Arts & Health Convening

Tanja Kunz is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator working at the intersection of visual art, cultural heritage, and community engagement. She is currently an interdisciplinary PhD candidate at the University of Maine. where her dissertation addresses topics in anthropology (medicine, labor and gender) with arts-based research.

Naj served as vice president, and a co-founder of the National Initiative for the Arts in Health in the Military and Lesley University’s Center for Arts in Health. A past president of the Society for the Arts in Healthcare, Naj is the former director of the Healing Arts program of the C. Everett Koop Institute at the Dartmouth Medical School and Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. Naj works as a consultant with Aesthetics, Inc. that uses the arts to create environments that engage, connect and heal. For over three decades, Naj has served as the arts coordinator for Connecting Youth and Community. Naj is a professional artist, known for creating large-scale environmental sculptures and, for many years, was represented by the Zolla-Lieberman gallery of Chicago, and an award-winning columnist.

Marcel’s work focuses on integrating creative solutions with rigorous systems management for social justice initiatives. Fusing a background in the performing arts with quantitative data analysis, Marcel worked in Tanzania (with support from the Sullivan Scholarship) on two separate initiatives: dance/theater messaging around HIV, as well as research on chimpanzee behavior with the Jane Goodall Institute Research Center. These ventures provided insights for effective communications within public health programming, best-practice in data collection and statistical research, and transnational advocacy networks that inform local health systems. Following this international experience, Marcel worked as an Operations Manager for CultureWorks Greater Philadelphia, Dance/USA Philadelphia, and consulted numerous non-profits on building robust programs for community engagement initiatives. With funding, Marcel attended Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health and graduated as the Commencement Speaker in 2017 with a Masters of Public Health and deepened expertise in community engagement and data analytics for global health programs.

Marcel is an arts & wellbeing expert and is an affiliate of University of Florida’s Center for Arts in Medicine and the American Evaluation Association’s Arts & Culture Group. A fluent Swahili speaker, they have consulted in 12+ countries.

Marcel co-founded Performance Hypothesis in 2021 because of a lifelong curiosity about the intersections of arts and wellbeing.

Jeremy Nobel, MD, MPH, is a long time faculty member of the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His teaching and research activities focus on population health, social determinants of health, and the design and evaluation of health improvement intervention programs.

With the unique background and training required to bridge scientific and humanistic disciplines, he has contributed to significant explorations into how creative expression mitigates illness and enhances wellbeing. He has become a prominent advocate for creative engagement, ancillary to and integrated with traditional medical care, as a pathway to healing.

As President and Founder, he leads the 501(c)3 nonprofit The Foundation for Art & Healing and its signature initiative, Project UnLonely.

Dr. Nobel’s book published by Penguin Random House in 2023, Project UnLonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection, unpacks our personal and national experience of loneliness to discover its roots and take steps to find comfort and connection. He clarifies how meaningful connection can be nourished and sustained, and he reveals that an important component of the healing process is engaging in creativity.

Dr. Nobel graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University within the Science and Human Affairs program. He received his medical education at the University of Pennsylvania and completed his internal medicine residency at the Beth Israel Hospital, Boston. Board-certified in both Preventive Medicine and Internal Medicine, Dr. Nobel also holds dual master’s degrees in Epidemiology and Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

A published poet, Dr. Nobel has received several awards for his poetry including the Bain-Swiggett Prize from Princeton University, and the American Academy of Poets Prize from the University of Pennsylvania.