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

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

Reginald Shepherd '88 was an American poet and teacher. His latest publication, The Selected Shepherd: Poems, appeared in 2024.

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