Board of Directors

Starlett Miller Massey is a founding board member of the Cultural Hub of NW Florida, Inc. Starlett grew up in the Panama City arts community in her grandmother Mary Ola Reynolds Miller’s Gallery of Art. She believes in the power of art to transform and heal individuals and the community. Through her personal development as a mother and her involvement with children and the arts in the non-profit sector, Starlett has experienced firsthand the benefits that artistic experience can provide.

Starlett is the founding shareholder of Massey Law Group, a real estate, business law, and commercial litigation firm in St. Petersburg, Florida. She founded MLG in order to create an alternative law firm model based upon the principles of fairness, equality, and transparency. In 1998, Starlett graduated cum laude from Florida State University with a degree in English. She is a 2007 graduate of the Florida State University College of Law.

Starlett serves as a Vice Chair on the Florida Bar Committee for Diversity and Inclusion. Starlett also serves on the Board of Directors for the Cultural Hub of NW Florida, Inc. in Panama City, FL and the Board for Florida CraftArt, Inc. in St. Petersburg, FL.

Starlett is committed to contributing to the arts community in her hometown community and its rebirth following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Michael in 2018. By providing a cultural center for artists and art lovers to connect and flourish, and by providing education and art classes, the Cultural Hub seeks to play a substantial role in creating a thriving community. Starlett is dedicated to giving back to her communities in Panama City and St. Petersburg, with a focus on gender and racial equity, diversity, and inclusion. Her vision for the Cultural Hub and her professional growth are surpassed only by her dedication to parenting her son and his development as a young man committed to fun, play, and the principles of integrity, equality, and community responsibility.

Angie Day Marcelli is a board member of the newly founded Cultural Hub of NW Florida, Inc. She graduated from Rutherford High School in Callaway, FL. After seeing the devastation of Hurricane Michael, Angie has been dedicated to giving back to the area through personal donations and fundraisers for critical recovery supplies. She is excited to part of an organization that provides FL panhandle communities an opportunity to recover and heal through the arts. Previously, Angie was a founding member and Vice-President of All Around Kids, Inc, a non-profit focused on giving at-risk and underprivileged children the opportunity to be involved in extracurricular activities to help them develop the confidence and skills necessary to become successful adults.

Angie is the Director of Marketing of Masonite Architectural, a company that manufactures beautiful yet high performance doors. She is passionate about shaping better built-environments by providing solutions that can help people heal, rest, learn, and live better. Angie has a BS in Molecular and Microbiology and an MBA with an emphasis in Marketing from the University of Central Florida and University of Colorado, respectively. She loves to travel, read, and spend time outdoors with her son William and husband Christian.

Nikki Barker is Senior Counsel with Massey Law Group, a real estate, business law, and commercial litigation firm in St. Petersburg, Florida. In 2000, Nikki graduated from the University of Central Florida with a Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology, and a minor in Criminal Justice. She is a 2007 graduate of the Florida State University College of Law.

Nikki moved with her family to Florida from New Jersey in 1990. She has served with several non-profit groups, with a focus on working with children, including Halo, Ava’s Voice, the PTA of PS 183 and PTSA of Rye Neck Union Free School District, Play Area Association and the Children’s Advocacy Center of the Florida State University College of Law.

Nikki is honored to be a part of the Cultural Hub, and is dedicated to the revitalization of the area following Hurricane Michael.

Kim Ogren is a public interest consultant who plans for people, organizations, projects, and communities. Kim is a Panama City Beach native (Bay High 1988) with a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Florida with over twenty-five years of broad-ranging experience. She has worked to further community livability and resiliency at the state and local levels in Florida as an urban planner for the State of Florida, Monroe County, and Miami-Dade County. For ten years Kim worked for a national philanthropic support organization to advance livability, sustainability, and justice in communities and regions all over the country. For much of the last 15 years, Kim has enjoyed rerooting herself in Bay County and continues to split her time between Panama City Beach and Coral Gables, FL with her husband, David Henderson.

With deep roots in Bay County, Cynthia Smith is a retired arts educator, community volunteer, and artist. For 38 years she developed art curriculum and taught drawing, painting, ceramics, photography, and multiple 2/D and 3/D art mediums. Her teaching experience includes working with K-12 multi-level learners, at-risk students, and special needs students, and advanced instruction in AP studio/Art History as well as 14 semesters as a painting adjunct professor at the local college.  In 1987, she founded Underglass Framery, located next to the Gallery of Art in Panama City, which she continued to own and operate until 2005.

Cynthia has facilitated and organized community events, including directing children’s art activities for annual events at St. Andrews State Park and Camp Helen St Park.  She has served as a member on the St Andrew CRA Design and Planning Board, the volunteer Event Designer for the St. Andrews Publishing Museum, and as a committee member for several community and professional organizations. Cynthia has created multiple set designs for the local community theatre and coordinated educational events, art exhibits, and student performances.

As a life-long learner, even while teaching and running a business, Cynthia made time for her own artistic advancement through educational courses and studio workshops at Ringling College of Art and Design, LaSalle University, Florida State University, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Savanah School of Art and Design, and several residencies at SkopeArt in Skopelos Greece. International travel has influenced her understanding of cultural heritage/design that she has integrated into her personal work. Although she was a Painting major in graduate school, Cynthia has spent the last few years working in enamels, encaustics, and ceramics. Art making, travel, sailing, and renovating spaces continue to be her personal passions.

