Trena Noval is a nationally recognized artist, arts writer, and curator. She has taught art and digital media in various universities and colleges, and in K-12 settings to kids for more than 18 years. She has received numerous awards and grants for her work from local and national foundations, state, and national granting agencies.

As a curator and writer of lens and digital media–based arts since early 1990s, Noval served as head curator for SF Camerawork in San Francisco for more than 10 years and as artistic director for two years until 2005. She served as a director, producer, and curator for the International Conference on Feminism Activism and Art from 1994–96, and recently as curator for ISEA (International Symposium for Electronic Arts) Public Domain Project for their ZERO One Festival in San Jose, Headlands Center for the Arts, and San Jose Arts Commission Artists Residency Program.

Noval also served as the editor of Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts, an internationally recognized critical arts journal for lens and digital media during her tenure at SF Camerawork, where she wrote about the arts and culture. She currently serves on the programming and curatorial committee for the Headlands Center for the Arts, in Sausalito, California.

Noval also teaches at Mills College, Graduate School of Education. She is an action researcher for arts integration through ACOE in partnership with Project Zero Research Program and Peralta Elementary School in Oakland, California, where she has been implementing a nationally recognized Arts Laboratory School program for the past five years. Here she has focused on arts integration and community video projects through the themes of community, environmental stewardship, and leads professional development in the arts.

Noval is a member of the Alameda County Arts Leadership Initiative and received an outstanding achievement award through the Oakland Museum of Art and Alameda County Office Of Education in 2007. She received a fellowship to Project Zero, Harvard University Graduate School of Education, in Cambridge in 2009.

She received her BFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia in 1980 and then earned her MFA in video, photography, and digital media in 1990 from Maryland Institute College of Art.