Alex Sarian is the President & CEO of Arts Commons, one of Canada’s foremost centers for arts and culture. In addition to overseeing the 560,000 square foot facility, which hosts over 600,000 guests to its 2,000 events annually, he is also responsible for leading the $660 million Arts Commons Transformation (ACT) project—the largest cultural infrastructure project in Canadian history. Scheduled to break ground in downtown Calgary in December 2024, ACT continues to attract attention from around the world for its record-breaking vision, and has secured the country’s largest philanthropic gift ever made to the performing arts sector. At the time of his appointment in 2020, at the age of 36, Alex became the youngest executive to oversee a major performing arts center in North America.

Prior to moving to Canada, Alex spent nearly two decades in leadership roles in New York City, most notably as the senior executive at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts responsible for international consulting, regranting initiatives, artistic programming for young audiences and families, community engagement, and the institution’s famed education department.

Alex has worked on cultural projects in 15 countries spanning five continents and has taught at New York University, Pace University, and City College of New York. He has served on governing boards and special advisory committees for institutions including Tourism Calgary, the Calgary Downtown Association, SXSW, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, and the Varkey Foundation’s Global Teacher Prize. A proud member of the 2022 class of Calgary’s Top 40 Under 40, he received undergraduate and graduate degrees from New York University, is a graduate of the CommunityShift program at Western University's Ivey School of Business, and was an inaugural graduate of the Impact Program for Arts Leaders at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

His debut non-fiction book, The Audacity of Relevance: Critical Conversations on the Future of Arts & Culture (ECW Press / Simon & Schuster, 2024) is already being praised as a “manifesto for the arts in times of crises.”

Ayesha Williams is the executive director of The Laundromat Project (The LP), a New York City community-based arts organization dedicated to making sustained investments in growing a community of multiracial, multigenerational, and multidisciplinary artists and neighbors committed to societal change. She is an arts professional with two decades of experience working with visual artists, presenting programs, and generating funding for commercial galleries and nonprofit institutions. Prior to The LP, she managed Visual Arts at Lincoln Center and served as the Director of Kent Gallery, New York. In addition to her professional experience, Ayesha is on the board of Rivers Institute for Contemporary Art & Thought and The Black School, and a member of Independent Curators International Independents. She completed the Stanford Impact Program for Arts Leaders and served as a Steering Committee member of the UN Women's Conference (2016). She received her Master’s degree in Visual Arts Administration from New York University and Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Brooke Whitaker-Royster is an experienced organizational strategist skillfully moving through the fine and performing arts, education, and both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. Her work focuses on inspiring and creating sustainable business practices in the formation of innovative programming and strategic partnerships.

While at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts as Lincoln Center Education’s Assistant Director, Global Partnerships, Brooke was responsible for expanding Lincoln Center’s educational partnerships through its conventional consulting practice and thought leadership portfolio, which focused on cultivating critical thinking in schools and communities. During her tenure within Lincoln Center Education, the department grew to manage consulting engagements in nearly twenty countries and four continents. During this time Brooke developed and grew new relationships with global government agencies, educational institutions and corporate entities. 

Brooke also curated and produced programming for Lincoln Center Education’s Summer Forum, an annual, three-week event which welcomed artists, educators, teaching artists, and participants from around the world to explore the process of imaginative learning and best practices in arts education and community arts. Most notable among this work was having produced a Speaker Series for Summer Forum which featured headlining BIPOC women whose work impacts arts spaces and focuses on equity and social justice. This programming served as the inspiration for Lincoln Center’s groundbreaking series Activate.

During its inaugural cycles, Brooke directed all programmatic aspects of the Lincoln Center Cultural Innovation Fund, in partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation, not only implementing the strategy for the grant program which included proposal guidelines, grantee selection and program evaluation, but planning and producing grantee convenings which centered on the reclamation of cultural capital, grantee collaboration and living in the realm of possibility.

