TCG National Conference 2006 - Speaker Bios
Doug Bachtel
Doug
Bachtel is editor of The Georgia County Guide, The Georgia Municipal
Guide, The Georgia Housing Guide. These publications are comprehensive
statistical fact books about all 159 of the state's counties and
534 municipalities. They are used on a daily basis across the state
by governmental, business, health, and educational decision makers
as well as interested citizens to improve the quality of life in
their communities. He was the former editor of two academic publications,
The Journal of The Community Development Society and The
Southern Journal of Rural Sociology. These journals focus on
community and economic development issues. He also was a contributing
editor to The Georgia Journal, a popular magazine about
Georgia.
Joan Blades
Joan
Blades is co-founder of MoveOn.org and Berkeley Systems with her
husband, Wes Boyd. She is on the steering committee of "Reuniting
America: A Transpartisan Campaign of Political Reconciliation" (ReunitingAmerica.org),
a group engaging people from diverse political points of view in
respectful dialogue that leads to creative, breakthrough solutions
to the challenges facing our nation.Joan is the author of Mediate
Your Divorce, and is also an organizer of and a contributor
to MoveOn's 50 Ways to Love Your Country: How to Find
Your Political Voice and Be a Catalyst for Change.
She lives in northern California with her husband and two children.
Anne Bogart
Anne
Bogart is the Artistic Director of SITI Company, which she founded
with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is a recipient
of 2 Obie Awards, a Bessie Award, a Guggenheim as well as a Rockefeller
Fellowship and is a Professor at Columbia University where she runs
the Graduate Directing Program. Recent Works with SITI include Hotel
Cassiopeia, Intimations for Saxophone, Death and
the Ploughman; A Midsummer Night's Dream; La Dispute;
Score; Room; bobrauschenbergamerica;
War of the Worlds; Cabin Pressure; The Radio
Play; Alice's Adventures; Culture of Desire;
Bob; Going, Going, Gone; Small Lives/Big Dreams;
The Medium; Noel Coward's Hayfever and Private
Lives; August Strindberg's Miss Julie; and Charles
Mee's Orestes. She is the author of a book of essays entitled
A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art and Theater and the
co-author with Tina Landau of The Viewpoints Book: A Practical
Guide to Viewpoints and Composition.
Tisa Chang
Tisa
Chang was born in China, raised in New York City and educated at
Performing Arts H.S. and Barnard College. Her father was the
Consul General from Nationalist China to New York City until the
late fifties. Early training in piano, ballet and Chinese
dance began at age seven. After an active career as actress
and dancer on Broadway (Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel,
Lovely Ladies and Kind Gentlemen, Pacific Overtures),
in TV and films (Ambush Bay, Escape from Iran ,
Year of the Dragon), she sequed to directing at LaMama
ETC for Ellen Stewart’s Chinese Theatre Group. In 1977 she founded
the Pan Asian
Rep to celebrate professional Asian American artistry and to
expand the boundaries of American theatre and is regarded as one
of the most influential pioneers in professional Asian American
theatre.
As a director, Ms. Chang specializes in intercultural productions including the premieres of Return of the Pheonix , adapted from the Peking Opera and later premiered on CBS TV’s Festival of Lively Arts; Ghashiram Kotwal, the Marathi play with music; Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream done as a Mandarin/English adaptation; Cambodia Agonistes, the music-theatre commission which toured nationally and to Festivals in Cairo and Johannesburg; 1999’s The Joy Luck Club ; 2001’s highly acclaimed Rashomon which was invited to the Havana Theatre Festival; and spring 2004’s Kwatz! The Tibetan Project which won critical praise from the press. Awards include the 2004 Alfred Drake Award from Brooklyn College, 2002 Lifetime Achievement Award from Organization of Chinese Americans, 2002 UrbanStages Honoree, 2001 Lee Reynolds Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women, 1997 Proclamation from Mayor Guiliani for Asian Heritage Month, The 1993 NYC Cultural Pioneer Tribute, 1991 Barnard College Medal of Distinction, 1991 JIMMIE Award from AAPAA, 1988 Special Theatre World Award. She is currently on the Executive Board of The Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers (SSDC). Ms. Chang has one son.
