Ricardo Gamboa is an award-winning artist, activist, and academic based in their native Chicago, creating radically politicized art, media, performance and theater.

In Chicago, Ricardo is a member of the Free Street Theater, the Goodman Theater Playwrights Unit, a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists, and founding adult partner of the controversial ensemble The Young Fugitives.

In New York City, they are a fellow of the EmergeNYC program at Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics; a member of the New York Neo-Futurists; and are currently a doctoral candidate at New York University’s renowned American Studies program where they also received their M.A. in Arts Politics from Tisch School of the Arts (2013).

Gamboa’s creative output that mixes arts and politics is exemplified by recent projects that include:

• BRUJOS, a webseries gone viral following four gay Latino grads that are also witches slaying white supremacy.

• The Hoodoisie, a traveling live news show delivering radical takes on culture and politics.

• Meet Juan(ito) Doe, a play based on Chicago's Mexican-Americans' stories and presented at a renovated storefront on the city's Southside.

In 2019, Gamboa began working as a screenwriter in Hollywood and since then has written for Amazon Prime, FX, HBOMax, and Showtime.

Ricardo has won several awards including a Joyce Award and an International Connections Award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. They have worked with over 5,000 young people in the hemisphere.