Careers in the Arts

Marc Franklin is a New York City-based photographer specializing in portrait, theatre, and lifestyle photography, currently working as the Principal Photographer/Photo Editor for Playbill Magazine. With an eye toward storytelling and composition, Marc strives to capture authentic experience and emotion in the world around us, focusing on simplicity and clarity to highlight his subjects. Marc’s photos have been featured in The New York Times, The LA Times, Vogue, The Paris Review, Elle, Out Magazine, The Boston Globe, Mashable, and more. Previous clients include MasterCard, Disney on Broadway, Jack’d, MeetUp, Hostelworld, The Brooklyn Web Fest, and Design Exchange Boston.

Kris is an Emmy nominated and award winning producer who has worked for the past 20 years with the comedic duo The Farrelly Brothers under their production banner, Conundrum Entertainment.  He has worked as a creative executive, production executive and producer on such blockbuster hits as “There’s Something About Mary,” “Me, Myself & Irene,” “Shallow Hal,” “Fever Pitch”, “Hall Pass”, “The Three Stooges” and “Dumb & Dumber To”. Conundrum’s body of work has resulted in over $2 billion in box office sales. He continues to work with The Farrelly Bros. on joint ventures.

Kris has independently worked on a number of films and tv shows ranging from the Sports Emmy nominated ESPN/THE LOST SON OF HAVANA to PLIMPTON! which aired on PBS/American Masters.

Under his own banner, BlackEagle, Kris’s most recent movies THE DO OVER starring Adam Sandler was released on NETFLIX, and most recently SUPERTROOPERS 2 was released nationwide.

His experience in developing strategic alliances, capital formation and his extensive network in the entertainment, media, sports, private equity and venture capital industries is key to building & advancing any company’s bottom line.

Emmy Award® winner Gregory Park founded PNR Studios in 2009 and has since become one of the premier concept designers and illustration artists in entertainment today. Throughout the span of his career in feature film, television, event and exhibition design, Greg has collaborated on a multitude of projects for a wide array of clients.

Some of Greg’s past broadcast projects include Saturday Night Live, The Colbert Report, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart; TV Funhouse, ESPN Baseball Tonight, The Today Show, ABC The View, and The Olympics. Clients range from Macklemore to Jennifer Lopez, CitiGroup to Google, Mercedes to Johnson & Johnson. Greg is a member of the Emmy Award winning design teams for Martha, NBC Education National Summit, NBC News: Decision 2012, MLB Tonight, ESPN Sportscenter, and Inside the NBA on TNT.

Greg is based in the New York City Area and holds a MFA in Film & Scenic Design from New York University Tisch School of the Arts and is a member of United Scenic Artists Local 829.

Kathryn is a freelance photographer and editor in the Boston area working primarily in sports. Her clients include: Boston Red Sox, Getty Images, USA Today Sports Images, Fenway Sports Management, Major League Baseball, BNP Paribas Open, Major League Soccer, NASCAR, United States Tennis Association, International Tennis Hall of Fame, Asics, Boston College Athletics, Inside Lacrosse, Boston Magazine, and others.

She has been a featured artist in both the "Undergraduate Photography Now! IV" exhibition in 2016 and "Undergraduate Photography Now! III" in 2015 as part of the Flash Forward Festival. Kathryn has also been profiled by The Boston Globe, and Boston College's student newspaper, The Heights.

Outside of photography, she has a passion for lacrosse. A former NCAA Division I lacrosse player, Kathryn now spends time volunteer coaching at the high school level.

Shelagh Abate is a  winner of the Coleman Competition (2000), and a founding member of the award-winning Triton Brass (Fischoff, Lyon & Concert Artists Guild, 2005). Shelagh has been a faculty member at the Boston University Tanglewood Institute, as well as the renowned Atlantic Brass Quintet International Summer Seminar. Shelagh is an Artist in Residence at Boston College, and The Boston Conservatory of Music where she has performed and conducted clinics and masterclasses on a regular basis since 2003.

