Leah Reddy (she/her/hers): Teaching Artist & Director

Leah Reddy is a Cincinnati-born, NYC-based director and dramaturg focusing on engineering creative processes in community. Leah is a Master Teaching Artist with Roundabout Theatre Company, a video producer, and a mentor with the Arthur Miller Foundation. Work includes producing the documentary theatre piece and podcast Justice for Sergio with Leadership High School students.

Meghan Grover (she/her/hers): Teaching Artist & Theater-maker

Meghan Grover loves devising, performing, and directing theater. She works with New York City Children’s Theater, Park Avenue Youth Theater, Trusty Sidekick Theater Company, Bluelaces Theater Company, AMIOS, and Hook & Eye Theater Company. Meghan is also a co-founding member and facilitator of the Defrost Project where she creates community-based art with residents of small towns in Minnesota. She is a Moth StorySLAM winner and GrandSLAM performer. Meghan graduated from the University of Minnesota/Guthrie Theater BFA Actor Training Program and is currently getting her MA in Applied Theatre at CUNY. She is so grateful to be a part of the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable community!

Amanda Adams-Louis, Program Coordinator/Lead Educator, CUE Teen Collective | Instructor, High School 2 Art School | Teaching Artist, Arts Connection and Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation

Lafotographeuse (née Amanda Adams-Louis) is a photographer, art educator, college counselor and cultural producer based in Brooklyn, NY. Born in the U.S. and raised between Europe, Africa, North America and the Caribbean, Lafotographeuse’s teaching practice is informed by her experience living, learning and working abroad. Amanda earned her BFA in Photography from Pratt Institute and is Studio Art an alumna of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.

Currently, Amanda is a teaching artist with Arts Connection and Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. She is an education consultant at the CUE Art Foundation where she coordinates and facilitates a full year, experiential, visual art program for teens. Amanda is college counselor with the Queens Council on the Arts where she co-facilitates High School 2 Art School, an art college preparation program.

Amanda has used Google Classroom in her teaching practice for the past 3 years. She has exhibited her photo based artwork at Union Theological Seminary, Brooklyn Museum, CCCADI and Aljira. Her imagery has been published in MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, ARTnews, Huffington Post and Time Out NY. Amanda has received photographic commissions from Alvin Ailey, Pepsi, Levi’s, Budweiser and Urban World Film Festival.

Danilo Randjic-Coleman, Teaching Artist, ArtsConnection

Danilo Randjic-Coleman is a filmmaker and musician who has been a Teaching Artist with various NYC organizations since 2011. He began his work with young people with a focus in documentary film, and has since expanded his repertoire to include stop motion animation, video art, and podcasting, among others. Over the last 9 years, he has completed over 50 residencies, both in school and after school, in every borough in New York City, and with students of all backgrounds, educational levels, and ages.

After the COVID pandemic struck NYC in March, Danilo transitioned into online teaching, and spearheaded an asynchronous stop motion course with students at IS 75 in Staten Island. Students in that class have independently created over 30 short stop motion videos under Danilo’s guidance.

Javan Howard, Teaching Artist & Teaching Artist Project Facilitator, Community-Word Project

Javan Howard is a poet and writer from Bronx, NY. He truly believes that the lived experience is the ultimate teaching tool and uses poetry as a social forum to foster discourse about love, culture, and identity. He has facilitated workshops across NYC. Javan is a Teaching Artist Project Lead Mentor and a Teaching Artist for Community-Word Project and Teachers & Writers Collaborative.

Katie Rainey, Teaching Artist & Director of the Teaching Artist Project, Community-Word Project

Katie Rainey is a Teaching Artist and Director of the Teaching Artist Project at Community-Word Project, where she trains artists to become educators. She has been a teaching artist for over 10 years, and has taught poetry, fiction, theatre, photography, English as a second language and filmmaking in various parts of the world. For the last five years, Katie has been teaching at The Young Women’s Leadership School of Queens, working with their 9th grade students on creative writing and using their art-making for activism.

Katie is a writer and editor who has been published in numerous literary journals and has received several awards for her writing. Katie also serves on the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable Teaching Artist Affairs Committee, and was a part of the 2018 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Emerging Leaders Boot Camp.

