Alexis Branagan is a communications professional, arts administrator, and a freelance professional dancer. In 2011, she received her degree in English with an emphasis on theater studies and dance from Princeton University, where she also founded Princeton University Ballet. From 2012-2022, she danced full-time with New York Theatre Ballet, performing works by Sir Richard Alston, Merce Cunningham, Agnes de Mille, Liza Genaro, Robert LaFosse, José Límon, Jerome Robbins, Pam Tanowitz, and Antony Tudor. She has also danced in opera productions, in productions of Shakespeare in the Park by the Public Theater, at Carnegie Hall with the NY Pops, and for television. Alongside her full-time dance career, Alexis managed the Ballet Connoisseurship program at School of American Ballet, programmed book talks at 92NY, and worked in marketing for American Repertory Ballet on part-time schedules. She flipped her full-time and part-time focus in 2022 when she happily returned here to Princeton University and joined the fabulous team at Princeton University Concerts. On the side, she dances for Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance and for Amanda Treiber + Company, where she also serves as Managing Director.

Meghan Duval is an American artist, entrepreneur, and educator. In all three sectors, her core interest is in what she calls Everyday Art: the images we see, consume, and generate daily. In the studio that work manifests in her painted and printed grids, her wrestling with the screen shots and encased imagery, her prints and photographs of the “Lovey” character and her Kitchen Basics Lino-cut prints. As an educator she strives to raise awareness of the immense power of art and the way in which art has infiltrated every area of our lives. As an entrepreneur she works to employ the power of art to generate positive and supportive environments for private, corporate and hospitality-based clients.

Learn more about Megan

Rhinold is an artist, curator, community activist, and lawyer.  He is the Executive Director of Art Against Racism, a nonprofit whose mission is to use the arts to inspire the creation of an anti-racist society. He is very active in the New Jersey arts community.

Socials: artagainstracism_org / ponderartist

Learn More Here: https://ponderart.com / https://artagainstracism.org

Katerina (Katie) Wong is a multidisciplinary dance artist, choreographer, arts advocate and mom of two. She is committed to creating new pathways for audiences of all kinds to engage with dance. Katie's choreography has been presented both in theatrical venues including Lincoln Center, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, ODC Theater, Z Space, and CounterPulse, as well as nontraditional spaces including Salesforce Park, California Academy of Sciences, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco Public Library, Exploratorium, and more. She has partnered with the ACLU of Northern California, Pop Up Magazine, Litquake’s Elders Project, Cutting Ball Theater, Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera, and mobile dance game developers in pursuit of this mission. 
 
As a freelance movement artist, Katie has performed with more than 15 Bay Area dance companies and has been a guest artist with the San Francisco Symphony. From 2019-2023, Katie served as Co-Artistic Director of RAWdance, spearheading artistic productions, choreography, and programming for the organization's headquarters in San Francisco. She graduated from Princeton University with a BA in Anthropology and concentrations in Dance and East Asian Studies. Katie has participated in arts leadership programs by Dance/USA, Women of Color in the Arts, APAP, and Asylum Arts. After over a decade of artmaking in the Bay Area, she relocated with her family to New York in 2023.

Learn More Here: www.katerinawong.com / @katerinamoves

The arts have been an integral part of Anthony Mastromatteo’s life for over 25 years.  A Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History from Princeton University in 1992 led to a five year position at Christie’s auction house in New York City in the American Paintings, 19th Century Paintings and Maritime Paintings and Objects departments.  As his exposure to the art world expanded he began studying the practice of art after work at the Art Student’s League in New York City.  In 1997 he made the transition to full-time art study at the Water Street Atelier, a school of art practice based on the methodology of the French Academy and the French atelier system of the 18th and 19th centuries, under the tutelage of Jacob Collins.  In 2002 he finished his studies and made the transition to working as a professional artist.  He has worked solely as an artist since that time.  He currently has representation with galleries in New York City, Los Angeles and Cleveland.