Shelagh’s early musical influences include extensive study with the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Richard Sebring, Toronto Symphony’s principal horn, Neil Deland, and renowned pedagogue and performer Laura Klock. She has been a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center and of The National Repertory Orchestra. Shelagh holds a B.A. from Boston College, an M.M. from The University of Massachusetts at Amherst where she was a recipient of the Howard W. Lebow Scholarship, and an Artist Diploma from The New England Conservatory of Music, where she was a Walkenier Scholar.

Maile Flanagan is an Emmy Award-winning actor who grew up all over the world. She received a BA in Political Science from Boston College. While there she performed with the improv comedy troupe My Mother’s Fleabag. Later she formed a comedy group that landed in Minneapolis where she also did stand up and performed with The Children’s Theater Company and Dudley Riggs. After moving to Los Angeles, Flanagan began in on-camera commercials, with over 100 commercials filmed to date. She started her voiceover career in 1999. In 2006 she won an Emmy for playing the lead in the cartoon Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks (also Emmy nominated 2007 and Annie Award nominee). Other animation includes the Oscar-winning film Rango, Ice Age 3, Back at the Barnyard, Pig Goat Banana Cricket, Uncle Grandpa, Fish Hooks, Shimmer and Shine, and recurring on The Loud House. She is the lead in the hit anime cartoon Naruto for which she has done over 700 episodes, 48 video games, 6 movies and is also in the spin-off Boruto:Naruto Next Generations.  She recurred on-camera as  Principal Perry on Disney’s Lab Rats, as well as Shameless, Bad Teacher, The Class and Grey’s Anatomy. Guest star roles include The Mindy Project, Modern Family, Mike and Molly, Last Man Standing, Weeds, and Reno 911. Feature films include 500 Days of Summer, Transformers 3, Yes Man, Evan Almighty, The Station Agent, and Phone Booth. She has 3 LA WEEKLY Awards for theater. Recently she was a producer and the title character in the film My Babysitter The Superhero (release 2021). She volunteers with The Unusual Suspects Theatre Company.

Alfredo de Quesada is a Puerto Rican film, television and theatre actor. de Quesada worked regularly with the premiere Hispanic theater company Repertorio Español in NYC, and was cast in the internationally acclaimed Argentinean aerial experimental theatre troupe De La Guarda.

de Quesada national recognition came when competing in the Telemundo produced reality show Protagonistas de Novela 2. He has had guest starring roles in many TV series including Strangers with Candy, Upright Citizens Brigade, One Life to Live, The Blacklist: Redemption, Law & Order, The Knick, and Orange Is the New Black. de Quesada played the part of Israel Pardo in the film Che by Steven Soderbergh.

Kristina is a general assignment reporter at CBS Boston, covering anything newsworthy happening in Massachusetts. Her reports can typically be seen at 5, 6, 10, and 11 PM Monday through Friday. Before relocating back to Boston, Kristina worked in both Bangor and Portland, Maine, as a reporter/multimedia journalist at the local NBC affiliates. Kristina has reported on a wide variety of topics, including Maine’s opioid epidemic, an electric company billing crisis, and the corrupt international business dealings of a local ski mountain. Her reporting on Portland’s Unsolved Homicides earned her a Maine Association of Broadcasters award for Enterprise Journalism. She was also honored to travel to Houston in 2017 to cover Hurricane Harvey and its aftermath for KHOU. Kristina has been nominated for two Emmy awards for her local news coverage, including a nomination for coverage of the Merrimack Valley Gas Explosions of 2018, which greatly impacted her home community. Kristina has been “in the field” reporting daily since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, telling stories of survival and hardship across Massachusetts.

