Influencers
Actress, poet, and writer best known for her role as “Lady Aberlin” on the children’s television classic Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood and more recently in movies including Dogma, Jersey Girl, and Red State
Former president of the New England Pediatric Society, fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and winner of the 2001 Franklin Rogers Award for her contributions to pediatric causes by the New Hampshire Pediatric Society
Photographer for Newsweek, Reuters, and, for eight years, at the White House as the President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton’s official documentary photographer
Founder of the award-winning firm Alter Studio architects, and Wm. S. Marvin Hall of Fame for Design Excellence inductee. Leading educator and critic, and associate director of the Center of American Architecture and Design at the University of Texas at Austin
Executive director of Prospect New Orleans and former deputy director of curatorial programming at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Bessie award-winning choreographer and dancer who, in 1993, founded his own Burkina Faso-based troupe, Kongo Ba Téria, which fuses traditional African dances with Western contemporary dance and is a central figure in the contemporary, emergent, experimental dance scene in Africa
Emmy, Tony, and Drama Desk Award-winning choreographer and director of musical theatre, film, and television whose work runs the gamut from performing in West Side Story on Broadway, directing Cindy Lauper and Rolling Stones videos, and choreographing numbers for Saturday Night Live
TECxTimesSquare board member and expert on “improvised careers”—nonlinear, multi-modal paths that help people succeed in the global borderless workplace—whose own résumé ranges from session musician to IBM executive
Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus and former chair of the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State University and past president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology and the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Borough president of the New York City borough of Manhattan who formerly served as a member of the New York City Council and as director of the Office of Federal Relations in the Dinkins administration, among her other positions in a long career of public service
Lipp Family Director of Dance and senior lecturer in dance at Williams College whose choreographic work has been performed at Dance Theater Workshop, the Judson Memorial Church, Theater 4/Negro Ensemble Company, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, MASS MoCA, and venues in Nicaragua, Brazil, and the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
Founder and artistic director of Prospect New Orleans, senior curator at the New Museum in New York from 1995 to 2006, and an independent curator whose work has brought to the spotlight some of the most inventive contemporary artists of the 1990s and 2000s
Author of Off the Road: My Years with Cassady, Kerouac, and Ginsberg, and model for Camille in Kerouac’s Beat classic
Former performer and associate artistic director of Elizabeth Streb’s Ringside company, known for its athletic, gravity-defying choreography, whose own Bessie award-winning work has been performed at Danspace, Dance Theater Workshop, and other high-profile venues
Photograph © Lois Greenfield
Textile designer and artist who is assistant designer at Mara Hoffman, who has developed textiles for Pierre Frey, Liberty of London, and other brands
Award-winning architect whose firm, Desai Chia Architecture, was rated among the top 100 design firms by House Beautiful
Principal designer for renowned architectural firm Michael Graves & Associates whose whimsical designs for fantasy pianos were published as a book, The Art of the Piano, in 2000
Dean of the School of Architecture and Design at the New York Institute of Technology, member of the prestigious College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects, and winner of the Rome Prize in Architecture
Screenwriter and television producer best known as the co-creator of the television series Huge
Bestselling author of Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman, former executive vice president of CNN, and before that a key player in the creation of the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and the 1966 Civil Rights Act during the Johnson Administration
Executive vice president and chairman of the Americas division of Sotheby’s, an international art auction house, and former president of Christie’s Los Angeles
Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of the poet Louise Bogan and the painters Jackson Pollock and Esteben Vicente whose writings on literature and art have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Art in America, The Nation, and ARTnews
Photographer named one of the Best and Brightest by Esquire in 2003, whose work is in the collection of MoMA and has appeared in exhibitions at the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Bilbao
Photograph © Bernd Arnold
Deputy curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, former editor of the European edition of TIME magazine, and author of I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How it Shapes the Way We See the World
Associate artistic director of The Public Theatre in New York City, former founder and producer of The Underwood Theatre, which supported new work from emerging playwrights, and former literary manager and resident dramaturg at the New York Theatre Workshop
Multimedia artist who creates sculpture, installation, performance, and video art that engages questions of race and gender, and director of the Rhinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art
Rare-book dealer who brokered the sale of important archives such as the papers of Norman Mailer and Don DeLillo and the Watergate notebooks of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
Photograph © Mark Mahaney
Dancer, choreographer, and founder of Risa Jaroslow & Dancers, who is dedicated to including diverse communities as participants and audiences, developing teaching techniques to engage dancers of all levels and people of all ages and abilities
Leader in the field of explorative methods of dance-making whose career spans creating original roles for the Trisha Brown Dance Company in the 1980s to recent collaborative, durational performance installations that have been staged in the United States and Europe
Leading American philanthropist and fierce advocate for research into the causes and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease
Museum director who has held top positions at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, the Katonah Museum of Art, the American Federation of Arts, and, currently, at the Mystic Arts Center
