Our Talented Staff
Meet our leadership, teachers, and more!
Seraphina Jerome
CEO of BYOA & Teacher
Seraphina is a freshman at HCPSS and loves filmmaking, singing, and screenwriting. She has won many awards for her short films (including Howard County's Best Middle School Film of 2020, Audience Awards Horror Shorts Film Festival Finalist, etc). Seraphina has been professionally trained in singing for 8 years, and she has been singing for her entire life (trained in multiple styles, such as- classical rock, pop, choral, rock, etc). She has been in various musicals, choirs, and in several rock/pop bands. Seraphina also has a YouTube channel in which she uses the craft of filmmaking to create her videos.
Meg Banich
Social Media/Marketing Manager
Meg is entering her last year at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind. She is majoring in Media with specializations in creative advertising, public relations, and web. Upon graduating, she hopes to focus her skills on the music and television industries.
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Colin Cacioppo
Teacher
Colin has been drawing with the intention of getting better for just over 13 years now. He loves to work in graphite, charcoal, and oil paints but has experimented in nearly every medium under the sun. He will be graduating with his Bachelor of Fine Arts by the end of 2021.
Giulia Nascimento
Born and raised in Brazil, Giulia is a 22-year-old senior in college. She's majoring in Filmmaking and minoring in Arts' Education, she has also taken classes on Screenwriting and TV Writing from the UCLA Extension program. She loves animation and her favorite genres to write are fantasy, science fiction, and comedy. She has won a Brazilian government fund awarded to upcoming screenwriters and is eager to start teaching others about the joy of writing for film and television.
Teacher
Emma Lenza
Teacher
Emma is a Theatre Arts and English double major at Santa Clara University. She has been involved in community and school theatre for over a decade and is passionate about making change through the performing arts. After she graduates in 2022, Emma hopes to pursue acting and arts education!
Iliana Johnson
Iliana is a freshman at HCPSS. Iliana has been classically trained in dance styles such as ballet, tap, jazz, and many more for 12 years. She has been invited to dance with her studio’s team for about 8 years. While with her dance team Iliana has gotten the opportunity to travel to many places and meet many different people. Iliana has been taking photos for 3 years and took classes for 2 years. She had a photo published in the “Our Voice” magazine this past year.
Teacher
Daniece Luckey
Teacher
Daniece Luckey is a Freelance Graphic Designer who creates logos, website design, does photography, and runs her YouTube channel. Daniece believes that practice makes perfect and you learn something new everyday. In addition to managing her freelance graphic design career, she maintains a living for her young family of toddler and newborn. Daniece holds an Associate's is Computer Art and Bachelor's in Graphic Design. She is also excited for this new journey in teaching Art for Be Your Own Artist.
Enrique Perez
Teacher
Enrique Perez is a screenwriter from South Texas. He has written for several local projects and has been working remotely on film and series across the country. He has a great passion for storytelling and wants to spread this love and skillset to others. To do this, he recently earned his Masters in Creative Writing and plans to begin a career as an English Professor in whichever University has an opening. He looks forward to seeing what new stories will come out of the Filmmaking class.