Lannette D. Alvarez, is a performer, teaching artist, choreographer, humanitarian, Artistic Director of VueLA Performing Artists, and a New York Cares Mural Artist, with a Harold W. McGraw “Good Citizenship Award”. She has been hailed as "one of 25 artists to watch in NYC" by BLEEP Online Magazine in 2012. Her teaching credits include "Mentoring the Muse Scholars" at CUNY Hunter College, American Ballet Theater Arts in Education (Project Plié TA), Bronx Arts Ensemble, Brooklyn Ballet, The Beacon Program, Ballet Hispanico, CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College, City Center Theater Outreach, Dance Theater of Harlem, Project Find Centers, Purelements, Italy, and Mukonoso Yochien of Amagasaki Japan. Ms. Alvarez has also served as demonstrator and assistant to choreographer during residencies at both The Ailey/Fordham University BFA Program and Joffrey Ballet School for Bessie Awardee Germaul Barnes. Ms. Alvarez has performed in works by Kyle Abraham, Germaul Barnes, Sara Erde, William Gil, Yesid Lopez, Nicola Marino, Pedro Ruiz, William Whitner, Edgar Zendejas and others. She has been seen on stages of local and national venues including The Kennedy Center Washington DC, NYLA/New York Live Arts, Aaron Davis Hall, Joyce SOHO, Kumble Theater, Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out Stage in Becket MA, Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Kaye Playhouse, Theater for a New City, IZOD Center, New York’s City Hall, Riverbank State Park, Bronx Academy of Art & Dance, Galapagos Art Space, and also abroad in Calabria Italy, Amagasaki Japan, and Seville Spain. Currently, she continues to teach and perform while completing a graduate degree at the Arnhold Graduate Dance Education Program at Hunter College, CUNY as the Heather Watts Scholar.

Jody Gottfried Arnhold is a dance educator and advocate and the Founder of Dance Education Laboratory (DEL) at 92Y. DEL was named best program by the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO). Arnhold serves on the Advisory Council for the Arts Education at the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) and is the Co-Chair of the Committee that created the NYCDOE Curriculum Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in Dance PreK-12. She is on the Board of Directors and Chair of the Dance Advisory Committee at Hunter College. She is on the Board at 92Y, Honorary Chair at Ballet Hispanico, and serves on the Advisory Committee of Dance/NYC. Ms. Arnhold has received the Visionary Award from NDEO, the Spotlight in Dance Education Award presented by NYCDOE and the Irmy Award for Dance Education from the Laban Institute of Movement Studies. She holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and MA in Dance Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and is a Certified Movement Analyst. Arnhold taught dance in the NYC public schools for over 25 years. 

Ted Berger is the Treasurer/ Trustee of the Joan Mitchell Foundation. He is the founding Executive Director of NYCreates and has served as Project Director of the Urban Artist Initiative/ NYC and numerous other organizations including, among others, the Brooklyn Public Library, Louisiana Cultural Economy Foundation, Robert Giard Foundation, and Rutgers University. He is Executive Director Emeritus of the New York Foundation on the Arts (NYFA). Berger joined NYFA in 1973 and retired in 2005. He presently serves on numerous other boards and committees, including: ArtsConnection, Asian American Arts Alliance, Center for West Park, CUE Art Foundation, Design Trust for Public Space, HB Studio and Playwright’s Foundation, the International Studio and Curatorial Program, and the New York City Arts Coalition. He is also on the Honorary Board of the Alliance of Artist Communities and Advisory Committees for the Actors Fund, CERF+, Brodsky Center, and the Research Center for Arts and Culture. He was formerly Assistant Dean for Columbia University’s Graduate Faculties (now Graduate School of Arts and Sciences) and School of International Affairs. Berger writes and speaks extensively on arts and artists and cultural policy and is considered one of the foremost people in the country focused on support for contemporary artists. 

Larry Bomback, joined the Cultural Data Project as Chief Operating Officer / Chief Financial Officer in February 2014. A senior financial and operations executive, as well as a respected arts practitioner, Bomback brings expertise in nonprofit administration, cost accounting, data analytics and strategic planning to the CDP. Prior to his role with the CDP, he was Director of Finance and Operations at OPERA America. He co-led a $14.5M capital campaign to design and build the National Opera Center, a 25,000 square foot performing arts facility, and he managed the organization through a period of tremendous growth that saw operating revenues and expenditures nearly double. In 2008, Bomback led a team that integrated OPERA America’s Professional Opera Survey within the CDP, making OPERA America the first and only arts service organization to partner with the CDP on a national level. Previously, he worked as Operations Manager at New York Youth Symphony. He is a member of the institute Management Accountants, Bridgestar’s Nonprofit CFO Networking Group and a former Board Member of the Bronx Charter School for the Arts where he chaired the development committee. Bomback is an expert in nonprofit accounting and skilled at communicating its idiosyncrasies and nuances to staff, board members, and key stakeholders. He has presented lectures and written articles on best practices in nonprofit financial management, creating great financial statements, changes to the Form 990, Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act (UPMIFA), and tax-exempt bond financing. In his spare time, Bomback sings tenor in the award-winning barbershop quartet, ‘Round Midnight, and is the founder of the acclaimed Voices of Gotham men’s chorus in NYC. He is also an accomplished jazz pianist. 

Tammy Bormann, through Tammy Bormann Consultants, is committed to dismantling racism through knowledge, dialogue and systemic change. Bormann began her life’s work with the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ) in the Greater Boston regional office in 1986.  In 1995, she became the first woman to serve as NCCJ’s National Vice President for Programs, a position she subsequently left to begin her own consulting practice. In the last 20 years, she has had the privilege of partnering with consultants across the country who are equally committed to dismantling racism. Bormann researches, designs and facilitates long-term dialogic learning processes that disseminate knowledge, create lenses of awareness, and empower individuals and organizations to dismantle the systems of privilege and disadvantage that continue to compromise the balance of social justice in the United States. A core component of her work involves facilitating and training others to facilitate meaningful dialogue that invites deep learning and reflection.  Since 2008, Bormann has consulted with the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, a worldwide network of historic sites, museums, and initiatives dedicated to remembering past social justice struggles and addressing their contemporary legacies.  In her work with the Coalition, she has partnered with more than 50 national and international museums to prepare facilitators to design and lead meaningful public dialogic learning processes using museum and site content as catalysts.

In addition to museums and historic sites, Bormann has worked with a wide variety of clients throughout the United States including universities, seminaries, churches, synagogues, private foundations, corporations and not-for-profit organizations.  She provides custom-designed educational processes that disseminate knowledge and information, engage deep reflection, motivate action, and establish organizational strategies to dismantle systems of discrimination, privilege and disadvantage. She earned her Bachelor of Arts with a double major in French and Communication Studies from Muhlenberg College and a Master’s degree in Education from Harvard University. She currently chairs the Board of Directors of Urban Bush Women, Inc.; she is Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of Muhlenberg College; and Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of Art Horizons, Inc.

Reisa Brafman is the Social Consciousness Leader of Community Partnerships & Women's Initiatives at EILEEN FISHER.  Her activities are wide ranging—on Monday she might be marching across the Brooklyn Bridge for International Women’s Day and on Tuesday meeting a girls’ theater group that received an EILEEN FISHER Activating Leadership Grant.  A legal background inspires Brafman’s passion for both social justice and EILEEN FISHER’s philanthropic mission of supporting women and girls. She actively seeks, cultivates and manages relationships with the brand’s nonprofit and community partners. She facilitates the brand’s various committees, including the Activating Leadership Grant Program, the Community Partnership Grant Program, and the Volunteer Task Force.  She is also an active member of the Business Grant Program for Women Entrepreneurs.  Brafman began her career at EILEEN FISHER as a sales associate at the Columbus Avenue store in New York City. Before joining EILEEN FISHER, she worked as the Senior Staff Attorney at Nassau County Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Her volunteer background includes serving as an educator for Child Abuse Prevention Services, a hotline crisis counselor at Long Island Crisis Center and a volunteer educator at Cornell Cooperative Extension Program.  She received her Juris Doctor in 1991 from Albany Law School, Union University and is admitted to practice in New York and Connecticut.   

Alex Champion is an archivist residing in Maryland. He came to that state through The HistoryMakers IMLS fellowship and partnership with the Maryland State Archives. He has since been the digital project archivist for Glenstone, a contemporary art museum in suburban DC, and Preservation Hub Manager at the Dance Heritage Coalition. In all three positions he cataloged and/or conducted digital preservation work and wrote administrative documentation for analog, digitized, or born digital video assets using FileMaker Pro, CollectiveAccess, or ffmpeg command line scripts. When not digitizing video at the DC digihub he is working with the DHC's Web developer to design the DHC's CollectiveAccess instance.

Kevin Clark led the creation of New Music USA’s project platform, which converts a traditional grant application into a public-facing project page. The platform leverages the grants process itself to create a powerful tool for audience engagement. Clark is also active as a composer both for theater and web, has written for #24mag, podcasts with Actually Happening, speaks on arts entrepreneurship, and consults on platforms and strategy for the arts and technology sectors. 

Anne Coates, Dance/NYC’s research consultant, is a management and research consultant to nonprofit arts organizations working on issues of equity, access, sustainability and resilience.  Vice President at the Municipal Art Society from 2011-2014, she was responsible for the arts portfolio at MAS as part of its livable city platform. She also led strategy development for the organization, as well as special initiatives, including community-based planning and arts activation in Brownsville, Brooklyn. She was Vice President at the Alliance for the Arts from 1996-2011, directing special projects including the large-scale technology project, NYC ARTS; advancing audience building and arts advocacy, including research. She is a graduate of Syracuse University with Bachelor of Arts degrees in both Anthropology and Secondary School Education. She was awarded a Master of Arts degree in Arts Administration by Columbia University in 1994. Ms. Coates has worked in the field for over 25 years in arts management, finance, fundraising, project management and operations. She serves on the Coro Alumni Advisory Board.  She has served on the board of the Fine Arts Federation in New York, the Selection Committee for the Nonprofit Coordinating Committee Nonprofit Management Excellence Awards, the New York Cultural Data Project Task Force, and on the boards of Women in Development and the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment, the New York City Department of Education’s Visual and Performing Arts Task Force, and the Project Audience Oversight Committee. She is a Coro Leadership New York XXI graduate and 2013 Rockwood Institute Arts Leadership Fellow.   

