NNPN Board Member
Prop Thtr Board Member (NNPN Founding Core Member Theater)
Chicago Dramatists (NNPN Partner Organization) Board Member, Executive Committee
I believe in the transformative power of live theater—in its ability to move people to new places and ideas and perspectives, and in the power that comes from experiencing it together, shoulder to shoulder, breath to breath, laugh to laugh, and tear to tear with other humans. Live theater is magical, and magical theater resonates and lingers and ripples with the power to change lives.
I have loved theater since I was a little girl, and have a running list of my top 10 favorite performances that includes everything from the first show I ever saw on Broadway (A Chorus Line, of course!!), to a very young Kenneth Branagh as Henry V at...
NNPN Board Member
Prop Thtr Board Member (NNPN Founding Core Member Theater)
Chicago Dramatists (NNPN Partner Organization) Board Member, Executive Committee
I believe in the transformative power of live theater—in its ability to move people to new places and ideas and perspectives, and in the power that comes from experiencing it together, shoulder to shoulder, breath to breath, laugh to laugh, and tear to tear with other humans. Live theater is magical, and magical theater resonates and lingers and ripples with the power to change lives.
I have loved theater since I was a little girl, and have a running list of my top 10 favorite performances that includes everything from the first show I ever saw on Broadway (A Chorus Line, of course!!), to a very young Kenneth Branagh as Henry V at RSC at Stratford in 1984, to a long-running play about Chicago’s own royal family – Hizzoner, Daley the First, at Prop Thtr, to a play about a necklace and hope at the tiny but mighty former 16th Street Theater in Berwyn. All have shaped and changed my life.
Professionally, I was in the advertising field for 40 years, starting out as a copywriter for the Sears Catalog. In the years that followed, I was everything from a writer, to a marketer, to a strategic planner, to my own marketing research consulting business, InsightStorm, specializing in consumer and brand insights. I refer to what I did as ‘Margaret Mead meets the Marlboro Man,’ applying a cultural anthropology approach to getting into the hearts and minds of people, ultimately in order to persuade them to do something—from buying a particular product to taking a chance on a new play at an unfamiliar theater.
My resume also includes stints at dude ranches and a year spent as a foreign exchange student in Norway (ja, jeg snakker norsk!). Academically, I hold a B.A.in Scandinavian Studies from The University of Texas (true!), as well as an M.S.A. in Advertising and Ph. D. candidate status (ABD) in communications, with concentrations in consumer behavior, persuasion and cognitive processing, both from Northwestern University.