Jade D. Banks is an award-winning folklorist, master arts educator, cultural documentarian, arts administrator, and poet/writer who has served the national arts and cultural community with distinction for over twenty years. She is currently a Folk and Traditional Arts Advisor for Community Partnerships with the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (PCA). An awardee of three Folk and Traditional Arts Grants from the PCA from 2015-2018, and three travel and study grants from the American Folklore Society from 2019-2021, Jade’s prolific work as a cultural researcher and documentarian has yielded an extensive array of performing art and education projects including acclaimed The Will to Adorn with the Smithsonian Institution. Jade is Director Emerita of the Community Folk Culture Program at Mind-Builders Creative Arts Center where she was Program Director from 2007-2014 and led hundreds of teens through creative and rigorous training as community folklorists. Prior to that, she was an artist-in-residence with Community Works’ landmark public education project, harlem is… from 2001-2008. Founder of Iman Books Worldwide in 2002, Jade made publishing history with the release of SIGNIFYIN' HARLEM, the first literary journal of Harlem artists since the revered Harlem Renaissance journal Fire!! was published in 1926 by Wallace Thurman, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston. Iman Books published 11 anthologies with multicultural teens of the NYC Department of Education from 2002-2010; and served as editorial advisor for Rider University’s journal ON FIRE!! from 2009-2011. Jade was an Associate Producer for Hottest Poets (2001-2003), the most prize-awarding slam competition in the U.S., where she also served as Tour Manager and Workshop Facilitator for the U.S. Hottest Poets International Poetry Slam Team in England. She was also the Executive Producer of THE DARK CORNER POETRY JAM for off-Broadway theater company New Perspectives and for SIGNIFYIN’ HARLEM’S STARBUCKS SATURDAYS from 2000-2001. She hosted SPOKEN WORD ON THE WAVES, NYC’s first-ever poetry cruise in 2001. Jade is a public historian and dynamic speaker who was a featured interviewee in several films including the HBO/Cinemax documentary, CUTTING EDGE (2004); BLACKS IN NEW YORK (2002); LET’S GET THE RHYTHM (2008); and IMAGES OF DIGNITY: DECENT PEOPLE’S CHILDREN (2014). Her literary creations, photography, and films are archived at the Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the NY State Folk Archives, and the PA State Folk Archives.