Peter Culman
In
June of 2000, Peter Culman retired as Managing from Center Stage
after 34 years of collaborative work. During his tenure there,
Center Stage survived two fires and flourished with a total audience
of more than 110,000. The new space has 110,000 square feet,
a thrust theater of 540 seats, a flexible theater of 380 seats,
two rehearsal halls, state-of-the-art shops and 50 one bedroom and
studio accomodations for visiting artists and interns. He
notes, "I relished the interactions with the artists, artisans,
administrators, trustees, volunteers and our audiences. Mr.
Culman also served as the President of LORT, the chair of the Companies'
panel for the National Endowment of the Arts, the Treasurer of the
TCG Board, and board member of The American Arts Alliance.
He is an Adjunct Professor of Homiletics at St. Mary's Seminary
and University and a trustee of The Institute of Christian and Jewish
Studies. Mr. Culman also works as a hospice volunteer.
He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts Degree by the Maryland
Institute of Art. He is married to Sita Culman, a Vice-President
of The Abell Foundation, with whom he has two sons.
Guy Garcia
Guy
Garcia is an award-winning journalist, novelist, and multimedia
entrepreneur. His new book, The New Mainstream: How the
Multicultural Consumer is Transforming American Business, is
both a wake-up call and road map to the new multicultural reality
in America. The New Mainstream explains how Americans
will eat, work, play, learn, and spend money in the twenty-first
century -- and why any organization that ignores the lessons of
the new mainstream is doomed to fail. The New Mainstream
was recently chosen by Soundview Executive Business Book Series
as one of the best business books of 2004. As a staff writer
at Time magazine Garcia wrote ground-breaking cover stories
on Hispanic culture and the Maya. His journalism has also appeared
in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times,
Rolling Stone, Men’s Journal, Harper’s Bazaar,
Spin, Interview, and People. A three-time
National Magazine Awards judge, Garcia has also written two novels,
Skin Deep and Obsidian Sky. Garcia was a
co-founder and the editor of Total New York.com, one of the first
urban Web sites to appear on the Internet. As an executive at America
Online, he worked on the development of AOL International, AOL Broadband
and launched the first iteration of AOL Latino, a bilingual site
for AOL's two million Latino subscribers. A frequent
contributor to the New York Times, the Los Angeles
Times and other publications, Garcia has appeared on ABC, Univision,
NPR, CNBC, and PBS. The founder and CEO of MentaMetrix, Inc, a multicultural
research and marketing firm, Garcia is a consultant and lecturer
to major corporations and organizations on the economic and
global implications of the new mainstream.
Colin Greer
Dr.
Colin Greer is president of the The
New World Foundation since 1985. Formerly, he was Professor
at Brooklyn College, CUNY. He is the author (with Herbert
Kohl) of The Plain Truth of Things and A Call to Character,
Harper Collins. Other books include: What Nixon is doing
to Us; The Solution is Part of the Problem; After
Reagan What?; and The Divided Society. He is
best known for The Great School Legend and Choosing
Equality: The Case for Democratic Schooling (which won the
American Library Association's Eli M. Oboler Intellectual Freedom
Award). He was a founding editor of Change Magazine
and Social Policy Magazine. He is a contributing editor
to Parade Magazine. Dr. Greer participated in and directed
several studies of US Immigration and urban schooling policy and
history (at Columbia University and CUNY). He wrote briefing
papers on philanthropy and government for First Lady, Mrs. Clinton,
and on education policy for Senator Paul Wellstone. He chaired
the President’s White House Fellows Program (1992-4) and chaired
the Funders Committee for Citizen Participation for ten years.
He currently chairs Healthcare without Harm (Boston), The LARK Theatre
Company (NYC), and The Culture Project (NYC). He serves on
the Boards of the Teachers and Writers Collaborative (NYC), NY City
Interfaith Center, Tikkun (California), Open Democracy (London,
UK), and the American Institute for Mental Imagery. He is
currently working on studies of philanthropy and social justice
under Ford Foundation grants.