Laurie A. Cumbo is the New York City Council Member for the 35th district; representing the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Crown Heights, Prospect Heights and parts of Bedford Stuyvesant.  As Chair of the Women’s Issues Committee at the New York City Council, she has been an aggressive champion of women’s workforce equality including gender pay equity, parental rights and reproductive rights. She is also a strong advocate for youth empowerment, subsidized and affordable housing, arts and culture, and senior citizens’ rights, among many other priorities.  Ms. Cumbo was born and raised in Brooklyn, where she attended and graduated from the Berkeley Carroll Day School in Park Slope and Brooklyn Technical High School in Fort Greene. After graduating Spelman College in Atlanta, GA with a degree in Fine Art, she returned to Brooklyn and received her Master’s Degree in Visual Arts Administration from New York University. At the age of twenty-two, while pursuing her graduate studies at NYU, Ms. Cumbo used her coursework and thesis to develop MoCADA, Brooklyn’s first Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts. She incorporated MoCADA as a 501c3 non-profit institution with enthusiastic support from the Brooklyn community of Bedford Stuyvesant and surrounding neighborhoods. As a cultural leader, entrepreneur, activist, college professor, educator, lecturer and small business owner working in the not-for-profit sector, Ms. Cumbo has dedicated her life to community development and preserving the dynamic elements of diversity that make Brooklyn, New York what it is today. 

Council Member Cumbo has worked with her colleagues in government to pass monumental legislation including: universal pre-Kindergarten for all eligible four-year olds and after school programs for middle-school-aged youth, and extending the right to paid sick leave to half a million more New Yorkers. Ms. Cumbo introduced and passed Intro 187, which will mandate an annual report from the Administration on the number of youth in foster care who graduate from high school to increase transparency on the progression of the youth and improve the City’s ability to better assess the Administration for Children’s Services. This law and her platform is aimed at raising the benefit floor for more New Yorkers, integrating the arts, utilizing a holistic education model and reducing income inequality in New York City.

Alberto Denis is currently a member of Third Rail Projects and featured in their 2013 Bessie Award winning production of Then She Fell as original cast in the role of Lewis Carroll. In 2008 he created [QuA²D] = The Queens Academy of Arts & Dance after leaving his position as Production Director/Producer for Dance New Amsterdam where he created the staff infrastructure for their inaugural theater on Chambers Street in lower Manhattan, while co-curating their first 3 seasons of programing. Most recently Mr. Denis has enjoyed an unprecedented successful rise to prominence in the international burlesque scene through his alter ego of GoGo Gadget, whom he premiered in Fall of 2011 and has since taken to stages for the first two inaugural NY Boylesk Festivals, the London Burlesque Festival, Toronto Burlesque Festival and most recently debuted in Paris at the Lettingo Cabaret. Previously he created the Wight Room Dance Series presented at The Movement Salon near Union Square. Mr. Denis has toured the world (Dubai, Dublin, Barcelona, Bangkok, Taipei, Mexico City, Oslo, Prague & others) as a Stage Manager, Audio Engineer, Assistant Technical Director & Production Electrician as well as a Performer for many choreographers. He has performed for Arthur Aviles' Typical Theater for five years & in projects for Doug Elkins, Risa Jaroslow, Palissimo Dance Theater, Dixie Fun Dance Theater, ann and alexx make dances, Marta Renzi, Alexandra Beller, Michael Leleux, Heidi Latsky Dance, Lawrence Goldhuber, Luis Lara Malvacias, JoAnna Mendl Shaw’sEquus Projects, and Mei Yin Ng’s Mei-Be Whatever. He was also a featured performer in the Whitney Museum's Christian Marclay: Festival performance of Prêt-a´-Porter. His choreography has been produced at Dance Theater Workshop's Family Matters, Danspace Project’s Food For Thought, Dixon Place’s Body Blend & Moving Men, BAAD!’s Boogie Down Dance Series and Out Like That Festival, The LaGuardia Performing Arts Center and Kinetics Dance Theater, Baltimore MD. He’s created sound designs for Alexandra Beller, Richard Rivera, Nathan Trice, Arthur Aviles and Karl Anderson. Denis has taught Arthur Aviles' Swift/Flow technique as well as Contact Improvisation, and Composition at Trinity College, Lourdes College and the Kinetics Dance Theater Summer Intensive, in Baltimore, MD. He has also served on the Dance Theater Workshop Curatorial Advisory Committee, Bronx Council on the Arts BRIO Awards Panel, Queens Council on the Arts artist panel, DCA & LMCC grant panels, and on the Dance/NYC Advisory Committee. He enjoys working part time as an event coordinator and DJ for Expressway Music. www.about.me/albertodenis

Stephanie Dockery is the Manager, Marketing Partnerships at Lincoln Center, partnering with corporations to raise significant funds from philanthropic and marketing channels for the institution.  Previously, she worked at Americans for the Arts, Arts & Business Council of NY, running the Emerging Leaders of New York Arts (ELNYA) program, the Arts Leadership Institute, and the Multicultural Arts Management Internship Program. In her free time, she is a board member of The Clemente, a member-investor in Venture Philanthropy Fund, and Head Class Agent of her college. Dockery received a Master's in Art Business at Sotheby's Institute-Singapore, a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Art History at Williams College, and she is currently studying Mandarin at NYU.

Tom Finkelpearl is the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. In this role he oversees city funding for nonprofit arts organizations across the five boroughs and directs the cultural policy for the City of New York. Prior to his appointment by Mayor Bill de Blasio, Commissioner Finkelpearl served as Executive Director of the Queens Museum for twelve years starting in 2002, overseeing an expansion that doubled the museum’s size and positioning the organization as a vibrant center for social engagement in nearby communities. He also held positions at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, working on the organization’s merger with the Museum of Modern Art, and served as Director of the Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art program. Based on his public art experience and additional research, he published a book, Dialogues in Public Art (MIT Press), in 2000. His second book, What We Made: Conversations on Art and Social Cooperation (Duke University Press, 2013) examines the activist, participatory, coauthored aesthetic experiences being created in contemporary art. He received a BA from Princeton University (1979) and an MFA from Hunter College (1983).  

Amy Fitterer has served as Executive Director of Dance/USA since January 2011 after serving as the director of government affairs for both Dance/USA and OPERA America.  Under her leadership, Dance/USA has developed the Institute for Leadership Training, a national mentorship program with support from the American Express Foundation; re-designed the re-granting program Engaging Dance Audiences, with support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; undergone a national strategic planning process; and evolved the organizational structure of the branch offices with an eye towards sustainability and growth.  Fitterer currently serves on the Board of the Performing Arts Alliance, a national network of more than 27,000 organizational and individual members comprising the professional, nonprofit performing arts and presenting fields.  In January 2014, Fitterer joined the Advisory Board for the Dizzy Feet Foundation whose mission is to support, improve, and increase access to dance education in the United States. A former ballet dancer and classical pianist, Fitterer received her ballet training from the Nutmeg Conservatory for the Arts in Connecticut and a BS in piano performance from Indiana University School of Music.  In 2008, Fitterer completed her masters in arts administration from Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City.

Marjani Forté-Saunders is a Pasadena, CA native and Harlem resident.  She traveled as a performer with Urban Bush Women Dance Co. for 5 yrs, and is now co-founder with Nia Love, of LOVE|FORTÉ.  She is a 2014 Princess Grace Choreography Fellowship Awardee, and has received support her work being Here… from the FCA, Puffin Foundation, 651 Arts, LMCC, and New Music USA. Throughout her career Forté-Saunders has been supported by many others including the Jerome Foundation (2013, 2014) and Mertz Gilmore Foundation with LOVE|FORTÉ (2013). Her work has been presented by Danspace Project, the Kelly Strayhorn Theatre, Judson Church, Mckenna Museum, Harlem Stage, The Pillsbury Theatre and several colleges/universities i.e. Hunter College CUNY. Forté-Saunders will begin a NYLA Studio Series in 2015, premiering work 2016/17. She is a passionate educator, having taught master classes and workshops internationally, and is a member of UBW’s BOLD Teaching Network. She is currently a Guest Lecturer/Choreographer at Princeton University. She moves onward in her work honoring that it stems from being born in and having engaged with culturally rich, vibrant, historic, and politically charged communities.

Ana Nery Fragoso is originally from the Canary Islands, Spain, where she performed and choreographed extensively. She attended the Alvin Nikolais Dance Lab (NYC) for two years, graduated from Hunter College (B.A. Dance /Education) and earned a M.F.A. in Choreography from Sarah Lawrence College. She has been the recipient of two grants from the Ministry of Culture in Spain and a J. Javits Fellowship award. For eleven years, Fragoso taught at P.S. 315, a Performing Arts Elementary School in Brooklyn, where she created a dance curriculum supported by the Laban Movement Analysis framework that emphasized improvisation, technique and dance making. She was the dance specialist at the East Village Community School in Manhattan as well where she created a brand new dance program. Mrs. Fragoso was a member of the New York City Department of Education Dance Blueprint Writing Committee and worked as a NYCDOE dance facilitator co-designing professional development workshops for New York City Department of Education dance specialists. She worked as a dance coach for the Artful Learning Community Grant (ALC) doing action research to develop strategies for collaborative inquiry around formative assessment practices and student learning in dance for six years and was part of the Arts Achieve team, a four-year project that developed innovative dance assessment tools and strategies.  Fragoso has been a faculty member of the Dance Education Laboratory (DEL) at the 92nd St Y from 2007 to 2014. She is currently the Dance Director for the NYCDOE Office of Arts and Special Projects.

