Our local steering committee.
The Local Steering Committee is a group of cultural and tourism community leaders in New Orleans.
They provide Wanderful with meaningful input into the planning and promotion of the festival to:
Help foster representation and economic tourism benefit for the local cultural community and small, Black, Brown, and women-owned businesses, culture bearers, and cultural experience providers.
Connect their local communities to the Wanderfest experience and Wanderful community.
Help maintain the cultural integrity of local programming, experiences, and offerings around the festival.
Connect visiting travel content creators, tourism industry professionals, and festival attendees with cultural experience offerings that increase awareness, appreciation, and knowledge of the history and cultural traditions of New Orleans.
Adrianne “Ajax” Jackson
Adrianne “Ajax” Jackson is the Visionary Owner of Magnolia Yoga Studio, the first Black-owned Yoga Studio in New Orleans. She considers herself a Yoga entrepreneur, a multifaceted teacher, and a wellness visionary. Some of her professional goals are to facilitate positive Yoga experiences for all people, empower families, athletes, artists, students, and business teams to adopt healthy and preventative practices that lead to their own progressive and passionate lifestyles. Originally from Los Angeles, California and raised partially in Mexico and Brazil, Ajax has an African-American and Mexican family background. She identifies as a Black multi-cultural woman fluent in several languages such as Spanish, Portuguese, Yoga and Inspiration! One of her best attributes is helping people feel heard, comfortable, and welcomed. Ajax is also a great example of how to use Yoga to fulfill a robust, active, and balanced lifestyle. Owning a Yoga studio in New Orleans has given Ajax the opportunity to lead conversations, solutions and options on the complexities of health in Black America. Ultimately she encourages ownership of one’s health having had first-hand experience with how transformative this mindset can be. She believes passionately in human potential and her commitment to people’s health is what influences her every day.
Alana Harris
New Orleans native Alana "Mama Pretty" Harris is the founder of the Creole Belle Baby Dolls, a group of socially-conscious Black women maskers who use their platform to uplift and advocate for cultural bearers across the city. Keeper of cultural traditions, “Mama Pretty” loves honoring the rituals she learned from both her parents while growing up in the heart of Treme and the 7th Ward. From gumbo gatherings to Mardi Gras to St. Joseph Day altars, paying homage and storytelling are priorities for this Baby Doll. As current Deputy Director of Arts and Culture in the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Economy, she conceptualized the Embrace the Culture Initiative which serves as a platform to uplift and amplify the voices and talents of the city’s cultural bearers and musicians.
Instagram: @alanaharrisnola | @creolebellebabydolls
Facebook: @alana.harris.18 | @neworleanscreolebellebabydolls
Amber Tucker
Amber Tucker is a program manager at Propeller, where she works closely with New Orleans-area entrepreneurs to build ventures that are grounded in financial viability, social impact, racial equity, and a demonstrated commitment to the prosperity of the city and region. Propeller’s programs center Black native New Orleanians who view their businesses as a catalyst for positive change and the advancement of anti-racism initiatives. Amber is a proud advocate for New Orleans’ best small, locally-owned businesses that are found outside the main tourism hubs.
Denise Augustine
Denise Augustine is a seventh-generation Creole griot (a West African term for culture bearer and storyteller) who has been guiding walking tours in New Orleans for more than 20 years. Active in the local Voodoo community and as a Black Masking Babydoll, she will connect you to the authentic cultures and histories of New Orleans like nobody else. Having learned the art of storytelling through years of sitting at her grandmother’s kitchen table prepping for dinner in a too-small shotgun house in the Tremé, she is an expert at entertaining and engaging visitors with the unsung stories of New Orleans. Denise has been a guest lecturer on the Discovery Channel and National Geographic. She has taught Creole history and traditions throughout the city, including Voodoo and Hoodoo rites and rituals. With every tour, she uses her deep connections to New Orleans’ communities to bring you closer to the city’s best food, music, cultures, and traditions.
Gilda Lewis
Gilda Lewis is the visionary and founder of the Le Bon Ton Baby Dolls of New Orleans and owner of Gilda’s SHUZ Suite retail pop-up experience specializing in Afrocentric, festival, and seasonal wearables. A New Orleans native raised in the Magnolia Projects and educated in New Orleans Public Schools, her community engagement and hospitality work has revolved around youth advocacy, executive concierge services, outreach, and marketing. She’s served as a volunteer for a variety of hunger prevention, prison reform, social and economic justice coalitions, and is a 25-year volunteer for New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
Gilda was recruited into the New Orleans Baby Doll tradition in 1999 by culture-bearers Antoinette K Doe and Tee Eva, and launched her own group in 2020. Her love of community and desire to make a difference in people’s lives is the inspiration for her own love of travel, her motivation as a cultural ambassador, and her shop’s focus on products sourced locally and from the Republic of Ghana in West Africa, where she visits often.
Margie Perez
Margie Perez is a vivacious Singer and Songwriter specializing in a versatile blend of Blues, Pop, and Latin with a New Orleans Funky touch. Dubbed by Offbeat Magazine as "One of the hardest working musicians in New Orleans" she sings with many projects. She leads her own band which performs her original music and is also lead singer of the Latin big band Muévelo.
She performs all over New Orleans and has made multiple Festival appearances such as The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and French Quarter Fest. Margie is also a tour guide for Historic New Orleans Tours and leads a Music History walking tour through the French Quarter.
Marissa “MoeJoe” Joseph
MoeJoe is a New Iberia, Louisiana native and New Orleans resident who labels herself and dance style as Creole-Afro, specializing in the areas of folk and street dance. Her movements and class experiences celebrate southern dance culture and empowers the individual while fusing diasporic world movements to connect and educate about worldwide Creole culture. As a powerhouse instructor, performer and experience host, MoeJoe has made appearances on Real Housewives of Atlanta Season 14, has taught at festivals Wanderlust, Summit Retreat, Hulaween, New Orleans Caribbean Experience and Bayou Bacchanal to name a few. She has served as host and curator of discussions, Audacity of Twerk at Ace Hotel and Tulane Bounce Bus Ride: The Business of Bounce and featured on online shows Professional Black Girl and Phat Phat and All That. When MoeJoe is not hosting or organizing experiences she is an improvisational and folkloric dance performer for New Orleans rare groove DJ Soul Sister, Seguenon Kone’s Ivoire Spectacle, Reggae Band-Higher Heights, Cirque Zuma Zuma and Bounce artists- Ricky Bee, Cheeky Blakk and Ms. Tee to name a few.