During a nearly 10 year professional tenure in Philadelphia, PA Brooke began her career at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, The Leeway Foundation and the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. Brooke earned her Bachelor of Arts from Temple University, where she studied Art History, Religion, and African American Studies. She has also studied at Harvard University’s Division of Continuing Education. She has held a variety of leadership roles within New York City’s non-profit landscape and has served as a Creative Advisor for a number of educational programs to include Futures and Options, a program dedicated to helping empower New York City's underserved youth to explore careers through career development and paid, mentored internships. 

Most recently, aside from her role as Advisor at Lincoln Center, where she advised on projects like Festival of NY, Brooke now leads Mid Monday Morning, LLC, a possibility-centric consulting agency focused on harnessing cultural capital to propel community and non-profit organizations toward high-growth strategies and self-reliance. MMM’s latest projects include consulting for the National Guild for Community Arts Education, National Queer Theater, Camden Repertory Theater and The Colored Girls Museum.

James Claiborne is a seasoned arts curator and educator with nearly 20 years of experience in the nonprofit cultural sector. In 2024, he rejoined the Barnes Foundation—where he previously served as Curator of Public Programs—after holding the position of Senior Vice President of Exhibitions and Programs at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit.

Claiborne leads efforts to deepen the Barnes's partnerships in Philadelphia and beyond, overseeing the development and implementation of public and community engagement programs that reflect the institution’s artistic, educational, and social missions. His career is marked by a commitment to inclusive cultural programming and expanding museums’ roles as spaces for creative inquiry.

Prior roles include Public Programs Manager and Director of Programming at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, and Community Engagement Manager at the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. Claiborne has also held positions as Program Manager at First Person Arts and Editor for Visit Philadelphia’s Philly 360 campaign. Additionally, he served as an adjunct professor at Drexel University’s Westphal College of Media Arts and Design, where he taught audience development in the arts.

In 2023, Claiborne co-curated William Edmondson: A Monumental Vision at the Barnes Foundation and Returning to Before, an installation by visual and movement artist Brendan Fernandes. As an independent curator, he has organized exhibitions featuring a wide range of artists, including Deborah Willis, James Dupree, Amber Art and Design, Richard J. Watson, Ruth Naomi Floyd, and Barkley L. Hendricks.

Claiborne has served on boards and advisory panels for numerous arts organizations, including Artblog, Art Sanctuary, FringeArts, Mural Arts Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia Cultural Fund. He holds a BA in African and African American Studies from the University of Memphis.

Kamilah Forbes is an esteemed award-winning director and producer for theater and television who currently serves as the Executive Producer at the world-famous Apollo Theater. Ms. Forbes is noted for having a strong commitment to the development of creative works by, for, and about the Hip-Hop generation. In addition to her work at The Apollo, Ms. Forbes’ directing credits include By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, written by two-time Pulitzer prize-winning writer Lynn Nottage; The Blood Quilt written by Katori Hall; and Sunset Baby by MacArthur Genius recipient Dominique Morisseau. She has also worked as associate director on the Tony Award-winning A Raisin in the Sun, and Emmy Award-winning “The Wiz Live” for NBC. Other Broadway credits include The Mountaintop and Stick Fly.

Ms. Forbes’ most recent directorial work, “Between the World and Me” aired as a special event on HBO and HBO Max in November 2020. Her directorial work on “Between the World and Me” has brought her a host of acclaim and recognition, including a nomination for Best Direction for an NAACP Image Award and a Critics Choice Award nomination.

Throughout her career, Ms. Forbes has won numerous awards for both directing and producing, including the 2019 NBTF Larry Leon Hamlin Producer Award, a Root 100 Award, an NAACP Image Award, a Helen Hayes and Barrymore Award, and an Audelco. Ms. Forbes’ recent projects include directing the sold-out world premiere, tour, and theatrical adaption of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ New York Times best-selling novel Between the World and Me, which premiered at The Apollo Theater in 2018 and returned for encore performances in 2019. In addition to her work at The Apollo Theater, Ms. Forbes is set to direct the Broadway premiere of Soul Train alongside producer Questlove, playwright Dominique Morisseau, and choreographer Camille A. Brown.

