As South Arts continues to grow, so does our Board of Directors! These 30 leaders from our nine-state region and beyond work in and support the creative sector through their professional and volunteer efforts. We welcome the following four individuals to our Board, and you can visit our Staff & Board Leadership page to learn more about the entire board of directors and also the South Arts staff.
Gina Therése Charbonnet (New Orleans, LA) is a dynamic creator, producer, and advocate for diverse voices, with over two decades of experience in the arts, entertainment, and production. As the founder and principal of the GeChar Agency she is a leading force in multimedia production, specializing in branding, creative content, and talent acquisition. Charbonnet's expertise has been sought after by numerous esteemed companies and organizations, including ESSENCE, the Ashé Cultural Arts Center, Prospect New Orleans, Watermark Conferences for Women, the City of New Orleans, Black Girls Rock! and Converse, among others. Her professional accomplishments are highlighted by a longstanding partnership with the Essence Festival of Culture, where Gina and GeChar serve as Executive Producer for the festival's daytime programming. This includes the festival's Empowerment Programming, BeautyCon, the Gospel Tribute, and Keynotes from A Listers, thought leaders and politicians. She consistently establishes and manages relationships with a diverse array of influential figures, which have included Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Monét X Change, Lenya Bloom, Ava Duvernay, Deepak Chopra, Rosario Dawson, and Halle Berry, among others.
Phillip March Jones (New York, NY) is an artist, writer, and curator based in New York City. In 2009, Jones founded Institute 193, a nonprofit contemporary art space and publisher in Lexington, Kentucky. He later served as the inaugural director of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation in Atlanta, and as director of the Galerie Christian Berst (New York/Paris) and the Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York. Jones currently serves as Institute 193’s Curator-at-Large and oversees Institute 193 (1B), a project space in Manhattan’s East Village that organizes collaborative exhibitions with cultural institutions from the Southern United States. Jones’ photographs and writings have been published by the Jargon Society, Vanderbilt University Press, Dust-to-Digital and Poem 88, among others.
Sejal Mehta (Raleigh, NC) has a strong love of the arts. She serves on the boards of North Carolina Arts Council and International Focus of North Carolina. Previously, she served on the board of the Raleigh Little Theater and Raleigh Review. Sejal also served on the fiction staff of the Raleigh Review, and she has assisted on the production of short films and various commercials in both New York and the Triangle. In addition, Sejal worked as a contract attorney for Duke Energy, an attorney at the New York Medical Examiner's Office, and a prosecutor in the Queens District Attorney's Office in New York City. She lives in Raleigh with her husband, Jay Chaudhuri, their two teenage children, and their golden retriever Lincoln.
Alan F. Rothschild, Jr. (Columbus, GA) has practiced estate planning and nonprofit law in Columbus and Atlanta for over 35 years. Alan has served as President of the Board of Trustees of The Columbus Museum and as Chair of the Board of Advisors of the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, where he continues his service as a lifetime trustee. He has also served on the boards of the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation and the Georgia Humanities Council. In 2012, Alan founded The Do Good Fund, a public charity whose mission is to build a museum-quality, public collection of photographs taken in the American South since World War II, by both well-known and emerging photographers, and to make the collection widely available to regional museums, community arts centers and non-traditional venues. Do Good’s collection of visual stories now numbers 855 images by 115 photographers, and has been included in dozens of exhibitions in ten states. Alan was a recipient of a 2022 Georgia Governor’s Award for the Arts & Humanities.