Meghan is a Digital Producer at WGBH, Boston's local NPR and PBS affiliate. As a member of the Digital team, she produces original content for WGBH digital platforms around music, food, arts and TV programming, which includes writing, photography and video content. In addition to content creation, Meghan produces and lay out daily content on WGBH.org's homepage, balancing the foundations editorial and marketing priorities. Prior to WGBH, she worked in digital marketing/communications at Tufts and Harvard. Meghan majored in Political Science and minored in Faith, Peace, and Justice.

Jeff Augustin is a Miami born playwright. His plays include Where the Mountain Meets the Sea (Humana Festival of New American Plays); The New Englanders (Manhattan Theatre Club); Little Children Dream of God (Roundabout Theatre Company); The Last Tiger in Haiti (La Jolla Playhouse and Berkeley Rep) and Cry Old Kingdom (Humana Festival). He translated Our Town into Haitian Creole for Miami New Drama’s multilingual production. Jeff was the Shank Playwright-in-Residence at Playwrights Horizons and the inaugural Tow Foundation Playwright-in-Residence at Roundabout. He is an alumni of the New York Theatre Workshop 2050 Fellowship; Rita Goldberg Playwright’s Workshop at the Lark; and The Working Farm at SPACE on Ryder Farm. Jeff is currently under commission from Manhattan Theatre Club and La Jolla Playhouse. TV Credits: Claws (TNT); The Morning Show (Apple) and The Good Lord Bird (Showtime). Current projects in development with Fox Searchlight; Netflix; and Film4. BA: Boston College, MFA: UC San Diego.

Erin Dionne’s latest book for tweens is Secrets of a Fangirl (Scholastic 2019). Her other novels are Lights, Camera, Disaster, Models Don’t Eat Chocolate Cookies, The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet, and Notes from an Accidental Band Geek.

Her novel Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking: A 14 Day Mystery, is based on the real-life Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art heist and was a 2014 Edgar Award finalist. The series continues with Ollie and the Science of Treasure Hunting. Her first picture book, Captain’s Log: Snowbound, illustrated by Jeffrey Ebbeler, was released in 2018 and received a starred review from Kirkus. Her second picture book, Balletball, comes out February 26, 2020.

A graduate of Boston College (BA English & Communications) and Emerson College (MFA), she teaches at Montserrat College of Art and lives outside of Boston with her husband, two children, and a very indignant dog.

Elizabeth Flock is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, author and documentary filmmaker with a focus on gender and justice. Her features and investigations have appeared on the PBS NewsHour, in the New Yorker magazine, the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post and many other publications. Her work is often investigative, immersive and long-term. She is the author of “The Heart is a Shifting Sea: Love and Marriage in Mumbai,” for which she interviewed three couples over the course of a decade to track how the country is changing. She is based in Taos, New Mexico.

Julian Kiani is a comedian and writer of Peruvian and Iranian heritage with a degree in Political Science and Theology. He wants you to know he has a degree in Political Science and Theology because nobody will ever ask him about it. He has written on several television shows, including CBS' multi-cam comedy BROKE, NBC comedies I FEEL BAD and MARLON, ABC’s voting special VOTE OR MISS OUT, the NBC variety/competition series BRING THE FUNNY, and contributed to SNL's Weekend Update. He is an alumnus of NBC's Writers on the Verge and Late Night Writers Workshop programs.

Julian has appeared on Comedy Dynamics’ Coming to the Stage and hosts a monthly stand-up show at Los Angeles’ Hotel Cafe—We’re All Friends Here. He co-founded the Brooklyn Comedy Festival and continues to produce live events across the country.

Jennifer Patten holds a B.A. in English and Music from Boston College, an M.M. in Musicology from Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, and an M.A. in Arts Administration from Teachers College, Columbia University. Prior to moving to New York in 2014, she served in the pilot Rhode Island Teach for America Corps and was hired as the founding humanities teacher at the Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts in Providence. Ms. Patten led arts integration initiatives with fellow academic instructors and artists-in-residence, crafting the trajectory of the school’s curriculum. After several years in the classroom, she served as Curriculum Director and formalized the school’s approach to arts-integrated education, oversaw all curriculum development, and provided administrative leadership. She is a recipient of the Laetitia M. Blain Award for Excellence in Music Performance and the Boston College Arts Council Award. Ms. Patten was also acknowledged as the 2012 Rhode Island District Teacher of the Year and a Regional Representative for the Sue Lehmann Award for Excellence in Teaching. Passionately dedicated to the arts and education, she actively seeks to intertwine these disciplines in both her life and professional philosophy.