Gina Gibney has created a repertory of over thirty works, including fourteen evening length projects that have been widely presented throughout the United States and abroad. In recent years, her work has been presented by such distinguished organizations as Works and Process at the Guggenheim Museum, Florence Gould Hall, Danspace Project, Symphony Space, White Bird Dance (Oregon) the Yale Repertory Theater (Connecticut), L’Agora de la Danse (Montreal, Canada) and Internationale Tanzmesse (Dusseldorf, Germany). Described as a “poet of modern dance” by the New York Times, Gibney is also dedicated to bringing the power of dance – both in performance and in practice – to new audiences and communities. Gibney has received recognition and support from prestigious organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Jerome Robbins Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, New York Community Trust/Lila Acheson Wallace Theater Fund and many others. Committed to serving the dance community, Gibney has established Gibney Dance Center, a two-facility resource for training, creation and presentation. Gibney serves on the Boards of Directors of Dance/NYC, and is a former Director of Danspace Project and Dance/NYC. She is a frequent panelist and speaker on the topics of dance, social action and entrepreneurship. Gibney is a native of Ohio.

Russell Granet, Executive Director of Lincoln Center Education (LCE), is internationally known for his work in arts education. Mr. Granet joined Lincoln Center after running his own international consulting practice, Arts Education Resource (AER).  Prior to founding AER, Granet held the following leadership positions as Director of Professional Development at The Center for Arts Education—The NYC Annenberg Challenge; Director of Education at The American Place Theatre; and senior teaching artist at the Creative Arts Team. Since 1995 he has been on the faculty at New York University, where he developed and teaches the course “Drama with Special Populations.”  Since his appointment in September 2012, he has spearheaded LCE’s highly successful fundraising efforts, its renovation, and the rebranding initiative that simultaneously confirms Lincoln Center’s educational mission and its message of dedication to bringing the arts to all schoolchildren.

Amanda Hameline is a choreographer, producer, and arts administrator. She tells absurd stories through movement interwoven with text, props and other things. In 2012 she founded the interdisciplinary production company Amanda + James with James Danner. She is also the Development Associate at the Martha Graham Dance Company, and a member of the Dance/NYC Junior Committee. Before all this she interned at Gallim Dance for both the Executive Director, Max Hodges and Artistic Director, Andrea Miller, and graduated from Harvard College (2012). 

Chad Herzog has served as the director of the performing arts at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, since October 2006 and curator of the College’s performance series since 2002. Since taking over the program, participation in the arts at Juniata has increased by over 600%. He serves on the board of directors for Citizens for the Arts in Pennsylvania, Gotham Arts Exchange, North American Performing Arts Managers and Agents, and on the executive board of Penn State Public Media. He has served on the boards of FOCUS Dance, Pennsylvania Presenters, Big Brother Big Sisters Huntingdon County, Huntingdon Arts Festival, and the Huntingdon County Arts Council. When not seeking out the latest technology trends, Herzog's mission is to investigate and implement audience development techniques through curation in the arts. He is a frequent speaker and panelist as well as invited international delegate to numerous arts and culture forums including SXSW, the Edinburgh Festival, National Endowment for the Arts, Association of Performing Arts Presenters, and EMC2. Herzog created and developed articulture, a community supported arts program; serves as an executive producer on the soon to be released feature film Spell; and is the original producer of One Radio Host, Two Dancers: Ira Glass, Monica Bill Barnes, and Anna Bass in concert. Herzog has a Masters of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College.

Michael Hickey has worked for nearly two decades building corporate, nonprofit and public sector partnerships on issues ranging from economic development, to affordable housing, environmental sustainability, creative placemaking, social impact investment, tech for good, and more.  From his beginnings as a social worker he made the unlikely move to banking, working for ten years in community development finance and corporate philanthropy at Deutsche Bank.  He then went on to become the founding executive director of the nation’s single largest foreclosure prevention intermediary: the Center for NYC Neighborhoods.  Today, as an independent consultant to the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors, Hickey works with his clients raise and deploy capital, create and strengthen relationships, and extend visibility.  His projects include the 2013 SUS/Bank of America Social Impact Investment Conference, and launching Civic Consulting USA, a nonprofit building public/private partnerships to help cities take on some of their most intractable challenges.  

Kathleen Isaac is the Director of the Arnhold Dance Education Program at CUNY Hunter College. She has been a leader in dance professional development, advocacy, K-12 teaching practice and dance assessment in New York City, New York State, nationally and internationally.  She authored, provided professional development for and was lead facilitator and trainer for Revelations – An Interdisciplinary Approach for the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater from 1999-2010.  She wrote Read My Hips® for the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago, worked as a mentor with Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Education Director through the DELCAP program, in the creation of the Firebird Curriculum.  Ms. Isaac continues to learn about and share best practices in student-centered integration of dance and technology, student-to-student dance mentoring and interdisciplinary models of learning.  Her work with dance students in public schools for over 25 years has been recognized by President Clinton’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities as a paradigm for the nation and featured in the New York Times, Dance Magazine, Dance Teacher, NBC News, CNN and Bravo.  Her choreography for students has been performed at Hunter College, the Alvin Ailey Studios, Apollo Theater, Lincoln Center, New York City Center Studios and at Mayor Bloomberg’s 2008 State of the City Address at Flushing Meadows Park.  Kathleen is a New York State Dance Education Association Board Member and NYSDEA’s Director of Awards.  She received a BA in Dance at SUNY Brockport, an MA in Dance from New York University, Gallatin School of Individualized Study, began her doctoral studies at Teachers College, Columbia University, and has completed post-graduate work at NYU and Empire State College.

Marianne Jackson had a 28-year career with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Region II.  She has broad and in-depth experience in disaster planning, response and recovery, working with government officials/emergency managers at all levels, the media, voluntary agencies, Native American tribes and private sector.  She served on over 80 Presidential disaster declarations nationwide in urban, rural and OCONUS locations.  As Federal Coordinating Office, she authorized over $2-billion from the President’s Disaster Relief Fund.  Her high-profile operations include Northridge earthquake, Katrina, 9/11, Hurricane Marilyn (Puerto Rico), Hurricane Omar (U.S. Virgin Islands) and Irene (NYS).  She served on FEMA National Emergency Response teams and on Region II teams, deploying pre-landfall to at-risk states during hurricane season.  Jackson developed and implemented FEMA’s first Special Needs program in 1997 in North Dakota.  She participated in 9/11 Lessons Learned seminars in Australia, sponsored by Australia Emergency Management and represented FEMA before U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works for 9/11 (Senators Clinton and Lieberman).  

Diane Jacobowitz (BFA, Ohio State University; MFA, Connecticut College) has had a distinguished career in performing, choreography and arts administration. She has taught dance for 26 years at numerous schools, institutions and universities.  She has directed and taught at the Dance Department at Westchester Music and Arts Camp and Hunter College Dance Department. She was instrumental in establishing the Dance Major at Long Island University, where she was a professor for 9 years teaching ballet, modern, choreography, aerobics and speech. She taught and directed the middle school dance program and afterschool dance elective at the Berkeley Carroll School in Park Slope for 6 years. Jacobowitz choreographed and directed her own company, Diane Jacobowitz Dance Theater, for 15 years performing at BAM in 1992. She founded Dancewave in 1995 with the mission of bringing dance to a broad spectrum of the city youth population, particularly to those talented dancers who lacked the means to afford pre-professional training. Her main focus has been working with young people as artists in the making and connecting them early to the rigor of high level performance and exposure to world renowned dance artists. As Executive/Artistic Director of Dancewave for the past 20 years, Jacobowitz has developed innovative programming to capture the talents and imagination of young dancers including a unique dance performance training curriculum, which emphasizes rigor, nurturing with coach mentoring and group teambuilding. Some of the programs she has developed, in addition to the Dancewave Company model, include Dancing Through College and Beyond, the Dance Career Symposium and the Kids Cafe Festival. Dancewave, under her leadership, currently reaches over 3,000 young people citywide through programs both at the Dancewave School and in partnership with over ten New York City public schools. She is currently leading the campaign for Dancewave's city capital project-- the opening/launch of a brand new dance center in downtown Brooklyn in 2017.

For the past 26 years, Sharon Jensen has served as Executive Director of Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts.  Jensen and Inclusion in the Arts received the 2011 Tony Honor for “Excellence in Theatre” and in 2009, Mayor Michael Bloomberg presented Jensen with the City’s diversity “Made in NY” award for Inclusion in the Arts’ “significant contributions to the City’s entertainment industry.” Jensen and Inclusion in the Arts champion the creative power of diversity and inclusion in theatre, film and television:  Jensen and her staff work closely with arts and entertainment unions, guilds, trade associations, artists and other professional practitioners for full inclusion throughout the industry.  Jensen is a Member of the Board of The Actors Center (NYC); serves on The Broadway League’s Diversity Summit series as well as on Dance/NYC’s Disability Task Force; and served on the Task Force for the 1998 and 2009 National Summits on Careers in Arts for People with Disabilities, organized by the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the U.S. Departments of Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, Social Security Administration and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. From 1971 to 1975, Jensen worked in the casting department of Theatre Communications Group and for the next 13 years, served as Executive Director of the League of Professional Theatre Training Programs.  Jensen received her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Michigan and, in 2013, was inducted into Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre, and Dance’s Hall of Fame.

Dr. Jamie Jewett is a choreographer, filmmaker, and new media artist who directs Lostwax Multimedia Dance. He creates hardware and software systems for use in live performance. He is an Associate Arts Professor of Dance and New Media at NYU/Tisch. Previously he was the Director of Dance at the College of Morris in NJ and a Professor in the Masters program in Sound, Image, and the Body at E.M.A. Fructidor in France. Jewett was the 2012 State of Rhode Island Choreographic Fellow, and recent works have been seen at the New Genre Festival (OK), Ringling Museum (FL), Here (NYC), Danspace (NYC), the Atlas Institute (CO), Boston Cyberarts (MA), and FirstWorks (RI) as well as London, Amsterdam, Dijon, and Vancover. Jewett has been awarded multiple fellowships, commissions, and grants including being named the 2012 State of Rhode Island Choreographic Fellow. He has been an artist in residence at HERE Center for the Arts in New York, at STEIM in Amsterdam, and at Perishable Theater in Providence, RI. Lostwax has been voted the best dance company in Rhode Island by readers of the Providence Phoenix. 