Ms. Forbes’ production credits include “What’s Going On,” the 40th anniversary celebration of Marvin Gaye’s seminal work (with John Legend as Marvin Gaye, Sharon Jones as Tammi Terrell, the Dap-Kings, Sonia Sanchez, and others); “One Mic,” a month-long multidisciplinary celebration of Hip-Hop Worldwide; and Nas’ “20 Year Anniversary of Illmatic,” a celebration of the classic hip-hop album, accompanied with 96 players from the National Symphony Orchestra—all staged at the Kennedy Center. Ms. Forbes lends her service and leadership to several Boards including the Yale Schwarzman Center Advisory Board as well as the Hi-ARTS Advisory Board.

Her connection to the arts began as a passion for theater and producing while at Howard University, where she earned a BFA in theater. Upon graduation, Ms. Forbes invested her time and talent in creating, collaborating, and producing hip-hop theater. As hip-hop theater came into prominence, so did Ms. Forbes, as the writer/director of Hip-Hop Theatre Junction’s premiere work “Rhyme Deferred.” A year later, the Hip-Hop Theater Festival was born. Presented in New York; San Francisco; Washington, D.C.; and Chicago, the festival featured the works of nearly 100 artists from the United States and from around the world, including England, Brazil, and Canada. Many new and well-known artistic forces have had their work leveraged under Ms. Forbes’ artistic direction, including OBIE Award winner Will Power, Tony Award winner Sarah Jones, Rennie Harris, Nilaja Sun, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and Indio Melendez.

The Hip-Hop Theater Festival grew tremendously from a fledgling project into a groundbreaking nonprofit organization, Hi-ARTS, with a truly national scope leading the charge in hip-hop culture and art. Hi-ARTS received the Union Square Arts Award as well as a special award given by the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers for “its innovative approach to addressing sociopolitical issues in New York City and beyond.”

Ms. Forbes has produced several works for television, most notably the seventh season of the Tony Award and Peabody Award-winning series “Russell Simmons presents Def Poetry” on HBO. She was also a co-executive producer on the “Brave New Voices” documentary series on HBO, in addition to executive producing the PBS special “The Women’s List.” She is the proud recipient of the Pollstar Impact 50 award, the Zelda Fichandler Award for excellence in leadership and directing, and was honored on the 2020 Root 100 list.

In 2021, President Joe Biden named Ms. Forbes as a nominee and subsequently inducted her into the National Council on the Arts. She also serves as the director for the Broadway-bound Soul Train, a new musical based on Don Cornelius' landmark TV show, that will premiere at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater in 2022. Making history as the first production to have Black female artists as the creative core of a Broadway musical the show is also written by Dominique Morisseau (Ain't Too Proud), choreographed by Camille A. Brown (Choir Boy). Four-time Grammy Award winner Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson serves as executive producer.

Ms. Forbes is a powerful leader, widely known for her ability and commitment to continue to highlight the ideas, complexities, and work of artists in the hip-hop community and beyond.

Russell Granet is President & CEO of New 42, the cultural nonprofit whose mission is to make extraordinary performing arts a vital part of everyone’s life from the earliest years onward through its signature projects, New 42 Studios and New Victory Theater. Under his leadership, New 42 expanded its virtual presentations and educator resources, earning the nonprofit a WNET Arts Hero Award. Recent projects include fully subsidized arts education for NYC public schools; publication of “Spark Change: The Intrinsic Impact of Performing Arts on Kids,” a longitudinal research study; “Let’s Get This Show on the Street,” a once-in-a-lifetime outdoor celebration (NY Emmy nomination) in Times Square featuring performances from Sara Bareilles, Freestyle Love Supreme Academy, Bill Irwin and Dance Theatre of Harlem, among others; and New Victory Arts Break, a highly successful online curriculum series for teachers and caregivers to integrate performing arts into remote learning. New Victory Arts Break reached more than one million views and was broadcast nationwide on PBS as part of WNET’s Let’s Learn and WNET’s Camp TV (NY Emmy nomination). 