Choreographer and visual artist whose recent show at The Chocolate Factory, Someone Once Called Me a Sound Man (2013), was named a Best of 2013 by Artforum magazine
Dancer who has performed with the Trisha Brown Dance Company, choreographed for her own company and independently, taught at universities and arts centers, and written reviews, features, and essays on dance for a variety of publications
Poet, author of That Blue Repair, and chair of the liberal arts department at the Curtis Institute of Music
Choreographer, performer, teacher, and recipient of the national Jacob K. Javits Fellowship in Dance, having trained and performed under the direction of American Ballet Theater principal ballerina Karena Brock Carlyle
Executive editor and regular contributor for Wine Spectator magazine
Actress best known for her longtime roles on The Wonder Years and The Bold and the Beautiful
Executive director of The Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation, a philanthropy dedicated to improving the lives of patients and their families through nurse-led innovation, and a member of the board of directors of the Brooklyn Academy of Music
Bessie and Alpert award-winning dance-maker, improvisational performer, and collaborative artist who developed an approach to real-time editing, “attentionography,” and performance she calls Tuning Scores
Architect, urban design champion, and executive director of the citizen’s group, Municipal Art Society of New York City
Guggenheim award-winning poet, writer, and author of several New York Times bestsellers, including Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith
Leading figure in American theatre, former artistic director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and winner of a Tony award for outstanding regional theatre
Associate vice chancellor for technology management and corporate relations at UC Davis, with a background in Fortune-500, publicly traded, entrepreneurial, and startup companies
Member of Trisha Brown Dance Company in the 1970s, choreographer, former editor-in-chief of Dance Magazine, and author of Through the Eyes of a Dancer
Pilot who learned to fly during her freshman year at Bennington, graduated early to become a WASP in World War II, and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 2010
Film director, producer, actor, acting teacher, and founder of New York’s Water Theatre Company who has overseen more than 20 stage and film productions
Deputy director and principal research scientist at American Institutes for Research who has worked at the intersection of public health, prevention, and education
Choreographer whose work has been seen at venues including Danspace Project, REDCAT, and The Getty Center and who has danced in the companies of Trisha Brown, Terry Creach, and Stephanie Skura
Member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, performing a vast repertory, originating several roles, and appearing in several of Cunningham’s works for camera including Charles Atlas’s film Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime in Dance
Poet, art critic, former senior editor at Art in America, and recipient of the Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government
CEO of Bocoup, a company that creates open tools and workflows used in the global marketplace
Founder and director of the Theatre of Witness, whose performance projects have given voice to prisoners and their families, survivors and perpetrators of abuse and violence, refugees, immigrants, elders, and those who have lived through war
President of First Beverage Financial and leading investment banker who has honed his expertise in mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, restructurings, and strategic partnerships in top positions at Peter J. Solomon & Company, Lazard, and Goldman Sachs
Founding member of the Compass Players along with Alan Alda and Alan Arkin ’55 in the 1960s, and actress best known for her roles in Goodfellas and The Sopranos
Dancer and choreographer who worked with Andy De Groat, Bill T. Jones, David Gordon, and Wendy Perron and whose own choreography was presented at the Dance Theater Workshop and the 14th Street Dance Center in Manhattan
Founder of the Lab School, a groundbreaking program for children with learning disabilities, and a leading expert in special education
Writer for GQ, McSweeney’s, Jezebel, Vulture, and New York Magazine and the television series Sirens and Gracie and Frankie, who was declared one of the “funniest women on Twitter” by The Huffington Post
Jazz vocalist, improviser, composer, and originator of Embodied VoiceWork, a vocal improvisation method of music therapy which she teaches at The Experimental Theater Wing at New York University
Tony award-winning orchestrator for some of Broadway’s most innovative musicals, including Assassins and Next to Normal, and for films including The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Tangled, and Chicago
Professor of environmental conservation at UMass Amherst and senior investigator at Harvard Forest who studies plants’ response to climate change, invasive species, and other ecological threats
Founder and former head of school of the Northwest School who has been recognized as a Changemaker by Global Washington for her current work as executive director of the International Leadership Academy of Ethiopia
Acclaimed poet, co-founder with Allen Ginsberg of the celebrated Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, recipient of the American Book Award’s Lifetime Achievement and a Guggenheim fellowship, and chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
Opera singer who performed principal roles in many of the world’s leading opera houses, award-winning novelist, and producer and director of critically acclaimed theatrical productions
Bessie and Guggenheim award-winning dancer, choreographer, and videographer, and the artistic director of Cathy Weis Projects
Photograph © Richard Termine
New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Choreography and Bessie Award winning Performer for Sustained Achievement known for her longstanding work with some of the leading names in modern and contemporary dance, whose choreography has been staged at venues including Center for Performance Research, Dance Theater Workshop, La Ma Ma, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Museum of Arts and Design, and New York Live Arts
Professor of ecology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and director of the award-winning North Carolina Botanical Garden
Former dance editor of The Village Voice whose writings about dance, theatre, and books have appeared in New York’s Metro and the Philadelphia Inquirer