Virginia Johnson is a founding member and former principal dancer, now Artistic Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem. During her 28 years with the company she toured the world performing in such ballets as Agon, Concerto Barocco, Voluntaries, Creole Giselle, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Fall River Legend, the latter three filmed and broadcast  on television (Fall River Legend won a cable ACE award from the Bravo Network). Later choreographic works include ballets created for Goucher College, Dancers Responding to AIDS, the Second Annual Harlem Festival of the Arts, Thelma Hill Performing Arts Center and Marymount Manhattan College, where she was also an adjunct professor. After retiring from performing, she founded POINTE Magazine and was editor-in-chief from 2000-2009. Her honors include a Young Achiever Award from the National Council of Women, the Dance Magazine Award, a Pen and Brush Achievement Award, the Washington Performing Arts Society's 2008-2009 Pola Nirenska Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2009 Martha Hill Fund Mid-Career Award. She is a Trustee of Dance/USA and serves on the advisory board of Dance/NYC.

David Johnston is Executive Director for Exploring the Metropolis (EtM).  An arts administrator/ playwright/ librettist/ screenwriter based in New York City, he worked at New York Foundation for the Arts, where he was part of the initial team responsible for NYFA Source and helped to administer the New York Arts Recovery Fund.  He joined EtM in 2002, and became Executive Director in 2012.

For EtM, Johnston oversaw NYC Performing Arts Spaces, served as Project Director for the 2010 study of dance rehearsal space needsWe Make Do, More Time is Better but Budget is King, and for the Queens Workspace Initiative.  He developed and administers EtM’s Con Edison Composers’ Residency, has served as a panelist for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Artist Advisory Council for NYFA, the Advisory Board for New York Theatre Experience, and is an Advisory Board member of the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation.

Johnston has a degree from the College of William and Mary and a certificate from the Professional Workshop at Circle in the Square.  He is an award-winning playwright whose work has been produced in New York, Cape Cod, Los Angeles, Washington, London and Germany. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, Actors Equity, Blue Coyote Theater Group, BMI Librettists Workshop, and is a Resident Artist with American Lyric Theater. Current projects include the operas Why Is Eartha Kitt Trying to Kill Me? with Jeffrey Dennis Smith, Daughters of the Bloody Duke with Jake Runestad for Washington National Opera, and the short film Monsura is Waiting, directed by Kevin Newbury. 

As a program director at Fractured Atlas, Selena Juneau-Vogel runs the agile business management platform, Artful.ly. She leads the community-design process that sets the direction for new feature development, works with software developers to build and maintain features, and manages customer support for the software. Juneau-Vogel first joined Fractured Atlas as a research fellow in 2010, and returned to the team after receiving her MPA from NYU's Wagner School of Public Service. She is one of the founding members of Emerging Leaders of New York Arts (ELNYA). Previously, she managed leadership programs for the Arts & Business Council of New York, coordinated grants for Brown University's Creative Arts Council, and ran a contemporary glass gallery. She studied visual art and journalism as an undergrad at Brown University.

Marc Kirschner is the Founder and CEO of TenduTV. TenduTV is an end to end digital services and audience development provider to the cultural sector, and offers international VOD and educational distribution of performing arts programs via platforms such as iTunes (http://geni.us/ttvituneslp), Google Play and Amazon Instant Video. TenduTV recently launched Cultureband, the first YouTube multichannel network (MCN) for cultural organizations (http://www.cultureband.tv). He is also a regular contributor of articles on emerging trends in the performing arts for the Huffington Post, Dance/USA’s “Inside the Green Room” and others.  Kirschner received his MBA from Columbia Business School, and a B.S. in Mass Media and Economics from Northwestern University. He lives in New York with his wife Susanna, a former professional dancer, his daughter Aria and dog Daisy.

Leah Krauss is a senior program officer for the NYC Dance Program at Joyce Mertz Gilmore Foundation. The Dance Program provides operating support for contemporary dance presenters located throughout the five boroughs and makes discrete investments to advance the dance field by improving conditions for individual artists. She is the chair of NYC Dance Funders Group, an advisory board member for Dance/NYC, and serves on the board of The Churchill School and Learning Center.  Krauss joined Mertz Gilmore Foundation in 2009. Prior to that she was senior program officer at NY Community Trust (NYCT), where for 12 years her areas of responsibilty included arts and culture, arts-in-education, and historic preservation. Her work at NYCT involved collaborative funding  with program officers in the areas of community development, youth, people with special needs,and the environment. Additional experience in the arts includes five years as assistant director of the Arts and Business Council where she recruited, trained and placed business executives as pro-bono management consultants with nonprofit arts organizations. Krauss graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in  art history from the University of Pennsylvania and a J.D. from University of Pennsylvania Law School. For three years she practiced bankruptcy law and also served with Volunteers for the Arts in Philadelphia.

Lauren Kushnick is the Director of Grants & Partnerships at the New York Council for the Humanities where she has worked since 2006 to support innovation, capacity-building and the resilience of the arts and culture sector.  In this role, she has consulted on a diversity of projects, regularly presents grants workshops, and has helped establish strong working relationships with MANY, CCNYC and NYLA.  As of February, she is also delighted to serve as the new co-chair of CultureAID's steering committee, an emerging network of arts & culture funders in NYC.  In her off time, she is an avid photographer and enjoys documenting her new neighborhood Long Beach, NY.  For more information about the Council, visit nyhumanities.org 

Brigitte LaBonté is Vice President of External Affairs at the real estate development firm Forest City Ratner Companies. During her 10 years at Forest City Ratner Companies, Ms. LaBonté has been an instrumental member of the firm’s External Affairs team which is responsible for dealing with all government, community and media relations issues for the company. More recently, Ms. LaBonté has become one of the team’s senior members and oversees all community relations and event planning for the company. Ms. LaBonté also manages the company’s multi-million dollar corporate philanthropic budget and efforts. Ms. LaBonté’s work on behalf of the community extends beyond her role at Forest City Ratner Companies. She is currently on the Board of Directors of the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger, a high school mentor with Student Sponsor Partners and a Team Captain for Brooklyn’s annual Making Strides Against Breast Cancer fundraising walk. She is also an active member with her company’s women’s leadership group, WE LEAD.  Ms. LaBonté graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration/Marketing and was awarded an International Business Certificate from Grenoble Ecole de Management in France in 2004.

Noémie Lafrance is an award winning Choreographer and Director based in Brooklyn working in film, television, advertising, live events and experiential marketing. Her work investigates “live interactivity, movement in public spaces, and experiential media” through a variety of medium ranging from art installations, performance, immersive experiences, film and dance. As an artist she is the recipient of two Bessie Awards, Lambent Fellow, NYFA Fellow, and a two times Alpert Award nominee, and her work has received multiple government and foundation grants. Her short films won several prizes internationally and were presented at Cannes Film Festival among others and her live work is presented at prestigious museums and venues around the world and has toured internationally. Lafrance’s work on music videos and commercials were nominated for a Grammy Award, won a MVPA award for Best Choreography, a CAD Music Vision award, MTV award and D&AD award. She has work with music artists such as Justin Timberlake, David Byrne, Feist, and Snow Patrol, and created work for brand such as Nike, Coca-Cola, Sprint, Bacardi, Apple, and At&T. 

David Leventhal is a founding teacher and Program Director for Dance for PD®, a collaborative program of the Mark Morris Dance Group and Brooklyn Parkinson Group that has now been used as a model for classes in more than 100 communities in 11 countries. Since 2007, he has trained more than 600 teachers in the Dance for PD® approach in 25 cities around the world. Along with Olie Westheimer, he is the co- recipient of the 2013 Alan Bonander Humanitarian Award from the Parkinson's Unity Walk. He has chapters about the program in two books: Moving Ideas: Multimodal Learning in Communities and Schools (Peter Lang), and Creating Dance: A Traveler's Guide (Hampton Press). He is in demand as a speaker at international conferences and symposiums, and has spoken about the intersection of dance, Parkinson's and healthcare at University of Michigan, Brown University, Rutgers and Columbia University. He is featured in the 2014 documentary Capturing Grace directed by Dave Iverson. As a dancer, he performed with the Mark Morris Dance Group from 1997-2011, appearing in principal roles in Mark Morris' The Hard Nut, L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, and Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet, on Motifs of Shakespeare. He received a 2010 Bessie Award for his performing career with Mark Morris. Levanthal graduated from Brown University with honors in English Literature.

Andrea Louie is executive director of the Asian American Arts Alliance, providing strategic direction for the 32-year-old organization in supporting Asian American artists and arts/cultural groups, and building the pan-ethnic, multidisciplinary arts community in New York City. She brings a combination of management experience, leadership as a communications professional, and a passion for the arts, as both a writer and a seasoned executive.  Louie most recently served on the management team at Religions for Peace, the world’s largest and most representative multi-faith coalition. She is the author of a novel, Moon Cakes (Ballantine Books) and coeditor of an anthology, Topography of War: Asian American Essays (The Asian American Writers’ Workshop). Louie is a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, the Hannah S. and Samuel A. Cohn Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a Ludwig Volgelstein Foundation grant and was short-listed for the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. She has served as a review panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, EmcArts, and the Brooklyn Arts Council. She was a writer-in-residence for the National Book Foundation and has been awarded artist residencies at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Djerassi, Hedgebrook and the Fundacíon Valparáiso in Spain. She serves on the board of the national Cultural Data Project, is a co-chair of the New York City Arts Coalition, and an ad hoc steering committee member of the 13% and Growing Coalition. She serves on the multicultural advisory committees for WNYC and StoryCorps and is a member of the Asian American Writers Workshop as well as the Asian American Journalists Association.

29 years ago, Kitty Lunn slipped on ice, fell down a flight of stairs and broke her back, leaving her a paraplegic.  Having been a dancer her entire life, Ms. Lunn had to find a way to keep dancing. In the fall of 1995, she founded Infinity Dance Theater, a non-traditional dance company featuring dancers with and without disabilities. Infinity Dance Theater is committed to bringing the joy and drama of motion and movement to a new level of inclusion by expanding the boundaries of dance and changing the world’s perception of what a dancer is.  To this end, Ms. Lunn has developed a wheelchair dance technique strongly rooted in, and growing out of, Classical Ballet and Modern Dance and feels very strongly that without technique and the pedagogy to train dancers with disabilities, we truly discriminate against them.