Candido Grzybowski
Mr.
Cândido Grzybowski is a philosopher and sociologist. He has been
the Director of the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analyses
(IBASE) since 1990. He is also an active member of the organizing
committee of the World Social Forum and a member of the WSF International
Secretariat. IBASE, founded in 1981 by political exiles returning
to Brazil, is a non-governmental research, service and consultancy
organization based in Rio de Janeiro. IBASE works for the
inclusion of poor and excluded groups in political processes, to
influence public policies related to democratization and sustainable
development, and to promote social accountability of citizens, businesses,
and government. IBASE was at the center of some public campaigns
in Brazil: Land Reform Campaigns (1984-1992), Ethics on Politics
(1992-93), Citizens Action against Hunger, Misery and for Life -
Hunger Campaign (1993-96), Corporate Social Responsibility (1997).
The main areas of IBASE's work today are: food security, solidarity
economy, democratic alternatives for globalization, Civil Society
participation, public policies, social watch, democratization of
big cities, ethics and social responsibility of organizations. Mr.
Cândido Grzybowski is former Professor of Sociology of Development
at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas, in Rio de Janeiro (1989-1991). He
has a doctorate degree from the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne),
France, and post-doctoral studies from the University College London,
UK.
Woodie King, Jr.
Woodie
King, Jr. is a founder and producing director of New Federal Theatre
in New York City. New Federal Theatre (NFT) has presented
over 180 productions in its 36-year history. Mr. King has
produced and directed Off-Broadway, on Broadway, in Regional Theatres,
and in Universities across the United States. He co-produced For
Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf,
What the Winesellers Buy, Reggae and The Taking of Miss
Janie (Drama Critic Circle Award). In addition to directing
at many universities, he has taught at Yale, Penn State, North Carolina
A&T, Columbia, NYU, Hunter, and Brooklyn College School of Contemporary
Studies. He is the author of many books including the
recent “Impact of Race.” His films include "Death of
a Prophet” and “The Black Theatre Movement” as well the soon to
be released documentary “Segregating the Greatest Generation.”
Mr. King received his MFA in directing at Brooklyn College.
Mr. King is the recipient of an Obie Award for Sustained Achievement
and an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Wayne State University
and a Doctorate of Fine Arts from the College of Wooster.
Kevin F. McCarthy
Kevin
McCarthy (BA Wesleyan University, MS and PhD University of Wisconsin)
is a senior social scientist who joined RAND in 1974. He has conducted
research on a wide range of domestic and international policy issues
with a focus on studies of domestic and international demographic
trends and their policy implications. He has also led research projects
on municipal finance, charter reform, and defense cutbacks.
Much of his recent work has focused on the arts. His volume entitled
“A New Framework for Building Participation in the Arts”, presents
a new behavioral model for understanding and influencing individuals’
arts participation decisions. This research on arts participation
was followed by “Gifts of the Muse: Reframing the Debate About the
Benefits of the Arts” which argues for a new policy approach to
making the case for the arts. He has also published a series of
studies about specific art forms, their current structure, and future
directions. These works include: “The Performing Arts in a
New Era”, “From Celluloid to Cyberspace: The Media Arts and the
Changing Arts World”, and most recently a volume on the visual arts
“A Portrait of the Visual Arts: Meeting the Challenges of a New
Era”. He is currently completing a study on local support systems
for the arts. In addition to his research, Dr. McCarthy has
held a variety of management positions at RAND including: Director
of RAND’s Institute for Civil Justice, Coordinator of California
Research, and Manager of RAND’s International Policy Program.
Marty Pottenger
Performer,
Playwright and Director. Performances and plays include: City
Water Tunnel #3, Winning the Peace, Construction
Stories, and What It's Like To Be A Man.
