Dr. Rosie Lee Hooks

Rosie Lee Hooks is an administrator, curator, photographer, filmmaker, educator, producer, actor, singer, and first-degree black belt in Tang Soo Do Karate. She is a 35-year employee of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and director of the Watts Towers Arts Center Campus. In addition to conceptualizing, designing, and producing multicultural, multi-disciplined, and culturally specific festivals, special events, theater programs, curating exhibitions, and classes in art and museum education, she leads a team of artists-in-residence in the Garden Studio Gallery Program at the WTAC Campus, which designs and installs public art through the Watts neighborhood. She has produced more than 40 short films documenting the culture of various ethnic communities in Los Angeles County. 

While working at the Smithsonian Institution, producing the African diaspora program in the Festival of American Folklife, culminating for the U.S. Bicentennial, she traveled under “Official Passport” as a diplomatic liaison to countries in the Caribbean, South America, and Africa, delivering government-to-government invitations, under Henry Kissinger’s signature, from the United States to Ministries of Culture in those nations. She is also an award-winning actor with more than 40 years of experience and a founding member of the renowned singing ensemble Sweet Honey In The Rock.