About The Speaker
Reyna Noriega
Reyna Noriega is a Miami-based Black and Afro-Latina visual artist, author, and educator who works across a variety of mediums, from graphic design, to painting, digital illustration, and photography. Through simplified shapes and forms in bold and vibrant shades, she portrays figures of people of color, architectural spaces, and landscapes. She helps tell the story of pride, joy, and vibrancy for women of color, whose stories are so often tied to generational traumas. In 2019, she notably published a collection of poems entitled In Bloom. Her multidisciplinary practice is devoted to highlighting and uplifting women and to helping them heal and harness joy and her Carribean background shapes her love for color and vibrancy. With layers of paint and pixels, Noriega offers a window into her life and those of all women, as she tells stories inspired by her culture and experiences, in which women can recognize themselves, feel represented, and feel empowered. Noriega received her BA in Psychology from Florida International University, with minors in Art and English. Over the course of the next four years, she taught graphic design and visual arts in a public high school and developed her passion and ability to teach, motivate, and inspire. She further refined her skill set as a creative director, public and motivational speaker, before becoming a full-time illustrator in 2018. Today her clients include Apple, Google, Science Magazine, NYTimes, Old Navy, Microsoft, The New Yorker, and many more.