Granet was formerly at Lincoln Center where he served as Executive Vice President of Lincoln Center Education, Community Engagement, and International, and as Acting President from April 2018 to May 2019, continuing his longstanding efforts to bring the best of the performing arts to the broadest possible audience. While at Lincoln Center he produced and commissioned the critically acclaimed Up and Away, a show for young people on the autism spectrum.  

Granet founded the consulting group Arts Education Resource and held leadership positions at The Center for Arts Education - The NYC Annenberg Challenge, American Place Theatre, and was a senior teaching artist in NYC public schools. He served on the faculty of the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University for 20 years, where he developed and taught the course Drama with Special Populations. Among numerous honors, Granet was recognized in the inaugural Crain’s New York Notable LGBTQ Executive List and was cited as a visionary leader by the Bloomberg administration. He was included in PoliticsNY's 2024 Power Players in Arts & Culture. He is a trustee of Times Square Alliance, Bank Street College and the Sherman Fairchild Foundation. 

Granet is a graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and Emerson College, and received his master’s degree from the Steinhardt School of Education, New York University.

President & CEO Stephanie Hill Wilchfort was appointed Ronay Menschel Director and President of the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) in August 2023. Founded in 1923 as the first city museum in the United States, MCNY is New York City’s flagship storyteller, serving roughly 300,000 people annually through exhibitions and programs that celebrate, document, and interpret our city’s past, present, and future. Previously, Stephanie served as President & CEO of Brooklyn Children's Museum (BCM), the country’s first and one of its largest children’s museums. During her tenure BCM realized a 30% growth in visitorship, raised $45 million in capital support, and completed four major capital projects, including a ground-breaking partnership with Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) that ensured a permanent home for BPL in Crown Heights. Following pandemic-related closure, Stephanie led BCM’s re-opening in September 2020, bringing over one hundred staff members back to work on the Museum’s floor, safely welcoming thousands of visitors for in-person experiences, and subsequently opening the Museum’s second floor as a vaccination site for children and adults in partnership with the NYC Department of Health & Mental Hygiene. Nearly 40,000 people in Central Brooklyn received their shots at Brooklyn Children’s Museum. A Brooklyn native, Stephanie has worked in arts and culture for two decades. She has previously held roles including Vice President of Development for the Lower East Side Tenement Museum; Assistant Vice President and Senior Project Director at Sesame Workshop; and Director of Development for New York Public Radio/WNYC. She began her career at New York Public Media/WNET and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Stephanie currently serves as the Executive Vice-Chair for the Cultural Institutions Group (CIG) of the City of New York, helping to lead advocacy for a coalition of 34 cultural institutions, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Museum of Natural History, and Brooklyn Museum. She served as Brooklyn Vice-Chair of the CIG from 2017 to 2020. She has been a panelist and speaker for the International Council of Museums; American Alliance of Museums; Association of Children’s Museums; Institute of Museum and Library Services; National Endowment for the Arts; and Lincoln Center Cultural Innovation Fund, among others. She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, an MPA in economic policy from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, and a BA from Binghamton University (SUNY). She and her husband Benjamin live in Brooklyn and are parents to three boys, ages 11, 14, and 17.

Prior to being appointed Consul General in New York by Prime Minister Trudeau, Tom Clark served as Chair of Global Public Affairs, one of the largest public affairs and strategic communications firms in Canada. His private sector clients included senior executives in Canada and internationally who sought public policy and strategic communications advice on key business and investment decisions. He was a frequent speaker to business groups and associations across the country as well as a sought after advisor to governments, both in Canada and abroad.

Prior to his work in the business community, Consul General Clark was one of Canada’s most respected broadcast journalists. During his 45 year career, he was posted as Bureau Chief to Washington DC and China, in addition to working in more than 30 countries, including tours in eight active war zones. His work earned him numerous awards in both Canada and the United States.

Mr. Clark is a licensed pilot who has flown extensively in Canada’s north. He is married to Jane Clark and has three daughters.