Meet our family
Our trustworthy and loving family. From many backgrounds. We all value Maya culture and honoring our ancestors and loved ones.
Steven Mayers
Professor at City College
Steven Mayers is a Professor of English at City College of San Francisco and Co-Coordinator of the Puente Program at CCSF’s Mission Campus. He is a co-founder of the Bay Area Maya Festival and serves as the CCSF community liaison. He is co-editor of Solito, Solita: Crossing Borders with Youth Refugees from Central America.
Rita Moran
Director of Mayan Woman in Art
Rita Moran is a retired ESL Professor at CCSF and the Director and Curator of Maya Women in Art, a collection that promotes the dignity and human rights of Indigenous and Latina women through contemporary Maya art. A co-founder of the festival, Rita has curated the festival’s art exhibits since its inception, including the landmark “Maya Women: Life, Art, Hope” exhibit that brought the work of seminal Maya painters to the CCSF community.
Pedro Tuyub
Housing Program Manager
Pedro Tuyub is Yucatec Maya and serves as Housing Opportunities Program Manager at the Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA) in San Francisco. One of the festival’s original co-founders and a driving force behind its community partnerships, Pedro brings together the Maya and Latinx communities of the Mission District and ensures that practical resources — from housing to financial empowerment — are always part of the festival’s programming
Lydia Candila Chan
Director of Asociacion Mayab
Lydia Candila Chan is the Executive Director of Asociación Mayab, acting as an advocate for the Yucatec Maya community in San Francisco. Under her leadership, the organization provides vital resources, including a food pantry for hundreds of families and advocacy for culturally competent healthcare that addresses the specific linguistic needs of Maya languages.
Francisco Icala
Interpreter and Mayan Leader
Francisco Icalá Tiriquiz is a Guatemalan Maya leader who studied at the National Indigenous Community School of Chichicastenango. As an interpreter for the K’iche’ Maya community in U.S. courts, he completed training on the code of ethics for interpreters of Indigenous languages in immigration in Monterey, California, in 1998. He also serves as a trained health promoter.
Currently, Francisco works as a care manager for the Indigenous Program at the Instituto Familiar de la Raza in San Francisco, California, where he also coordinates the Jornal-Heroes program.
Oswaldo Martin
Business Developer and Project Manager
Oswaldo is a Maya Mam leader based in Oakland, CA known for his work as an advocate for language justice and Maya representation. Studied in Civil Engineering, he is a multidisciplinary professional focused on developing cooperative business structures in construction, language services, manufacturing, and agriculture.
At the core of his Pan-Mayanist ideology is the development and propagation of individual and collective talent within Maya society to advance its plight and create models for collective development among Indigenous Americans at large. He is currently the Business Developer and Project Manager of Martin’s Bay Area Construction and Chairman of MILPA (Mayan Interpreters and Language Professionals of the Americas).
Giovanni Emmanuel Uribe Hdz
Visual Artist
Based in Yucatán, he is the creator of the Cosmic Transfiguration artistic movement, which brings together Maya worldview, cosmic consciousness, and the pursuit of creative intelligence beyond conditioned thought and the divisions that fragment our perception of reality. His paintings explore the relationship between humanity, nature, and the cosmos, deeply informed by the Popol Vuh and Maya cosmology.
He holds a B.A. (Honours) in Art History from York University in Toronto and studied Etnology for two years at ENAH, México. He has collaborated with Maya poet Pedro Uc on three published books: Reddish Sheets, Waya’asbaj and Uek’same’enil, and Juntúul J Wi’it’. In 2025 and 2026, he painted the official Maya Festival poster in collaboration with Maya artists.
Anibal Pablo
Web Developer
Anibal Pablo is a Todos Santos native, originally from the hamlet of Maẍ. He is a web developer who combines ethnographic research with modern web technologies. His work focuses on understanding Mam Indigeneity through direct engagement with Mam culture, language, and community members rather than relying on external proxies.
Edgar Torres
Professor at City College
A Mesoamerican archaeologist with more than 50 years of experience, he earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology from UC Berkeley in 1983 and was the first Latino admitted to Berkeley’s doctoral program in Mesoamerican Archaeology. His career has included archaeological research throughout Mexico and Guatemala, National Geographic-sponsored excavations, and work at the Maya site of Takalik Abaj.
Join the Team
Send us a message and share our vision. All are welcome to join, support, and present their Maya project for the next upcoming festival