She is a founding member of Heresies: A Feminist Publication
on Art & Politics. Her current/recent projects include:
home
land security, a community performance project about the
dramatic changes in Portland Maine since September 11th as told
by indigenous and refugee leaders, politicians and citizens. home
land security will be remounted in May and October in Portland
Maine. Abundance, a
multi-media theatre work which focuses on economy and resource,
created from in-depth interviews with minimum wage working and billionaire
parents throughout the United States. Abundance was
chosen by Seattle Post-Intelligencer as one of the year's 10 best
plays. Just War, a tragi-comedy
with original songs written from interviews with veteran soldiers
and their families, created with Director Ana Miljanic and the Center
for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade Yugoslavia; and touring
internationally with City Water Tunnel
#3, an Obie-award-winning multi-media performance
and visual arts exhibit about NYC's 60 year long public works project,
as told through the collected stories of the people building the
tunnel. Founder of TheaterWorks!, offering performance workshops
for union members with The Working Theatre (2000 - 2001).
Ms. Pottenger also served as Board Chair of American Festival Project,
a national organization of artists and cultural workers that is
committed to deepening the relationship of the arts to the daily
lives of people and communities everywhere from 2000 to 2004.
Marty Pottenger has received generous and critical financial support
from the funding community including the NEA, The Trust for Mutual
Understanding, Lila Wallace Arts Partners, Rockefeller MAP, Animating
Democracy/Ford Foundation, NYSCA, NYFA and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.
Wendy Puriefoy
Wendy D. Puriefoy is a nationally recognized expert on issues of school reform and civil society. She is well known for her passionate advocacy of education equity for poor and disadvantaged children and has written and spoken extensively on the issues. She has been president of Public Education Network (PEN), the nation's largest network of community-based school reform organizations, since PEN was founded in 1991. Under her visionary leadership, PEN has grown into a national network of local education funds reaching 11 million children in 1,220 school districts and 16,700 schools nationwide. Ms. Puriefoy has been deeply involved in school reform since the 1970's when she served as a special monitor of the court-ordered desegregation plan for Boston's public schools. As president of PEN, Ms. Puriefoy has successfully advocated and implemented systemic reform initiatives in school finance and governance, curriculum and assessment, parent involvement, school libraries and school health. With support from leading national foundations, PEN recently launched multi-million dollar initiatives on teacher quality, standards and accountability, and schools and community services. Ms. Puriefoy is also a noted leader in the philanthropic world. Prior to being recruited as president of PEN, Ms. Puriefoy was executive vice president and chief operating officer of The Boston Foundation, a community foundation with an endowment of over $750 million supporting public health/welfare, educational, cultural, environmental, and housing programs in Boston, Massachusetts.
Michael Rohd
Michael
Rohd is founding artistic director of Sojourn
Theatre in Portland, Oregon, a 2005 recipient of Americans for
the Arts’ Animating Democracy Exemplar Award. His work there
as creator/director/performer includes 7 Great Loves (five
2003 Drammy awards including Best Production and Best Director),
and Witness Our Schools (9 months of Oregon
and national touring). Rohd is a recipient of Theatre Communication
Group's 2001 New Generations Grant, and their 2002 Extended
Collaboration Grant with Atlanta's Alliance Theatre.
An associate artist with Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles
and an artistic associate with PingChong & Co in New York City,
he is currently a guest faculty member at Northwestern University
in Illinois. He is author of the book Theatre for Community,
Conflict, and Dialogue, and has recently premiered new work
in Michigan, Idaho, Virginia & New York City. He has an MFA
in Directing and Public Dialogue from Virginia Tech, where he studied
with Bob Leonard.
Michael Sommers
Michael
Sommers is a theatre artist based in Minneapolis. His work
has been seen at the Guthrie Theater, The Children’s Theatre Company,
Theatre de la Jeune Lune, The Jungle Theater, The Court Theatre,
The Intiman Theatre, The Seattle Children’s Theatre, The Denver
Center, The Humana Festival and numerous small companies, basements,
backyards and on the street. He is a co-founder of Open Eye Figure
Theatre creating original mainstage work and small touring shows.
Open Eye has been seen in Minneapolis, New York, Chicago, Washington
DC, and Mexico. Mr. Sommers is the recipient of numerous grants
and awards and teaches in the Department of Theatre and Dance at
the University of Minnesota.