Before joining The New York Community Trust in 2009, Kerry McCarthy ran a consulting company serving City nonprofit arts organizations. She has more than twenty years experience in museum and performing arts administration with organizations as varied as the Queens Museum of Art and Jim Henson Productions. She has curated exhibitions for the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center and Atlanta’s Center for Puppetry Arts. McCarthy holds an M.A. in Folk Art Studies from New York University and a B.A. from Sewanee: The University of the South. She is a graduate of Coro’s Leadership New York Program, and former co-chair of the City’s Dance Funders Group and of New York Grantmakers in the Arts. She is a board member of Grantmakers in the Arts. 

Zach Morris is a Bessie Award-winning director and choreographer whose work includes site-specific performances, installation art, video and multi-media projects, and immersive performance environments.  He is co-creator of the long-running Then She Fell, an immersive dance theater work named as one of The New York Times’ Top 10 Shows of 2012.   He is particularly interested in creating projects that place contemporary art and performance in non-traditional contexts.  Critics have described his work as “visually stunning,” “wickedly clever,” and “hauntingly melancholy.” Others have said, “there is no escaping the feeling that you have been doing drugs for the past hour. Good drugs.” Morris has a BFA in Directing from Carnegie Mellon University.

Sydnie L. Mosley is a New York City-based dancer, choreographer and educator.  An artist-activist, she is the Artistic Director of Sydnie L. Mosley Dances (SLMDances), a Harlem-based contemporary dance company interested in telling the stories of women and black cultures. She is a dance educator at the DreamYard Preparatory School (Bronx) and the YMCA and designs and teaches Barnard College's Pre-College Program, Dance in the City. As a performer, she most recently danced with INSPIRIT, a dance company. She also created and performed a solo work as a part of a collaboration between artist-instigated organization, Dancing While Black, and the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts (MoCADA). She earned her MFA in Dance - Choreography from the University of Iowa (2009) and is an alumna of Barnard College at Columbia University (2007), where she earned her BA in Dance and Africana Studies. She has been a member of the Dance/NYC Junior Committee since 2011 and currently serves as Vice Chair.

Richard Move is Artistic Director of MoveOpolis! a TEDGlobal Oxford Fellow, Ph.D. Candidate (ABD) in Performance Studies at NYU, Assistant Professor of Dance in the Department of Drama, Theatre & Dance at Queens College, CUNY and Lecturer in Design at Yale School of Drama. His commissions include productions for Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project, Martha Graham Dance Company, PARADIGM (Carmen DeLavallade, Gus Solomons, Jr. and Dudley Williams), Italy’s Opera Ballet of Florence, New York City Ballet Principal Helene Alexopoulos, Guggenheim Museum, American Festival of Paris, European Cultural Capitol, Parrish Art Museum, Deborah Harry and Blondie, Dame Shirley Bassey and Isaac Mizrahi. MoveOpolis! has been presented by Dance Theater Workshop, New York Live Arts, The Kitchen, Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival, SiteLines/River-to-River Festival and on tour internationally. His films include: Bardo, Jury Prize nominee at Lincoln Center’s Dance on Camera Festival, BloodWork-The Ana Mendieta Story, National Board of Review Award/Directors Guild of America, GhostLight, Tribeca Film Festival premiere and GIMP-The Documentary, 2014 Lincoln Center Dance on Camera Festival premiere. Martha@ ..., Move’s performances as 20th Century icon, Martha Graham, received two Bessie Awards and tours globally.
www.move-itproductions.com

Madeleine M. Nichols is an attorney and business owner. Her law firm, Madeleine M. Nichols, P.C. provides business law and strategy services for artists.  Her primary clients are choreographers and photographers.   Since 1981, she has been a member of the American Bar Association, New York State Bar Association, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and is admitted to practice law in the State of New York, the federal District Courts in New York and the United States Supreme Court. Curator Emerita of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, Nichols led that international information service and preservation lab from 1988 to 2005, producing over 600 films and videos, and writing and lecturing internationally on copyright and intellectual property issues. She is recipient of a Bessie Award and Dance/USA’s “Ernie” Award. She is a past member of the Board of Directors of Core of Culture; of the National Advisory Board of the Atlantic Center for the Arts; and chaired both the American Library Association’s Arts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries, The New York Public Library’s Research Libraries Council.  She was a member of the Board of Directors and of the Editorial Board of the Society of Dance History Scholars, a member of the National Leadership Group for the University of California at Los Angeles Dance/Media Project, and adjunct professor at New York University’s Department of Dance and Dance Education.  Ms. Nichols co-founded the Dance Heritage Coalition, an association of major national institutions dedicated to the development and exchange of information and materials related to the history, documentation, and preservation of dance.  She has curated numerous exhibitions at Lincoln Center in New York City.

Prentice Onayemi leads ArtPlace’s fieldbuilding and communications efforts, which focus on positioning art and culture as a core sector of community planning and development. A recent graduate of Columbia University’s MBA program, he complemented his studies by serving as a consultant with Exploring the Metropolis’ Queens Workspace Initiative, a research study aimed at developing strategy and policy recommendations to bolster the performing arts landscape in Queens, NY. Onayemi has also co-authored two case studies on artists as social entrepreneurs that were released by Harvard Business Review in 2014. Prior to grad school, he co-founded JACK, a performing arts venue in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY; and Asmi International, a nonprofit that trains NGO staff to facilitate literacy and creative self-expression workshops for survivors of armed conflicts and natural disasters. He has also worked in talent strategy and operations with Achievement First, a network of charter schools; and trained non-violent offenders to build and install cabinetry with Brooklyn Workforce Innovations. A proud member of Actor’s Equity Association and the Screen Actor’s Guild, his credits range from children’s e-books to bringing the title character to life in War Horse on Broadway. Onayemi holds a BFA in Drama from New York University and focused on real estate finance and social enterprise during his time at Columbia. 

Susan Gluck Pappajohn is the CEO & Founder of Arthenia.com.  Her vision for Arthenia grew out of her love for the arts, technology and learning. She joined the New York City Ballet at 17 and danced for eight years under the leadership of George Balanchine, Peter Martins and Jerome Robbins. After her NYCB career, Pappajohn returned to her academic studies and received her BA from Harvard College and MBA from Wharton Business School. She went on to co-found Time Warner Electronic Publishing, one of Time Warner’s first digital media groups, and IBM's Multimedia Studio, which produced e-learning content in collaboration with well-known brands such as World Book, Crayola and Brain Quest. She also oversaw IBM's global licensing activities and was a VP of Marketing Management for IBM Global Services. After IBM, Pappajohn co-led a NEA grant to evaluate the use of digital technology for the study of the arts. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the George Balanchine Foundation and Dance/NYC, as well as on the Corporate Advisory Board of the Interlochen Arts Academy.

David Parker and Jeffrey Kazin direct The Bang Group, a rhythm-based, contemporary dance company based in NYC since 1995.  The Bang Group tours and performs widely throughout The United States and Europe.  Parker's newest experimental tap and percussive works will appear at The Harkness Dance Festival at the 92nd Street Y at the end of February.  He got his first computer when he was 35.

Will Penrose joined the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in 2010 and is an advocate for providing direct support to artists across disciplines. He has worked at the Scottsdale Cultural Council for both Scottsdale Public Art and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Upon relocating to New York, he was the registrar at Sundaram Tagore Gallery based in Chelsea and with locations in Los Angeles and Hong Kong. Additionally, Penrose consults at the Research Center for Arts and Culture (RCAC) for research projects on living artists. He is a contributing author to the RCAC’s studies Still Kicking: Aging Performing Artists in NYC and LA Metro Areas as well as Art Cart: Saving the Legacy: A Feasibility Study. Penrose has lectured at NYU, Parsons: The New School for Design, and Drew University. He holds an M.A. in Arts Administration from Columbia University, as well as a B.S. in Economics, B.F.A. in Drawing, and Minor in Philosophy from the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University. He was an inaugural participant in NYFA’s Emerging Leaders Boot Camp and has served on Dance/NYC’s Junior Committee.

Eric G. Pryor has been the Executive Director of The Center for Arts Education since 2012. The Center for Arts Education, a leading arts and education organization in New York City for over 16 years, is dedicated to ensuring that all of New York City’s 1.1 million school children have quality arts learning as part of their K-12 education. As director, Mr. Pryor provides direction and oversight for all of the organizations teaching and learning programs, professional development activities, advocacy and public engagement initiatives, and fundraising efforts. Prior to joining CAE, Mr. Pryor was the Executive Director of the New Jersey State Museum, where he successfully revitalized the historic institution, including the re-opening of the Planetarium, the Cultural History Collection Gallery, and the Fine Art Collection Gallery, and the Fine Art Collection. Earlier in his career, Mr. Pryor served as president of the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey where he developed and implemented a five-year strategic plan that expanded the Center’s facility from 13,000 sq. ft. to 24,000 sq. ft. and was also responsible for expanding the Education Outreach program's partnerships with schools to reach over 1,300 students annually.

Mr. Pryor began his Arts career as Executive Director of the Center for Arts and Culture at the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, the country's first and largest community development organization, which early on recognized the value of using arts programming as a community-development tool. At the Center, he was responsible for developing the Playwrights Den, a scriptwriter’s workshop for young playwrights and the Restoration Youth Arts Academy, a multidisciplinary arts training program serving 500 students on-site and 1,000 in New York City schools.

Mollie Quinlan-Hayes, Deputy Director and Accessibility Coordinator, joined South Arts (Atlanta, GA) in early 2006. South Arts is one of the nation’s six regional arts organizations, and is a partner of the National Endowment for the Arts. As Deputy Director she works with all South Arts programs, the board, member state arts agencies and other partners to make a positive difference in the arts throughout the South. She oversees South Arts’ portfolio of activities and helps to guide strategic planning and evaluation. She is director of South Arts’ national initiative ArtsReady, providing business continuity planning and emergency preparedness for arts organizations. She serves as co-chair of the Steering Committee of the National Coalition for Arts’ Preparedness and Emergency Response. She has served as a speaker/panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and numerous state arts councils. Quinlan-Hayes worked for the Arizona Commission on the Arts for 14 years, was a founding board member of Alliance for Audience/ShowUp.com, and of ARTability/Accessing Arizona’s Arts. She is a facilitator/consultant in strategic planning and participation-building, has been a professional audio describer, and is trained in Critical Response. In Atlanta she creates glass sculpture and jewelry as Southern Flameworks. She is a member of Alternate ROOTS, is married to Michael Quinlan and has a daughter, Chandra Lakin.

