Zipporah Yamamoto is a senior director with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro), where she directs the agency’s public art and exhibition programs. The programs under her direction include immersive public art experiences at transit stations being built to serve the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic game venues and beyond. Prior to her return to Metro in 2017, Yamamoto was the program director for Turnaround Arts: California, the state affiliate established to implement the national Turnaround Arts program, a signature initiative of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities developed under the leadership of First Lady Michelle Obama.
Before joining Metro, where Yamamoto has served for over thirteen years in total, she was the assistant director of the Public Art Studies Program at the University of Southern California Roski School of Art and Design. She is chair of the Subcommittee on Art and Design Excellence in Transportation of the Transportation Research Board, a division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which provides independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex transportation problems and inform public policy decisions.
Yamamoto has a PhD in Culture and Performance from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), an MPAS in Public Art Studies from the University of Southern California (USC), and a BFA in Art & Design Education from Pratt Institute.