Speakers

Vanessa Thomas is Co-Founder and President of the Dublin Arts Collective, bringing together her passion for the arts, community building, storytelling, and creative advocacy. A writer, freelance journalist, floral photographer, and owner of Fables & Flora, she has a diverse professional background spanning communications, marketing, information management, project management, and health science. Vanessa is committed to creating opportunities that connect artists with the wider community and demonstrate the value of the arts in building vibrant, thriving communities. Her contributions have been recognized with the Alameda County Arts Leadership Award (2021), the City of Dublin Mayor’s Award (2019), and a Citizen of the Year nomination (2017). As President, she looks forward to championing creativity, strengthening partnerships, and helping DAC—and the artists it serves—continue to grow and flourish.

Prachi Sharma is a Bay Area author and the founder of The Sapling Press, a children's publishing house where every book is written by a young author. Alongside her career as a tech engineer, she founded Sapling Press after losing her mother in 2022, turning grief into a family legacy of storytelling — a journey she explores in her books Manju: A Life of Grit, Grace and Greatness and Paws Around the World. Her writing has appeared in KQED Perspectives, IndiaWest, and The Arunachal Times, and the press has published nine books by seven young authors.