Push Navigation Toggle Mobile Search Form Toggle Push Menu Toggle Breadcrumb Home Stories A Nonlinear Career ALUMNI, COMMUNITY, ARCHES A NONLINEAR CAREER By Zoe Branch ’18 Photo by Sy Bean Jun 14, 2021 If there’s anyone whose career demonstrates the value of the liberal arts, it’s Tony Gómez ’93. Today, he’s associate director of education at Tacoma Arts Live, but his career also has included being a K-12 teacher, arts administrator, percussionist, and PBS education producer. “One of the most powerful things about a liberal arts education is that you can look at big pictures,” he says, “and one of the challenges is that the world may not be organized according to what you’re able to see. So you have to be able to function within the silos the world has, and then start to build some bridges between those silos.” Gómez (holding a Neapolitan tambourine called a tammorra) plays percussion instruments from Afro-Latin, Mediterranean, and Arab cultures. The big pictures around which Gómez has built his life’s work are race, identity, and culture. Born in Texas to a Chicano activist and an Italian American VISTA volunteer, he moved with his family eight times throughout the West before he graduated high school. He dove into learning about identity as an undergrad, where he majored in comparative sociology and Spanish, and was a founding member of Puget Sound’s Latino Student Union (later known as Latinx Unidos). Advocacy for underrepresented communities has remained central to his work for the last 28 years, during which he has designed culturally diverse curricula, produced documentaries on the “opportunity gap,” and created after-school programs to connect low-income students to traditions like Mexican folkloric dance and global drumming. Gómez is also a percussionist—it’s a passion he discovered as a child, when he was drawn to drum circles in 1970s San Francisco. He specializes in Afro-Latin, Mediterranean, and Arabic styles, and his musical projects—such as his band Trío Guadalevín—use unexpected instruments like baroque guitar, oud, harp, and riq to explore connections among Mexico, the Mediterranean, Europe, and Africa. The resulting mélange of sounds and cultures creates a passport, Gómez says, “that allows you to connect with others.” EXPLORE MORE STORIES ALUMNI Playing It Forward Soccer was Maya Mendoza-Exstrom's way to a Puget Sound education. Now, 16 years after graduating, she’s making sure that local children can reap the benefits of the sport... ALUMNI Playing to Learn Twenty years ago, Tanya Saine Durand ’93 and her colleagues at the nonprofit Children’s Museum of Tacoma found themselves wondering if their jobs—their mission—should conti... ALUMNI Point of Pride Late into the night of July 11, 1997, Jenn (DeLury) Ciplet ’98 and a group of friends were dipping Styrofoam cups into bright colors of paint. They were members of the studen... BACK TO THE TOP VISIT APPLY GIVE UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND 1500 N. Warner St., Tacoma, WA 98416 CONTACT US facebook Instagram linkedin twitter Youtube flickr CAMPUS MAP & DIRECTIONS SECURITY SERVICES EMERGENCY TITLE IX & EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYMENT FOR THE MEDIA CONSUMER INFORMATION & DISCLOSURES OFFICES & SERVICES © 2021 UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND SLATER MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY RACE AND PEDAGOGY INSTITUTE