Ralph Trombetta
Ralph
G. Trombetta is an executive educator and management consultant
with over 20 years of business experience. He is the Founder
of Value Innovation
Associates and an Adjunct Professor at Fordham University in
New York City. Prior to Value Innovation Associates, Trombetta was
a Vice President at Emergence Consulting in Boston, a global strategy
consulting firm, and a Principal in Renaissance Strategy, creators
of the Balanced Scorecard. He held a series of management and
staff positions at IBM in marketing & sales,services, management
information systems and was one of the original members of the IBM
Consulting Group. Trombetta a senior blue ocean specialist in Professors
W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne’s value innovation network, has
delivered executive workshops in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
He holds an MBA degree from New York University, Stern School, with
distinction and has participated in strategic management programs
at Wharton, Harvard, and INSEAD. Trombetta resides just outside
of New York City in Westchester County and can be reached at ralph.trombetta@viassociates.com.
Alene Valkanas
Alene Valkanas is a national leader in the arts advocacy movement and education. For 19 years, Ms. Valkanas has directed the Illinois Arts Alliance (IAA), and its sister organization, the Illinois Arts Alliance Foundation developing a number of innovative programs and research projects including the first comprehensive examination of leadership transition in arts organizations. Over the years, she has quadrupled IAA membership, training a statewide network to support the arts. She recently served as co-chair of the newly formed State Arts Action Network of Americans for the Arts. She was previous chair of the State Arts Advocacy League of America and is an officer of the Donors Forum of Chicago. She is a founding board member of Charity Lobbying in the Public Interest. In 1993, she oversaw the campaign that re-instated funding for the City Arts program of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. In June of 1994, she was awarded the “Double Emmy” Arts Award by Mostly Music in recognition of her contribution to the cultural life of Chicago.
Her work in arts advocacy was preceded by fourteen years in public relations, program development and cultural affairs. While director of public relations and programming for the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago for 12 years, she produced more than 500 multi-discipline cultural events culminating in a major city-wide music festival. She conceived and implemented numerous promotional, marketing and community programs. Her previous experience was as an educator in the field of English and art at the secondary-school level. She holds an M.A.T. in art education from the University of Chicago and a B. A. in English from LaRoche College.
Donna Walker-Kuhne
Acknowledged
as the nation’s foremost expert in Audience Development by the Arts
& Business Council, Ms. Walker-Kuhne has devoted
her professional career to increasing access to the arts. She was
formerly Director of Marketing and Audience Development for The
Public Theater and Director of Marketing for Dance Theatre of Harlem.
Presently, she is President of Walker
International
Communications Group, a marketing and audience development
consulting company. Her clients include The Lower
Manhattan Cultural Council, Dance USA, Signature Theater, Three
Mo’ Tenors, The Apollo Theater, and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre.
She was an Associate Producer for George C. Wolfe’s Harlem
Song at the Apollo Theater. Her first book, Invitation
to the Party: Building Bridges to Arts, Culture and
Community, was published in fall 2005.
Ed Waterstreet
Ed
Waterstreet (DWT Artistic Director/CEO) founded Deaf West Theatre
in 1991, making it the first resident theatre company in America
operated by a deaf artistic director. Under his leadership,
Deaf West Theatre has performed on Broadway, garnered a Tony® nomination
and has received over 80 theatre awards including six Ovation Awards
(including Best Musical) for Big River and six L.A. Drama
Critics Circle Awards (including Best Musical) for Big River;
and the two top Ovation Awards for 2000, for A Streetcar Named
Desire (Best Play) and Oliver! (Best Musical). In
2005, Deaf West Theatre was also selected to receive the Highest
Recognition Award by the Secretary of Health and Human Services
for its “distinguished contributions to improve and enrich the culture
lives of deaf and hard of hearing actors and theater patrons.”
A former 12-year member of the National Theatre of the Deaf, he
also starred in the Emmy Award-winning Love Is Never Silent.
Ed was the recipient of the