Michelle Ramos-Burkhart has a twenty-year successful history in business, consulting and work in the non-profit and philanthropic sectors. She has worked as an Executive Director for multiple non-profit organizations and as a program officer for a foundation. She was an adjunct professor at New York Univeristy and worked at Columbia University and Cornell Univesity in an advisory capacity on arts initiatives and studies. Ramos-Burkhart holds a B.S. in Behavior Science from University of San Francisco, a J.D. from Golden Gate University, and L.L.M From California Western School of Law and is pusrsuing her PhD in Cultural Psychology. She consults in arts-business with non-profit orgnaizations nationwide in addition to her legal practice. She is the proud mother of a professional dancer and since retiring from her own dance career has become a competitive ironman triathlete and marathoner.

Joanna Reiner Wilkinson joined the Cultural Data Project in 2010.  In her role as senior finance and education associate, she works with the Education team, to create and deliver trainings and craft other educational materials with the goal of helping all CDP stakeholders find value in data and financial accuracy. Previously, Wilkinson worked for a Philadelphia-area accounting firm, which specialized in nonprofits, leading research and training efforts, and participating in consulting projects such as the creation of the CDP in 2001. An educator by avocation, she delights in teaching arts and cultural professionals from around the country the value of financial best practices and the important role boards and managers play in an organization’s financial health. She holds an AB in the Growth and Structure of Cities from Bryn Mawr College.

Nicholas Reiter is a labor and employment attorney at Venable LLP in New York.  He regularly advises and litigates on behalf of nonprofit employers, including charities, foundations, trade and professional organizations, think tanks, and advocacy groups.  His employment practice focuses upon defending employers against allegations of discrimination and wage-and-hour violations, preparing employee handbooks and workplace policies, drafting and evaluating non-competition agreements and other restrictive covenants, and conducting organization-wide audits of employee classifications for compliance with state and federal wage-and-hour laws.  Mr. Reiter also represents employers in traditional labor law matters, including defending employers against labor union grievances, the negotiation of collective bargaining agreements, and advising employers during anti-union organization campaigns.  Prior to joining Venable LLP, Mr. Reiter graduated cum laude from Brooklyn Law School in 2008 and was a law clerk for United States District Judge David N. Hurt of the Northern District of New York.

Charles Rice-González, born in Puerto Rico and reared in the Bronx, is a writer, long-time community and LGBT activist, co-founder and Executive Director of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance and a Distinguished Lecturer at Hostos Community College - CUNY.  He received a B.A. in Communications from Adelphi University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College.  His debut novel, Chulito (Magnus 2011), has received awards and recognitions from American Library Association (ALA) and the National Book Critics Circle. In 1998, Charles co-founded BAAD! with award-winning choreographer/dancer Aurther Aviles. BAAD! is a workshop and performance space that presents empowering works for men and women, people of color, and the LGBT communities. At Hostos, he teaches in the English Department at and serves as the Associate Artiostic Director  Center of the Hostos Center for the Arts and Culture and coordinates their CUNY Dance Initiative.  He worked in the publicity and public relations field for nearly 20 years at varied companies, including Universal Pictures and for former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer. Rice-González, serves as the Chair of the board for the Bronx Council on the Arts and the National Association of Latino Art and Cultures (NALAC).

Ali Rosa-Salas is cultural worker from Brooklyn, NY. She is a proud graduate of Barnard College, where danced in works by Beth Gill, Heidi Henderson and Faye Driscoll. As a Curatorial Fellow at MoCADA, Rosa-Salas recently co-curated "Re: purpose", a visual art exhibition and performance series at FiveMyles. Her upcoming curatorial project, "NO SUCH THING AS NEUTRAL," is a symposium sponsored by the Barnard Center for Research on Women about the contributions of Flex and Lite Feet to the contemporary dance landscape. Most recently, she was selected for the AUNTSforcamera Residency at the New Museum, where she and her collaborators will make an interactive video game to teach the Harlem Shake. Alongside her curatorial projects, Ali is the assistant editor of TOP RANK and a dance critic for BroadwayWorld. She also teaches precious 5th graders how to non-awkwardly rhumba as a Teaching Artist with Dancing Classrooms.

Ella Rosewood is an educator, choreographer, performer, and solo dance preservationist based in NYC.  She is currently a full-time NYC public school dance educator and serves on Dance/NYC's Junior Committee.  Rosewood holds dual degrees in Dance and Elementary Education from UW-Madison and is perusing her masters degree in Dance Education through the newly established Lincoln Center Scholars Alternative Certification Program, in Partnership with Hunter College.  In 2013 Rosewood completed Anne Green Gilbert's Summer Institute for Dance Educators in Seattle, WA.  She has also studied at the 92nd Street Y's Dance Education Lab.  Her educational outreach programs created in conjunction with her solo show Second Skin were featured in the May/June 2011 Inspiration Issue of Dance Studio Life Magazine. Rosewood preserves historic solo dances for performance and educational purposes and has works by seminal artists Jane Dudley, Anna Sokolow, Helen Tamiris, and more in her repertoire.  Her choreography has been seen internationally in Taipei Taiwan, and locally at the Judson Church, Danspace Project, Secret Theater, and Chen Dance Center (as a Newsteps recipient), among others.  Before graduate school, Rosewood was the Education Associate at New York Live Arts where she managed the educational programs for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company.  www.ellarosewooddance.com

Celia Rowlson-Hall is a filmmaker, choreographer, and performer based in NYC.

Pedro Ruiz is a celebrated choreographer and dancer, born and trained in Cuba, as well as in Venezuela. He was just appointed Associate Artistic Director of Ballet Contemporaneo Endedans de Camagüey, Cuba. During his 21-year career as principal dancer with Ballet Hispanico, he also choreographed three critically acclaimed ballets for the company, taught master classes and performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Central and South America.  Currently, he is on the staff of the Alvin Ailey School and Marymount Manhattan College; and was recently named Resident Artistic Director of the Arnhold Graduate Dance Program at Hunter.  Some of his works have been performed by: Danza Contemporanea de Cuba, Danza del Alma  Santa Clara Cuba, Ballet Contemporaneo Endedans de Camagüey, The Joffrey Ballet, Luna Negra, The New Jersey Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem,  Opus, Nimbus, The Jacob's Pillow Festival, The Harvard Ballet, The Ailey/Fordham B.F.A., MMC BFA program, and the international gala "Notte di Stelle," in Italy.  Ruiz has performed at the White House for several presidents and is the recipient of a Bessie Award, the Choo-San Goh Award, The Cuban Artist’s Fund, and The Joyce Foundation Award. Ruiz was honored by The American Friends of the Ludwig Foundation in 2011, and, last year, the FBI honored him for his Public Service. In 2010, Ruiz founded The Windows Project—a groundbreaking cultural exchange program celebrating the art of dance between the U.S. and Cuba. Ruiz has been the subject of two PBS documentaries: Pas de Deux (part of the “In The Life” series), and Coming Home, a PBS documentary nominated for a NY Emmy Award. For more information, visit www.thewindowsproject.org.

Danielle Russo has been presented nationally at the American Dance Festival, Jacob's Pillow and The Yard; and internationally in Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Mexico, Panama, South Korea, Spain and Sweden. In 2012, she was a grant recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts to present at the 80th Anniversary Season of Jacob's Pillow and selected to represent the United States alongside John Jasperse at the inaugural PRISMA Festival de Danza Contemporánea in Panama. In 2013, she was invited to present her multimedia solo work with artist Jin-Wen Yu at the World Dance Alliance Assembly. Artist residencies have included Chez Bushwick (NYC), Nadine Laboratory for the Contemporary Arts (Belgium), Independent Artists’ Initiative WUK (Austria), PA-F Performing Arts Forum (France), SILO (NYC, PA) and Springboard Danse Montréal (Canada). Her work has been commissioned by Florida State College, Marymount Manhattan College m(mix), Mercyhurst College, Middlebury College and University of Wisconsin – Madison, to name a few. She is a recipient of a BFA in Dance and a BA in Anthropology from New York University (Tisch School of the Arts), and a MFA in Dance from Hollins University/American Dance Festival where she attended on fellowship. For more information, please visit www.daniellerussoperformanceproject.com. 

Lucy Sexton works in dance, theatre and film. Since 2010, she has served as Director of the independently produced NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies. She began life as a dancer and with Anne Iobst she created, performed and toured with the seminal dance-performance group DANCENOISE. She also performs as The Factress, often cohosting with Nurse Baby Asparagus, aka Mike Iveson. With Kathie Russo, she developed and directed the Obie-Award winning Spalding Gray, Stories Left to Tell at The Minetta Lane Theater. She directed Tom Murrins’s Magical Ridiculous Journey of Alien Comic at Performance Space 122. Sexton has produced two documentaries: Charles Atlas’s The Legend of Leigh Bowery for the BBC and Arte, and TURNING with Antony and the Johnsons. In addition to serving as Director of The Bessies, she is currently working as the Associate Artistic Director of the planned performing art center at WTC.

Alice Sheppard took her first dance class in 2005 as a way of fulfilling a dare.  In 2006, she made her debut with Infinity Dance Theater.  She joined AXIS Dance Company in 2007.  In 2012, she went freelance. She has danced in projects with GDance and Ballet Cymru in the United Kingdom and Infinity Dance Theater, Marjani Forté, MBDance,and Steve Paxton in the United States.  As a guest artist, Sheppard has danced with Full Radius Dance Company and AXIS Dance Company.  She has been presented as a solo performer and speaker in universities throughout the United States; her choreography has been commissioned by MOMENTA in Chicago and presented by Infinity Dance Theater in New York.

