Yakaira Núñez serves on the Board of Directors for the International Museum of Dance. With over 20 years of experience in product development, research, and insights leadership across SaaS, Cloud, and AI technologies, Yakaira brings deep expertise in human-centered innovation. She has worked with global corporations, startups, educational institutions, and nonprofits to deliver thoughtful, inclusive, and impactful experiences. As a Research & Insights VP at Salesforce, she helped build AI products and the systems to support them, and she continues to coach executives and advise on responsible AI today. Yakaira holds fellowships from Fortune, the Aspen Policy Institute, and True North Teaching, and she co-authored the World Economic Forum’s AI guidelines for children. Her belief in economic growth through and with the arts drives her passion for IMOD’s mission to bring dance, culture, and technology together in new and inspiring ways.

Yakaira earned degrees from the University of Illinois (B.A. in Rhetoric & Spanish) and DePaul University (M.S. in Computer Science, with a focus on Human Computer Interaction and AI).

Yakaira’s commitment to IMOD is rooted in her love for movement as a form of resistance, celebration, and storytelling. While not formally trained, her experiences dancing to House, Hip Hop, Merengue, and Salsa have given her a deep appreciation for the power and beauty of dance as cultural expression.

FAVORITES: Yakaira’s favorite dance film is Shall We Dance by Masayuki Suo. Her favorite place to dance is a packed dance hall just before midnight.

Tina Hristova serves on the Board of Directors for the International Museum of Dance. A senior executive with extensive experience in scaling technology companies, Tina brings over two decades of expertise in strategic financial planning, business modeling, and operational excellence. She has led high-performing teams across SaaS, media, and services industries, and her specialties include M&A, revenue forecasting, compensation strategy, investor relations, and contract management. Tina has supported organizations through IPO readiness, systems implementation, and cost restructuring initiatives, and is recognized for her ability to build finance infrastructure from the ground up while driving sustainable growth.

Tina has held leadership roles in global strategic financial planning and analysis, supporting SaaS business units and professional services organizations through long-range planning and operational scaling. Her background includes deep partnerships with executive teams, capacity planning, corporate development, and integration support following M&A activity. She is proficient in enterprise tools such as Hyperion, NetSuite, Salesforce, Adaptive Planning, and Workday.

Tina’s passion for IMOD stems from a lifelong belief in the transformative power of the arts and a commitment to building strong institutions that preserve and elevate culture. She is honored to bring her finance and operational expertise to support IMOD’s growth, sustainability, and vision for the future of dance.

photo

Rei Chou’s purpose is to create experiences that help people realize they’re part of something greater. A leader, facilitator, and healer, she draws on 15+ years of experience in convening, experience design, and purpose-based innovation with organizations ranging from NASA to Intel. One of Fast Company's 100 most creative people, Chou founded The Feast, which brings together a global community of innovators and creatives to support each other in living their fullest lives, purpose, and potential with over 600 dinners hosted around the world to date. The Feast has inspired and facilitated collaborations among leaders and organizations from the White House to MTV and the Rockefeller Foundation. Attendees and participants included CEOs, heads of foundations, catalytic innovators and artists from across disciplines.

Chou works with leaders to understand their true selves, create clarity of action and vision that are aligned accordingly, and uses her community skills to build teams that operate at their peak. She is a master Usui Reiki practitioner, teacher, and KAP practitioner. Above all, she is passionate about helping each person realize the fulfillment of their true heart's desire, thereby creating the kind of world we want to see.

In 1999, Jim Spadaccini founded Ideum with the mission of creating visitor-centric interactive experiences of substance. As the Creative Director and Founder, he helps direct Ideum’s commercial touch table and software initiatives and provides creative direction for a wide range of experience design projects at museums, zoos, and other public spaces.

Before founding Ideum, Jim was the Director of Interactive Media at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. He has taught design and technology for almost 30 years, including at San Francisco State University’s Multimedia Studies Program; Technology-Enhanced Communication for the Cultural Heritage program at the University of Lugano, Switzerland; and digital media and museums for the Cultural Resource Management Program at University of Victoria, British Columbia. Jim has also consulted with Apple and Adobe, and has developed promotional and instructional materials for a number of professional software authoring tools.

Jim was the Principal Investigator for the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored Open Exhibits software and community initiative and a co-PI for the Creating Museum Media for Everyone project. He also co-chaired the NSF-funded Human-Computer Interaction in Informal Science Education conference. Jim was a Principal Investigator on the NASA-funded Space Weather Mobile project and co-PI on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) sponsored project, Hurricanes and Climate Change.‍