OUR STAFF
PHINNEY BROWN
Executive Director
Phinney Brown began her role as Executive Director for the Arts Center Task Force in July of 2021. She joins Arts Center Task Force as a nonprofit professional with a passion for the arts. She brings welcome expertise in fundraising, marketing, networking, event planning, and more.
Phinney has called the Tri-Cities home since 2006, having grown up in Hermiston, OR. She has been involved in the local performing arts community for many years as an actor, singer, director, and costumer. She is also a visual artist, working primarily in Indigenous style beadwork and moccasin making, and is a lineal descendant of the Coeur D'Alene Tribe. Phinney has worked with many local arts organizations over the years including The Rude Mechanicals, Richland Players, and Columbia Basin College Summer Showcase.
Phinney's professional background is in nonprofit management, marketing, and event planning, and she is eager to use her skills and experience to help bring a much-needed performing arts center to the Tri-Cities.
She can be reached via email at phinney@artscentertaskforce.com.
ALICIA BRIONES
Operations Director
Alicia Briones grew up in the Tri-Cities but left for Seattle after high school to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Law, Societies, and Justice at the University of Washington. After finishing her undergraduate degree, she went on to pursue her Master of Criminal Justice at Seattle University. She worked for the ACLU of Washington in the legal department for several years while earning her master’s degree, working on legislation that won rights for marriage equality, and the legalization of marijuana in Washington State. She also served on Harborview’s Neurological Services Unit board. After getting married, she moved back to the Tri-Cities to be closer to family and immediately sought out ways to help her community, including joining the Safe Harbor/My Friend’s Place board, and working as the Team Read Director at the Children’s Reading Foundation of the Mid-Columbia. She has also worked for the Richland Public Library as a reference librarian, and is an adjunct professor, teaching Criminal Justice at Columbia Basin College.
While her professional life has mostly been justice-oriented, Alicia has been deeply involved in the arts her entire life, believing that social justice and the arts are two sides of the same coin. She has worked with The Rude Mechanicals, and The Richland Players as a stage manager and producer, and in her spare time she paints, sculpts, makes jewelry, creates textile and fiber art pieces focused on her Mexican/Indigenous and Coahuiltecan heritage, and reads 100 books a year. She also loves to cook, much to the joy of her husband, and her old boy Atticus, a yellow lab/foxhound mix.
Alicia is thrilled to bring her twenty plus years of experience in the non-profit world, and her eclectic skill set to ACTF, and be a part of an important project that will forever bring the Tri-City area joyfully new experiences.
You can get in touch with Alicia at alicia@artscentertaskforce.com.