In my youth my dream was to be an artist. Always the creative and imaginative one, that dream was awakened in 2005 when I took an acrylic painting workshop. The obsession with painting began and I couldn’t wait to pick up a brush. For me art is not only my career but my joy. When I create, I crank up the music and dance. My experience in acrylics, encaustics and metal jewelry making are all incorporated into my latest sculptural assemblage work. The addition of sculpting in various types of clay gives me the opportunity to create one-of-a-kind beings. I love the process of taking discarded items and giving them a new life as imaginary creatures or spaces. My focus on fantasy forces me to stretch my already vivid imagination. I get inspiration from the creatures of the earth, mythology, and fantasy. While I work, I create a story for these creatures and their habitat. As that story develops the piece evolves. I keep adding to the piece until I am satisfied that it tells the story. My goal is that my artwork is unique, thought provoking, sparks the imagination and most times, a bit humorous.

Tesa Burch was born in Panama City, FL where she currently resides and works. Her family is recognized as a first family of Bay County Florida with the Bay County Historical Society.

She studied Fine Art at the University of West Florida in Pensacola where she graduated with Honors. Her work explores formal abstraction and figure study. She works in a variety of mediums including paint and found objects. Some of her most preferred objects for collage are taxidermy and vintage objects and fabrics. She likes to illustrate southern themes and romance, both their successes and failures. Her favorite color is “shiny”.

Tesa is also a professional event coordinator and has experience with marketing, PR and design. Content creation is her passion.

Pavel Amromin was born in Gomel, an industrial city in the former Soviet republic of Belarus. At age 13 he and his family immigrated to the United States and settled in Chicago. Pavel received his Bachelor of Fine Art with a concentration in sculpture from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and his Master of Fine Art in Ceramics from the University of Florida. Pavel is a recipient of the Florida Individual Artist Fellowship, and has exhibited his sculpture in juried and invitational exhibitions around the country. Currently he is the Gallery Director and Associate Professor at Gulf Coast State College.

Liz moved to Panama City from Michigan in 2005. She received her BA and PhD from the University of Michigan (Go Blue) and her JD from Cooley Law School. After a career in education as a teacher and administrator she served Of-Counsel with LaPointe and Associates in Michigan. She worked extensively in special education and curriculum and instruction. She is an avid supporter and consumer of the arts.

Mark White is originally from Long Island, New York. He attended the State University of New York at New Paltz. He received a Masters degree in Special Education from Queens College and began his professional life as a New York City public school Special Educator, working with elementary school aged children.

Following a sports related injury, he had a profound experience while under Chiropractic care, and felt a calling to change professions. After completing his education and training at Life Chiropractic College in Marietta, Georgia, he earned a Doctor of Chiropractic degree and practiced in Atlanta for a year before he relocated to Panama City Beach.

He practiced chiropractic care for 33 years, where his philosophy was that he could move the world, one vertebra at a time. Mark recently sold his practice and retired to focus on his artwork.

Mark grew up with a father who gave him an appreciation of woodworking and working with his hands. He has developed his own way to create art and express himself by repurposing wood to make recycled 3D art pieces. He is a fan of good music, sports, and the culture he grew up in and works to express his influences in his art.

Maxwell Miller founded the Cultural Hub of NW Florida, Inc. because he was a lifelong supporter of artists and the arts.  As a child, he worked with his mother, Mary Ola Reynolds Miller, at the Gallery of Art of Panama City.  Mary Ola founded the Gallery of Art, the new home of the Cultural Hub of NW Florida, Inc. in 1970 where she served as the community’s art appraiser, a mentor for artists, an art critic. The Gallery of Art was initially located in an old gas station before moving to its current location at 36 W. Beach Drive.  Mary Ola is credited for bringing art to Panama City through the founding of the Gallery of Art.

Although Max made a career in construction management and general contracting, he spent several decades of his personal life in the “back of house” operations of the Gallery of Art of Panama City. Living in the shadows of one of Panama City’s oldest art galleries (40 years of operation) provided Max with an appreciation for the arts as well as a recognition of the importance of art in a community and the positive influence it has on the individuals. Consequently, these influences contributed to Max establishing the Cultural Hub as a vehicle to enhance and promote local and regional art in Panama City.

Max graduated from Florida Atlantic University with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and worked as a project manager during the construction of the Regan Building in Washington D.C. as well as the construction of several riverboat casinos in the mid-west. He owned and operated MCS General Contractors, Inc., the Gallery of Art of Panama City, Inc., and the Artisan Enclave, a pottery and sculpture gallery in Panama City, where he created handmade pottery and turned wooden artisan bowls.  Max passed away on August 26, 2021.  He is deeply missed by his family, friends, and community, but his and his mother’s legacy shall live on through the Cultural Hub of NW Florida, Inc.

An observant listener and maker of things, Kim Griffin White is a lifelong artist with over four decades of professional experience in graphic design, branding, and marketing. She has managed both independent and commissioned projects, campaigns from concepts through completion for educational, medical, and nonprofit organizations in addition to private corporations including several Fortune 500 companies. Her career spans the art spectrum from graphic art to fine art. Her longest running client for both graphic design and fine art is The Carter Center in Atlanta, which has on permanent display, the Guinea Worm Eradication sculpture award that she designed and produced.

Kim has lived most of her life in north Florida, but after a dozen years of living in a vibrant downtown neighborhood in Atlanta, the coast beckoned and she relocated to Panama City twenty years ago. She challenges herself to uncover, encourage, teach and promote artists who cannot promote themselves especially in areas of the north Florida community. “Art lasts. If you want to understand the community, go see the art.”

As an founding member of the Board of Directors, Kim was an integral part and inspiration for the Cultural Hub of NW Florida, Inc. Her continued support and expertise are tremendously appreciated by the organization.