Aileen Cassinetto served as San Mateo County Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2022. A Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100 Honoree and Academy of American Poets Fellow, her work has appeared in Poetry magazine and poets.org. She is featured in venues such as the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Japanese American National Museum, Kulturhuset Islands Brygge Cultural Center in Copenhagen, and the U.S. Consulate General in Shanghai, among others. Aileen co-edited the climate change anthology, Dear Human at the Edge of Time, a companion to the congressionally-mandated Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5), and wrote the lyrics to “Wide American Earth” which premiered at Carnegie Hall in June 2023. She was appointed Commissioner on the Status of Women in 2021, and currently leads the Office of Arts and Culture’s Youth Cultural Ambassadors program.