Jared Garland '15 is a Brooklyn-based fiction writer. After studying comparative literature and creative writing at Princeton, he received an MFA from NYU's fiction program on the Jill Davis Fellowship. His writing has appeared in. publications including The Chicago Quarterly Review, Adroit Journal, and Narratively. When he is not writing, he runs Prospect Advising, a boutique college and graduate admissions firm, with Grace Kim '11. He is working on a debut novel. 

Kahina Haynes, Executive Director (2016-Present), is a passionate arts activist and the visionary architect behind DIW’s strategic revitalization following the significant loss of its Founder/Artistic Director, Fabian Barnes.

Prior to her appointment to the Executive Director role by the DIW Board of Directors, Ms.Haynes served as DIW’s School Director. Before that, she worked in program and process evaluation for a number of philanthropic and non-profit organizations including the United Nations (Bureau for Development Policy at UNDP), the Annie E. Casey Foundation, SafeKids Worldwide, and the World Bank Group. Ms. Haynes holds a B.A. from Princeton University with a Minor in African American Studies and a concentration in Dance; as well as, a MSC from Oxford University in Evidence-based Social Intervention. She was recently recognized by the Black Voices for Black Justice Fund as a 2022 National Awardee and is also the recipient of the David Bradt Non-profit Leadership award (2021). 

Ms. Haynes serves on many volunteer committees and Boards including Princeton Arts Alumni Board of Directors, the School of American Ballet Alumni Committee, the DC Arts Education Alliance, the interview panel for Princeton’s Alumni Schools committee.

Soprano Heather O’Donovan has been seen in a workshop performance of Julian Wachner’s Rev. 23 (Fury 1); Nino Rota’s I due timidi (Lucia); the world premiere of Andrew Lovett’s The Analysing Engine (Professor Platt); Victor Massé’s Jeannette’s Wedding Day (Jeannette); Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea (Drusilla); and the world premiere of Flannery Cunningham’s Weehawken (Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton). Scene work includes Cendrillon (La Fée); La Fille du Régiment (Marie); Così fan tutte (Despina); and Die Zauberflöte (Papagena). O’Donovan graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and received her master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music. Previous studies also include the Royal College of Music in London. O’Donovan is also an avid writer, with a particular focus on topics relating to classical music. Her writing work has been featured with WQXR, OperaWire, the Santa Fe Opera, and BuzzFeed.

Bio: Sonya Hayden is a playwright, lyricist, and composer whose work has appeared at local and international venues, including the Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center, Edinburgh International Festival, Traverse Theatre, The Duplex, Village Pub Theatre Leith, Merlin Theatre Frome, Art House Productions, and Princeton University. Sonya is a member of the Dramatists Guild, ASCAP, and the BMI Advanced Musical Theatre Workshop. She was previously a member of the Princeton University Triangle Club Writers Workshop (Milton Lyon Award for Outstanding Writing), as well as Traverse Theatre Young Writers in Scotland. MSc Playwriting, University of Edinburgh; A.B. Music, Princeton University.

Learn More Here: http://sonyahayden.com

Jill Sigman (’89, *98) is a queer interdisciplinary artist and agent of change who choreographs with bodies and materials. She founded jill sigman/thinkdance in 1998 to think about pressing social issues through the body. In 2016, she developed “Body Politic,” a program of workshops and performance laboratories to ask salient political questions somatically, and in 2022 she initiated a Social Justice Movement Lab for artist-activists. Working with things we cast off such as “garbage” and “weeds”, Sigman illuminates connections between social justice and environmental justice and helps us to envision a future in which we re-connect with the natural world in meaningful and empathic ways. Her book Ten Huts about choreographing with waste, was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2017. Sigman has partnered with activists, legal advocates, janitors, anthropologists, and farmers. She was the first Gibney Community Action Artist in Residence, a Choreographic Fellow at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, a Distinguished Guest Artist at the University of San Francisco Performing Arts & Social Justice program, and an Artist in Residence at Movement Research, The Rauschenberg Residency, Guapamacátaro Interdisciplinary Residency in Art and Ecology (Mexico), the Kri Foundation (India), and the Tisch Initiative for Creative Research at NYU. She is currently a Creative Campus Fellow at Wesleyan University and a Dance Fellow at Smush Gallery in Jersey City. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY.