La Senora accomplishes its research activities with the help of our Academic Fellows. Each of these distinguished scholars brings a fresh perspective and a spirit of collaboration to the work. Relationships established through participation in La Senora projects have led to further collaborations between the Fellows resulting in projects which benefit the Southern California community as a whole. They also strengthened the core of our work.

ARCHAEOLOGY/ANTHROPOLOGY

Teri Brewer, Ph.D grew up in Santa Monica Canyon. Dr. Brewer's childhood fascination with the

Pascual Marquez Family Cemetery led to her choice of this discipline. A professor in Wales, she never-the-less is very active in collaborative activities relating to La Senora. She is the Coordinating Fellow for this group of Archeo/Anthro Fellows and is a Cotsen Institute of Archeology Research Associate.

Wendy Teeter, Ph.D Dr. Teeter is the Curator of the Fowler Museum of Archeology at UCLA. She has been active with La Senora since 2011 when she headed the crew who did the dig under the foundations of a residence encroaching on the Cemetery.

Lynn Schwartz Dodd Ph.D Dr. Dodd brought her graduate students and their sophisticated archeological photography to the Cemetery activities. Dr. Dodd has expressed an interest in coordinating activities of the Archeo/Anthro Fellows while Dr. Brewer is in Wales this year.

HISTORY

Ernest Marquez - La Senora Historian - was awarded the highest honor a local historian can achieve when the American Association of State and Local Historians cited him for his :Excellence and Scholarship in his Body of Work. We are blessed to have him.

William Deverell Ph.D Dirrector of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West,

Dr. Deverell is a Distinguished Faculty member of USC’s Center for Excellence. Bill has long been a friend and advisor to LSRI He first began to help us when we were among the co-founders of LA as Subject and he was its liaison to the Huntington-USC program. He represents La Senora within a number of community-wide organizations and provides one of our historic lectures.

David Hayes-Bautista Ph.D Dr. Hayes-Bautista has been a vital part of our Alta California education day programming for the past two years. He brought us the role of California juntas in forming Cinco de Mayo, a Californio celebration, not a Mexican Holiday. California had an extensive role leading up to and during the U.S. Civil War and Dr. Hayes Bautista is taking us through these stages.

Stephen Arons Ph.d - Dr Arons is the chair of the UCLA History Department at UCLA and provides our Patron Members participation in the exceptional programs provided to the Friends of UCLA History .

Music

Elisabeth Waldo, is a noted ethnomusicologist. At Rancho Cordillero del Norte, we find her producing concerts using pre-Columbian instruments which are to-this-day played using the Waldo Notations (a system of hieroglyphics first introduced by Elisabeth in the 1920s.) The performances at the Rancho cover the entire spectrum of Indigenous music of Central and South America and La Senora Patron Members are invited to be her guests.

Lynn Waldron Ph.D holds doctorates in Archaeology and in Anthropology, but to La Senora she brings her extensive wealth of talent in the field of music. A member of the Executive Committee of LACMA's Sunday's Live, and a voting member of BAFTA's committee selecting Oscar Winning Best Original Soundtracks, Lynn is also an accomplished photographer. She contributes all of the photos and videography at La Senora events.

Danielle Belen - D. Mus.A. as part of the violin faculty at the Colburn School, her studio is turning out national and international award winning young string artists who are being accepted into major conservatories and universities around the world. And she's a virtuoso concert violinist in her own performance with symphony orchestras. In her spare time she's the founder of the Center Stage Strings summer camp for gifted young string artists. La Senora is proud to support her in that effort and to share with our audiences each year the resulting Stars and Strings concert of her young artists.

Berenika Schmitz - D. Mus.A. A graduate of the Julliard school ; a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard; her Masters came from Christ Church, Oxford and she went next to the Royal Academy of Music in London. Her credits include being the Leonard Bernstein Fellow at Tanglewood and the New Horizon's Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival. When Phillip Glass received the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Award in the Mellon Auditorium in Washington, DC, Berenika was chosen to play "Philip Glass" for Phillip Glass. She has been presented to HM Queen Elizabeth II, and performed for Canada’s Parliament and the Commonwealth Heads of Government. While Berenika has performed around the world with symphony orchestas as a solo pianist, she has chosen to give back to the community with her work. Berenika first performed at La Senora in 2011, then become one of the creators and the Artistic Director of the Dana Point Symphony and Casa Romantica, all the while making her work available to La Senora Patron Members