Elizabeth McGuire, Teaching Artist, Broadway Bound Kids

Elizabeth McGuire is a choreographer, performer, teacher and human living in New York City. She is the Artistic Director, Co-Founder, and Resident Choreographer of ToUch Performance Art, a multimedia performing arts company specializing in immersive and innovative performances. AcousticaElectronica, ToUch’s sold out original show, has been in performance since 2011 in Boston, NYC, and beyond, most recently seen at the House of Yes in Brooklyn and American Repertory Theatre’s Club-Theatre OBERON. Outside of ToUch, Elizabeth has performed with artists such as Sinking Ship Productions, and BitterSuite at BAM, and has choreographed for people and places like the Mac-Haydn Theatre, the Signature Theatre, Manhattan School of Music, and Columbia University. As a teacher she has been teaching with Broadway Bound Kids since 2019, and has fallen madly in love with arts education.

Thank you to the NYC Arts in Education Roundtable for having me this summer!

John Coons, Teaching Artist at Third Street Music School Settlement

John Coons has a passion for performing and educating young people in music and theater. He has worked with groups of students of all ages, leading lectures, facilitating collaborative residencies, as well as training other teachers. John has performed as a soloist for the Boston Pops, Seattle Opera, and with popular artists Ben Folds, Amanda Palmer and Foreigner.

Karen Oughtred, Teaching Artist, Flushing Town Hall

Karen Oughtred is an educator and theater artist who develops Drama programs, mask and puppetry workshops for museums, youth, the disabled, and indigenous peoples in the US, Australia and Taiwan. She directs and performs interactive museum theater for seniors. The Memory Project, co-created with Spica Wobbe (2016) delivers workshops in storytelling through visual arts, theater and puppetry to older adults at culturally diverse senior centers. (LMCC SU-CASA (2017), Creative Learning (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020) grants.

Spica Wobbe, Teaching Artist, Flushing Town Hall

Spica Wobbe (Shu-yun Cheng) is a puppetry artist originally from Taiwan. Her work has been seen in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, Holland, Germany, Israel, Austria and the U.S. She established Double Image Theater Lab in 2011 to create cross-cultural productions. Spica co-created The Memory Project with Karen Oughtred (2016), storytelling through visual arts, theater and puppetry for culturally diverse senior centers. The project received LMCC SU-CASA, Creative Learning grants in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.

Marisol Rosa-Shapiro, Teaching Artist, New Victory

Marisol Rosa-Shapiro is an actor, director, teaching artist, and creator of original works of theater. She has recently appeared in THE UP CLOSE FESTIVAL at NYC’s New Ohio Theatre, and in Spellbound Theatre’s WINK and THE LAST COIN. Marisol is a teaching artist with The New Victory Theater in NYC, and has served in a similar capacity for many theaters and arts orgs across the country, including Seattle Children’s Theater, Seattle Rep, Tectonic Theater Company, TADA! Youth Theater, Partners for Youth Empowerment and Seeds of Peace. She recently served as Director of Community Engagement for Philadelphia’s Shakespeare in Clark Park and will appear in SCP’s upcoming pageant wagon mobile performances throughout West Philadelphia this August. She hopes to help build justice, playfulness and joy. And she is always learning.

Lisa Green, Teaching Artist | Department Director of Dance & Music at Dreamyard

As a community artist and cultural worker, Lisa Green has over 15 years experience in the public school system and community based programs. She has worked closely with schools and organizations collaborating to integrate arts into curriculum and leads arts engagement events. As a training facilitator, Lisa has conducted several workshops that focus on youth/community development, arts integration, self- care practices and social justice through the arts. She is an accomplished performer and considers herself a healing artist through multiple dance forms. Passionate about wellness, Lisa is also certified in Yoga and Ayurvedic Counselling.

Gabriella Kula, Museum Educator, Poster House

Gabriella Kula is a New York City based freelance museum educator with a B.A. in Art History from The University of Michigan and M.S. in Museum Education from Bank Street College of Education. She has worked in the gallery and curatorial worlds, and currently serves as an educator for school, family, adult and access groups at Poster House, The Jewish Museum, and The Noguchi Museum. Gabriella’s goal is to offer students challenging and fun experiences with observation, interpretation, and art making that deepen imaginations, bridge boundaries, and inspire dreams of new possibilities for the world.