, economic development and modern law enforcement throughout South Texas, to include assisting local Churches to improve their security detail for their congregations, and Willie is frequently invited to speak to students in local schools, colleges and universities, such as University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, San Antonio College (SAC), St. Phillis College in San Antonio, as well as multiple elementary, middle schools, high schools and charter schools.

Trish — aka Captain Marvel – believes that superheroes come in all shapes and sizes.

With her wicked smart intellect and passion for making a difference, there is no doubt that she is built for speed and performance to find solutions to problems most find too vexing to conquer. A native San Antonian with a degree from Trinity University, Trish has a deep and abiding love for the Alamo City. Previously, as a Centro Board Member, Trish helped shepherd three transformational downtown projects to voter approval as part of the 2017 City Bond. As Chair, she oversaw Centro’s implementation, guidance, and community involvement as the projects broke ground and reached completion. Her return as Centro Board Chair coincided with another period of accelerated growth downtown, exemplified by the passage of the 2022 Bond Program, catalytic projects like the UTSA Downtown Campus, San Pedro Creek, and Alamo Plaza, as well as by the increase in residential units in the core. As the current President and CEO of Centro San Antonio, Trish has catalyzed a resurgence in downtown San Antonio by fostering new collaborations among city partners.

This transformation marks a new era of activation aimed at overcoming a period of stagnation, driving growth and revitalization across the community. As an entrepreneur and strategist at heart, Trish possesses unique qualifications to craft the overarching vision that guides all other tactics.

Barrister Donatus Berinyuy is a resident of San Antonio and the President of the Cameroonian Community of San Antonio (CamCoSA) since 2023. He is a husband and father of Two girls.

Laura Thompson, the CEO and creator of TAAN TV, is a visionary leader and media trailblazer with over 16 years of experience in public relations and community engagement. Dedicated to empowering African American voices, Laura founded TAAN TV, a streaming platform offering video on demand, live streaming, and pay-per-view programming. Beyond media, Laura has been deeply involved in her community, building a vast network of mayors, city managers, corporate executives, and community leaders. Her extensive civic work includes partnerships with organizations such as CPS Energy, VIA Metropolitan Transit, and the San Antonio Housing Authority, where she has facilitated projects that strengthen community connections. Through TAAN TV, she continues to elevate diverse perspectives, creating an inclusive digital media space that drives change and amplifies underrepresented voices.

For more than a decade, Krystal Jones has been dedicated to advancing, supporting, and promoting San Antonio’s arts and culture community. Since June 2022, Krystal has served as the Director of the City of San Antonio’s Department of Arts & Culture. In this role, she oversees seven grant programs, the City of San Antonio’s public art program, two City owned galleries, the San Antonio Commission, and several cultural programs and initiatives. Under Krystal’s leadership, San Antonio’s public art funding grew from 1% to 1.5% of City capital improvement projects, investment in individual artists increased, and filming in San Antonio rose by more than 80%. She is driven by her firm belief that art transforms lives and should be accessible to all.

Krystal’s nearly 15 years with the City of San Antonio included various positions within the Department of Arts & Culture, including Film Commissioner, as well as marketing roles for Visit San Antonio. Before public service, Krystal directed award-winning marketing strategies for global corporations.