Kevin Skobac leads digital and social strategy at SS+K, a creative agency specializing in social engagement.  He helps brands explore how they can communicate and build relationships through the use of emerging media and technology.  His work has included cross-platform initiatives for Obama 2012, HBO, The College Board, GE, E*TRADE, and the internationally award-winning Mr. Pizza “True Origins” campaign.  Skobac also co-founded SS+K Labs, SS+K’s in-house incubator of creative technologies, and is a mentor at Coolhouse Labs, a startup accelerator.  Before SS+K, he was a media strategist at FCB, where his work on the “Above The Influence” brand launch won MediaWeek’s “Media Plan of the Year”.

Sydney Skybetter is a technologist, choreographer, and writer. His dances are regularly performed around the country, most recently at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Boston Center for the Arts, Jacob’s Pillow and the Joyce Theater. As a Founding Partner with the Edwards & Skybetter | Change Agency, he has consulted on issues of change management and technology for The National Ballet of Canada, Barnes & Noble, New York University and The University of Southern California among others. He lectures on everything from dance history to cultural futurism, and is a frequent speaker at Juilliard, Dance/USA, and Opera America. He is a regular contributor to The Clyde Fitch Report and Dance Magazine, serves on the faculty of The Boston Conservatory, and is a lecturer on Dance History at Harvard University. He produces shows at Joe’s Pub and OBERON with DanceNOW[NYC], and was the first to get the word “Frack” in print at Dance Magazine.   

Libby Smigel (MFA PhD), has served as Project Director (2007-2009) and Executive Director (2009-2015) of the Dance Heritage Coalition (DHC). Among the projects and programs that have been developed during her tenure are the DHC's artist services (such as the Artist's Legacy Toolkit online), the online Irreplaceable Dance Treasures exhibit, the copyright and fair use project that culminated in a publication of best practices for fair use, and the Dance Preservation and Digitization Program (DPDP). A component of the DPDP is a set of regional video digitization stations (or "digi hubs") that provide advice and services for digitizing videotapes and care for the digital files. DHC has now digitized more than 1,000 tapes to national digital standards, and is developing a "secure media network" where streaming files of preserved tapes can be accessed exclusively for teaching and research. Before joining DHC, Smigel taught theatre and dance at American University, George Washington University, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, among others, and she was co-author with John Munger of Dance/USA's Bay Area Needs Assessment (2002). Last November, she was honored by the Congress on Research in Dance which awarded her the Dixie Durr Outstanding Service to Dance Research.

Imogen Smith has served as Project Manager for Dance Heritage Coalition since 2011. A specialist in dance archives, she previously worked for the Dance Division of the New York Public Library as a video cataloger and oral history project manager. For DHC, she has overseen direct services to artists, student fellowships, and archival processing among other programs, and she commissioned and edited essays for the online exhibit “America’s Irreplaceable Dance Treasures.” She has frequently presented on artists’ archives at national and international conferences and coordinated workshops and focus groups for artists. Based in New York City, Imogen is also a freelance writer on film and art and the author of two books on film history.

Clarissa Soto, Director of Fiscal Services, Director of Cultivating Leadership in Dance, has been working at Pentacle since 2011. After graduating from Hofstra University with a B.A. in Dance and B.B.A. in Entrepreneurship, she found a great love for arts administration. She saw the opportunity to help artists and felt a connection with Pentacle’s mission. Since her start at Pentacle, she has worked within the fiscal, education, and booking departments. She describes her work as Director of Cultivating Leadership in Dance as both rewarding and inspiring. In addition to her roles at Pentacle, Soto works as a bookkeeper for Robin Becker Dance, teaches dance at Groove With Me, and is currently pursuing her M.B.A at Quinnipiac University.

Kristine Sova, Esquire, has been advising employers on labor and employment issues, including the proper use of independent contractors, interns, and volunteers, for 12 years. She devotes a substantial portion of her practice to counseling employers on ways to avoid litigation through business decisions, such as advising on issues pertaining to employee relations, policy and practice development and implementation, employment contracts and separations agreements, termination of employment, and reductions in force, and regularly training managerial and rank-and-file employees on harassment, discrimination and retaliation prevention. Prior to founding her own firm in 2012, Sova was associated with management-side law firms Venable LLP, Littler Mendelson P.C., and Clifton Budd & DeMaria, LLP; union-side law firm Cohen, Weiss and Simon LLP; and the Judge’s Division of the National Labor Relations Board. Kristine received her Juris Doctorate from Fordham University School of Law and her Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from New York University. 

John Swartz is a producer and digital media enthusiast with 15+ years experience brining ideas to life, particularly through innovative uses of technologies/ He is currently the Director of Production and Innovation at SS+K, where he leads a team of producers and technologists responsible for executing the wide variety of programs the agency creates. Work he has produced has been recognized by industry award shows and publications, including Cannes Lions, One Show, Clios, Webbys, Communication Arts, and Creativity Magazine. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey with his wife and two sons and has developed an increasingly uncontrollable passion for soccer. 

Paz Tanjuaquio is a choreographer, performer, and visual artist, based in NYC since 1990. She received her MFA in Dance from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and BA in Visual Arts from University of California, San Diego. Her work has been presented by the Danspace Project, Harkness Dance Festival at 92Y, LaMaMa, PS 122, Movement Research; nationally at San Diego Trolley Dances, Cornell University, Philadelphia Fringe Festival; guest artist at SUNY Brockport, Sacramento State University, Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, and Vargas Museum at University of the Philippines. As a dancer, she has performed for Molissa Fenley, Carl Hancock Rux, Clarinda Mac Low, Marlies Yearby, among others. Awards for her choreography include NEA, American Dance Festival’s International Screendance, NYFA BUILD; residencies at Kaatsbaan in Tivoli, NY, Akiyoshidai International Art Village in Japan, The Yard at Martha’s Vineyard, Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, and artistic research travel in Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam, and in her birthplace the Philippines. She has served on panels including NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, NYFA, and adjudicator for American College Dance Festival Association. She is currently a member of NYS DanceForce since 2009, developing opportunities for new work in the dance field. In 2000, Tanjuaquio founded TOPAZ ARTS, Inc. with collaborator Todd Richmond, establishing a creative space for contemporary dance and visual arts. 

Ira Tannenbaum is the Assistant Commissioner for Public/Private Initiatives at the New York City Office of Emergency Management (OEM). Serving as the primary liaison between the City and businesses and private sector organizations, Tannenbaum coordinates the integration of private sector concerns, interests, and resources to support New York City’s emergency planning, preparedness, response, and recovery activities. Ira harmonizes the exchange of information between the City and the private sector, and works to include the private sector in the City’s emergency plans, by overseeing the Private Sector/COOP Emergency Support Function, which incorporates private sector capabilities into OEM operations. He is also responsible for OEM's Partners in Preparedness program, which helps organizations better prepare their employees, services, and facilities for disasters; CorpNet, an emergency information-sharing program; OEM’s business preparedness education initiative; and manages the NYC Corporate Emergency Access System, a credentialing program designed to support private sector resiliency. In 2013 Tannenbaum was recognized as a White House Champion of Change in Community Resilience and Preparedness for his innovative work to increase private sector participation in emergency preparedness, response and recovery efforts. Prior to joining OEM in 2003, Tannenbaum was a consultant with Pricewaterhouse Coopers/ Mellon Financial Services. He has been an active EMT in a local volunteer ambulance service for the past 18 years, and has served as an adjunct professor of Emergency Management at CUNY’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is a Certified Business Continuity Professional and holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Yeshiva University and master’s degree in business administration from the Zicklin School of Business of CUNY’s Baruch College.

Denise Saunders Thompson is the Chairperson/Executive Director for the International Association of Blacks in Dance and Theatre Manager/Professor for Howard University’s Department of Theatre Arts. She is President & CEO of D.d.Saunders & Associates, Inc., a comprehensive fine arts advisory firm offering artist representation; Co-Founder of PlayRight Performing Arts Center, Inc., a non-profit arts organization in Atlanta, Georgia, and former Business Manager for The Malone Group, Inc. a non-profit arts organization in Washington, D.C. that co-produced Black Nativity at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts from 1994-1999. She currently is a Board of Trustees member for Dance/USA. Mrs. Thompson also served as the Manager of Howard University's, Cramton Auditorium for eight years. Freelancing in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and across the nation in production, Mrs. Thompson has held positions at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Debbie Allen Dance Academy, Alliance Theatre Company, National Black Arts Festival, 1996 Olympic Arts Festival, 1996 Olympics, Lincoln Theatre, Several Dancers Core, the Atlanta Dance Initiative, the Mark Taper Forum, the Shakespeare Theatre at the Folger, Harrah’s Marina Hotel Casino as well as other numerous positions. In addition, she is a grant recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts, St. Paul Companies, and the DC Arts and Humanities Commission.

Richard Toda, ABT Artistic Coordinator of Educational Outreach, is an ABT® Certified Teacher, in Primary through Level 7 of the ABT® National Training Curriculum. He facilitates ABT’s arts in education residencies: ABT at School, Ballet for a New Audience, and Make a Ballet in New York City public and private schools. Toda has served as Artistic Coordinator for the Los Angeles Young Dancer Workshop and the Young Dancer Program of Dance Bermuda. He coordinates ABT’s partnership with the Summer Arts Institute, a free summer arts program for the New York City Department of Education and has taught Musical Theater dance in ABT’s Collegiate and NY Summer programs. Toda served on the writing committee for the Dance Blueprint for teaching and learning in the Arts. This document outlines a sequential curriculum for Dance education in the New York City Public Schools. He facilitates professional development workshops and seminars for the New York City Department of Education, 92nd Street Y, Dance Education Laboratory and the LA Music Center.  He is a guest teacher for the Arnhold Graduate Dance Education Program at Hunter College, and has taught for the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. He has served as a panelist for a variety of arts leadership conferences.

Toda’s association with ABT began as a rehearsal assistant for choreographer Agnes de Mille on her last two ballets: The Other and Tally Ho.  He performed on Broadway and in the National Touring companies of The Phantom Of The Opera.  Prior to the many Phantom years, he danced the pas de six in Jerome Robbins choreography of West Side Story starring Bebe Neuwirth, Michael Bennett’s A Chorus Line, Oklahoma starring John Schneider and My Fair Lady starring Simon Jones and Judy Blazer. Workshop productions include Daniel Ezralow and Lonnie Price’s Finnians Rainbow and choreographer Rachel Lampert’s Inventory 91 at Dance Theatre Workshop.  

