Erica Flores likes rock and roll, reading, science, eating, and dinosaurs, but not eating dinosaurs. She moved to Los Angeles from Austin, and while she laments the loss of Southern cuisine, she does not miss the Texas summer. Erica has been hanging around 826LA East for almost a full year, which has given her ample opportunity to brush up on elementary school gossip (Hannah Montana is so five minutes ago), test out the dusty recesses of her brain in geometry and algebra, and relearn the rules of freeze tag (where she excels in her mediocrity). Mostly, Erica loves being able to share her passion for learning with the great students in Echo Park, who teach her just as much as she hopes she teaches them. She is super excited about being one of the Volunteers of the Month, and can't think of a better way to start off 2009.

Amy Martin is an art director, graphic designer, and illustrator. A graduate of the University of Michigan, she's spent much of her career working on books, magazines, and newspapers including the Detroit Free Press and Los Angeles Times. Some of her recent clients have included The New York Times, TBWA\Chiat\Day, and Smog Design; she's currently Senior Designer at Knock Knock, a firm in Venice that makes smart, funny paper goods. This past summer she created a series of retro-inspired time travel posters for 826LA, following up with a HOPE Obama poster that hung in the Manifest Hope Gallery at the DNC and was pasted all over the country. Right now she's creating posters and collateral for Tiny Vaudeville.

Amy is a bookworm and indie rock obsessive, one who has traveled obscene distances to see her favorite bands play. She's an avid player of real and imagined sports and commissioner of a start-up U.S. Senate fantasy league. She is a clinical mid-Western who gets achingly homesick for frozen lakes and driveway basketball. You can see more of her work at design-book.blogspot.com.

Susan Mathison is a native of this fair town. She has a BA in Philosophy from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Film Production from UCLA. She has worked in post-production for Lucasfilm's THX division and Paramount Pictures, and is currently raising her kids (although she really should be bringing in some dough). She loves listening to people's stories, and will likely try to turn concept that into a project sometime soon. She loves working with seniors at Garfield High.

Susan lives in Silverlake with two kids, Nora, 13, and Emmett, 10, plus her husband Dirk, two dogs, two rats, and eight koi fish.