CRUZ ORTIZ—–AMERICAN, Born in Houston, Texas 1972
Cruz Ortiz is an American Contemporary Artist who uses multiple mediums examining connections to nature, hope, healing, beauty, endurance, and the cosmos. He uses bold graphic screen prints, figurative abstract portraiture, dream-like landscape paintings, temporal guerrilla installations, utilitarian machines, hand carved wood sculptures, large scale public art, video, and performance art. He is interested in the exhausting narratives searching for love and the sense of home land. Ortiz is constantly working in the studio, jumping from traditional studio methods such as painting and sculpture to commercial printmaking and print design projects. Most of his works are created with a sense of exigency, only so he can keep up with the ever evolving ideas and visual manifestos eager to be revealed. Early in his career he would thrash through photography, screen prints and video projects in a very punk skater rasquache manner, which involved staged performances and make-shift projection art parties.
Currently, Ortiz has been exclusively working on painting as a romantic art historical form of documentation. It is through the use of this archaic form that he is taking risks of institutionalizing subject matter. In a time where everything is now digital and virtual, Ortiz is mixing oil paintings and painting from direct observation, while detecting the importance of painting for the future. He is also very interested in how painting pushes the critical contextualization of social political issues. His artistic projects aim to center the periphery to capture moments in history, especially the settler state that has tried, over and over, to erase from collective memory. With a great sense of urgency to record, preserve, and disseminate, he paints.
Ortiz has committed himself to creatively collaborating with cultural arts organizations and social justice organizations for most of his career. He was also a public high school instructor for 15 years, working with diverse urban students. Cruz Ortiz has had solo exhibitions at: ARTPACE in San Antonio, Texas; the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston, Texas; the University of Texas in Austin; The Museum of Contemporary Art in Santa Barbara, in Santa Barbara, California; and the Judd Foundation, in Marfa, Texas. He has been invited to participate in many major international exhibitions and institutions such as: the Louvre in Paris, France; EV-A in Limerick, Ireland; the traveling exhibition Phantom Sightings with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; the San Juan Triennial in San Juan, Puerto Rico; and at The Blue Coat Museum, in Liverpool, England. His work is in the permanent collections of Ruby City, the San Antonio Museum of Art, the University of Texas at San Antonio Library Special Collections, the Arizona State University Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

Francie Millan is the reigning Miss San Antonio USA 2024. She placed 1st runner-up at the 2024 Miss Texas USA pageant, where she was the only Latina in the top five. She is a former Miss San Antonio Teen USA and Miss Grand Texas and the first Uruguayan to obtain state titles in the United States and compete nationally, placing 3rd runner-up at Miss Grand United States.

A proud fur mom to her rescued Frenchie, Simon, Francie is an active volunteer who has partnered with Be Well Texas, Special Olympics Texas, Gardopian Gardens, Thru Project, and Empower House San Antonio. She also volunteers at Jennie’s Rescue, where she adopted Simon.

Additionally, Francie mentors at a pageant school in Uruguay and is the godmother of the Action Culture Togo association, which supports an orphanage in Africa. She is dedicated to empowering minority children through mentorship and leadership programs and sharing her definition of success.

Fluent in Spanish, Francie is a passionate advocate for her Latin community and is pursuing a career in real estate. She is also a columnist for Boerne Monthly Magazine and the host of the TV show Society with Karen Grace. Francie’s goal is to raise awareness of important causes and positively impact as many lives as possible.

K. Day is an award winning journalist, founder of PEPPER Magazine, philanthropist and community supporter. Her work as an intuitive life coach has fostered speaking engagements for entrepreneurs, at career days for students and sensitivity training for police. She sits on the Board of Directors for the Alora nonprofit for autistic teens and adults. K. actively serves the local community and continues to act as a supporting force for the greater global community.

Ernie Zuniga is a veteran TV and media personality in San Antonio. Currently, he is the executive producer and host of his popular digital talk show “Pickup Lines”, which is seen and heard every week by thousands of people on five different social media platforms.
Previously, Ernie anchored the morning news on FOXSA for more than 17 years. Ernie also spent time as a sports anchor and reporter in San Antonio, Phoenix, Arizona, and in his hometown of Victoria, Texas.
Zuniga attended Texas A&M University and graduated with a degree in Communications from the University of Houston-Victoria.
Ernie has devoted much of his time in recent years to area nonprofits, including the 100 Club of San Antonio and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. He is also a member of the Rey Feo Consejo Educational Foundation. Every year, Zuniga emcees dozens of events for these and other nonprofits and causes.
Ernie has been married to his wife Tami for over 25 years. Together, they have a daughter Ava, and twins, Luke and Madeline.
Find out more about Ernie at erniezuniga.com.