Meghan Pressman joined Center Theatre Group as Managing Director / CEO in 2019. Previously, she served as Managing Director of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (D.C.), Director of Development for Signature Theatre (N.Y.), Associate Managing Director of Berkeley Rep, and Managing Director for The Ground Floor: Berkeley Rep’s Center for the Creation and Development of New Work. She has worked at numerous other theatre and arts organizations across the country including Yale Repertory Theatre as Associate Managing Director, Chicago Theatre for Young Audiences as Co-Founding Managing Director, and at the Chicago Improv Festival as an Associate Producer. She holds an MFA in theatre management from Yale School of Drama, an MBA from Yale School of Management, an MA from Northwestern University, and a BA from Boston College. At Yale, she was the recipient of the Morris J. Kaplan Award and the Benjamin Mordecai Scholarship, both for recognition in theatre management. She is the Vice-Chair of the National Board for the Theatre Communications Group (TCG).

Born and raised in Satellite Beach, Florida, Sarah Silva holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and Theatre (‘14, Magna Cum Laude) from Boston College and a Master of Arts in Theatre and Graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Villanova University (‘17). At Villanova, Sarah stage managed and assistant directed for directors James Ijames, Harriet Power, and David Bradley, pursued her thesis in dramaturgy on José Rivera’s Marisol, and organized community events around the intersection of theater and social justice. While living in Philadelphia, Sarah was a house manager for the annual FringeArts Fringe Festival and a subscriptions apprentice at the Walnut Street Theatre. Sarah joined the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) in Boston, MA as Development Associate in July 2017. In September 2018, Sarah was promoted to Development Coordinator and in June 2020, to Development Officer. She also works as an instructor for barre3 in Brookline. Her favorite color is purple, her favorite movie is Titanic, and her favorite place is the west coast of Ireland.

Nzinga (En-Zing-Ah) Williams is a New York Based Company and stage manager. She has worked on projects on and off Broadway (and the high seas) such as Hair, Sleep No More, The Secret Life of Bees, Halfway Bitches Go Straight To Heaven, The Mother, Priscilla Queen of the Desert and After Midnight to name a few. She is an activist and the founder of The New Black Mutual Aid, a mutual aid for Black theater artists (on and off stage). She is passionate about bettering the industry through education, equality, diversity, inclusion and accessibility. 

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is an art museum in Boston, which houses significant examples of European, Asian, and American art. Its collection includes paintings, sculpture, tapestries, and decorative arts. The museum works with community leaders and artists to co-produce and design programs and hands-on activities that celebrate the voices and talents of our neighboring communities. Their goal is to engage new audiences, learn from fresh perspectives, and to connect visitors with the Museum’s rich collection, special exhibitions, and resources through creating meaningful experiences

Molly Phelps graduated from BC in 2014 as an Art History major, and completed her Master's degree in Art History at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western's Master's program was jointly administered by the Cleveland Museum of Art, which ignited Molly's passion for working in a museum setting. After graduate school, she was a Curatorial Fellow and later a Collections Manager at The Trustees of Reservations. This role gave Molly experience in hands-on collections care and exhibition coordination. Molly now work in the Collections department at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum as the Collections Cataloguer & Administrator, where she is responsible for conducting research on the broad range of objects in the museum's collection. Starting October 7, Molly will start a new role as the Academic Programs Manager at the Gardner. In this position, she will manage the museum's university and college partnerships and oversee a new paid internship program called "Gardner Ambassadors."