Margaret Tudor is a dance maker, administrator, and performer living in Brooklyn and working around the five boroughs.  Originally from Houston, TX, she graduated from Northwestern University in 2013 before making her way east.  Since arriving here, she has working with The Playground NYC, Gibney Dance, Dance/NYC, Pentacle, and Hi-ARTS.  Currently she serves as the Artist Services Associate at Gibney Dance, where she programs professional development workshops and consultation sessions, and helps facilitates some of Gibney’s Emerging Artist programs, such as Work Up, ShowDown, and boo-koo.  She has also had the pleasure of working with the Dance/NYC team as the Volunteer Coordinator for the 2015 Symposium. Outside of her administrative work, she makes and performs dance whenever and wherever she can!                                                                                               

Carlton Turner is the Executive Director of Alternate ROOTS, a regional non-profit arts organization based in the south supporting artists working at the intersection of arts and social justice. He is the co-founder and co-artistic director, along with his brother Maurice Turner, of the group M.U.G.A.B.E.E. (Men Under Guidance Acting Before Early Extinction). M.U.G.A.B.E.E. is a Mississippi-based performing arts group that blends of jazz, hip-hop, spoken word poetry and soul music together with non-traditional storytelling and a member of the Progress Theatre Ensemble. Turner is currently on the board of Appalshop, an advisory member to the National Theater Project at New England Foundation for the Arts and Michael Rohd’s Catalyst Initiative. He is a member of the We Shall Overcome Fund Advisory Board at the Highlander Center for Research and Education, a steering committee member of the Arts and Culture Social Justice Network, and former Network of Ensemble Theaters steering committee member. In 2011 Turner was awarded the M. Edgar Rosenblum award for outstanding contribution to Ensemble Theater by Irondale Ensemble Project in Brooklyn.  In 2013 he was named to the Kennedy Center Honors Artist Advisory Board alongside Debbie Allen, Maria De Leon, and Ping Chong. M.U.G.A.B.E.E. has been named a 2015 Otto René Castillo Awards for Political Theatre recipient.

Dr. Marta Moreno Vega is president and founder of the Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute. Dr. Vega is a scholar, cultural activist, documentarian, author and founder of cultural institutions including Amigos del Museo del Barrio Inc. She is presently also adjunct professor at the Tisch School NYU - Department of Arts and Public Policy. 

Eduardo Vilaro joined Ballet Hispanico as Artistic Director in August 2009, following a ten-year record of achievement as Founder and Artistic Director of Luna Negra Dance Theater in Chicago. Mr. Vilaro is an accomplished choreographer, having created over 20 ballets for Luna Negra and others such as the Ravinia Festival, the Chicago Sinfonietta, the Lexington Ballet, and the Civic Ballet of Chicago.  He has worked in collaboration with major dance and design artists as well as musicians like Paquito D'Rivera, Susana Baca, Luciana Souza, the Grant Park Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  In 2001 he was a recipient of a Ruth Page Award in choreography, and in 2003 he was honored at Panama's II International Festival of Ballet for his choreographic work.  A former principal dancer with Ballet Hispanico, Mr. Vilaro has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Central and South America.

Maria Villafranca is the Senior Officer, Online Resources/Communications at the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) where she manages NYFA Classifieds and NYFA Source, a free database of over 12,000 opportunities for individual artists. She is the co-chair of CultureAID, a network of organizations committed to supporting NYC’s cultural community around times of disaster. She is also on the Steering Committee of the National Coalition of Arts Preparedness and Emergency Response. She holds a B.A. in Art History and English from Rutgers University and a M.F.A. in Fiction from Brooklyn College.

Alexandria Wailes has been a member of the Heidi Latsky Dane Company since January 2013. She attended University of the Arts and has a BFA in Modern Dance. Ms. Wailes’ acting credentials include Broadway: Big River and numerous NY/regional theatre: Mother Courage, A Kind of Alaska, Gruesome Playground Injuries, Fetes De La Nuite, Pippin, The Wild Boys, Sleeping Beauty Wakes, Big River; Television: LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT and NURSE JACKIE. Film: THE HYPERGLOT, THEATRE OF WAR, ALWAYS CHASING LOVE, FREEDOM IS NOT FREE, AN EXPERIENCE and THE TUBA THIEVES. Web series: 258 NEWS, WEINER & WEINER and HIGH MAINTENANCE. She was the associate choreographer for Deaf West Theatre/ Forest of Arden’s revival of Spring Awakening in the Fall of 2014. She will return to partake in the remount at the Wallis in LA in late Spring 2015. Please check out http://heidilatskydance.com/ for their upcoming performance schedule.

Adam H. Weinert is a performance-based artist born and raised in New York City. He began his training at The School of American Ballet, and continued on to Vassar College, The Juilliard School, and New York University, where he recently earned a Master’s Degree under the tutelage of André Lepecki. Adam has danced with The Metropolitan Opera Ballet Company, The Mark Morris Dance Group, Shen Wei Dance Arts, and Christopher Williams, and for six years served as the Artistic Associate to Jonah Bokaer. In addition to his performance work, Adam has been published in The New York Times, the Juilliard Journal, and as a featured profile in New York Magazine. He produced and choreographed an award-winning collection of dance i??lm shorts screened nationally and abroad, and his performance works have toured to four continents including a number of non-traditional dance venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, The Tate Britain Museum, and The Tate Modern Museum. He was awarded Presidential Distinction and Scholastic Distinction from the Juilliard School, and in 2008 received the Hector Zaraspe Prize for Outstanding Choreography. He currently serves on the faculty of Barnard College teaching Site Specific Choreography and Experimental Methods.

Melissa West is a dancer/choreographer and poet based in Staten Island, NY. Originally a student of the Staten Island Ballet, she earned an MA in Performance Studies from New York University. She has studied contemporary dance at Hunter College, Movement Research, The Limón Institute, and the Yard Dance Colony. In 2012, she was a recipient of the Premier Grant in Choreography and the Excellence in the Arts Award, both funded by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs through Staten Island Arts. Since 2008, her work has been presented throughout NYC at venues including the Atlantic Salt Factory, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, The Living Theater, Triskelion Arts, Queens Museum, The Brick Theater, and the Bowery Poetry Club. She has worked with Yoshiko Chuma, Marta Renzi, Gerald Otte, and other dance makers. West has held residencies at the Curiosity Project, Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden, and the Greenbelt Conservancy. She is the organizing director for Second Saturday Staten Island Art Walk. Publication credits include The Gorilla Press, Martha’s Vineyard Arts and Ideas, Examined Media, and NYSAI’s Flushed.

David R White is the Artistic and Executive Director of The Yard on Martha’s Vineyard, an artist/company creative residency, presentation and educational nexus dedicated to the nurturing of outstanding artists in contemporary dance and related art forms in a diverse rural island community.  From 1975 to through 2003, he was the Producing Director of Dance Theater Workshop, where he founded and directed the National Performance Network, the Suitcase Fund, and The Bessies.  Early on, he co-founded Pentacle, and later the NY State Dance Force He edited two editions of the iconic Poor Dancer's Almanac.  He is a 'Distinguished Alumnus' of Wesleyan University, and a Chevalier in France's Order of Arts and Letters, a recipient of theDance/USA Honors and the Capezio Award, among other recognitions.  He is currently the instigator and National Field Manager for a  project born initially out of thoughts of bringing the Almanac into the digital age,  now a much broader concept based now in a planning coalition with UCLA, Ohio State University, and Wesleyan University, and a select group of "Field Partners," individual artists working on issues that affect the life and times of the working artist and the community s/he serves.  For now, it's called The Dance Cloud.

Craig Von Wiederhold is an award-winning writer and producer and has been the Executive Producer with SS+K and SS+K Labs since 2010.

Risë Wilson is the inaugural Director of Philanthropy for the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (RRF). As a member of the foundation's senior leadership team, Wilson is leading the organization through a new phase of charitable giving—one that builds on the legacy of its founder while remaining relevant to contemporary concerns. To that end, the foundation supports initiatives at the intersection of arts and political issues, particularly those that embody the fearlessness, innovation, and multidisciplinary approach that Rauschenberg exemplified in both his art and philanthropic endeavors. RRF is particularly interested in the role of creative problem solving in achieving social change. Before entering the field of cultural philanthropy, she founded The Laundromat Project, an award-winning organization that mounts public art projects and other art programs in local laundromats as a way of amplifying the creative power available in neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy, Harlem, and the South Bronx. She currently serves as the organization’s Board President. Ms. Wilson’s sixteen- year tenure in arts and culture includes roles at the Ford Foundation, Parsons: the New School for Design, MoMA, and the International Center for Photography. She holds a BA from Columbia University where she was a Kluge Scholar, and an MA from NYU, where she was a Maccracken Fellow.  

Alice Sachs Zimet, President, Arts + Business Partners, is a pioneer in the field of corporate sponsorship in the United States. Working for 20 years at The Chase Manhattan Bank, she was Director, Worldwide Cultural Affairs, where she created the first sponsorship program in a commercial bank, now a model in the field. Zimet worked across 14 countries and 20 American cities and generated over $2 billion in new business for the bank using the arts as a strategic marketing tool. In 1999, she founded Arts + Business Partners to consult on issues of corporate sponsorship.  Zimet works with both nonprofit and business clients and is an accomplished lecturer, regularly teaching for Americans for the Arts, the U.S. Department of State and is an Adjunct Professor, Graduate Program, Arts Administration at New York University. As a collector, advisor and educator, Zimet is well-recognized and well-respected in the photography world. She began to collect in 1985, and her collection of roughly 250 images includes 20th Century masters up to the present. She is Chair, Photography Collections Committee, Harvard Art Museums; member of the Acquisitions Committee, the International Center of Photography; and on the board of the Magnum Foundation. A ‘Collector Profile’ was featured in the February 2014 issue of Art+Auction magazine.