Staff & Program Leader Bios

NANCY AHN serves as Program Associate, Marketing and Artist Services for The Field. She graduated from Bennington College with a concentration in painting and literature. An independent comic artist, Nancy illustrated Intro to Alien Invasion (Scribner, 2015) and has been featured in Cornell University's Epoch literary magazine. She also designed Crushing It, a bike lane barrier installation near Brooklyn Bridge Park for the New York City Department of Transportation. Key themes and values in Nancy's work include internet culture, feminism, bikes, environmental sustainability, dogs, and hip hop. Before joining The Field in the Spring of 2017, Nancy supplemented her creative practice by working in pharmaceutical sales as a copywriter, in visitor services at The Museum of Modern Art, and in marketing & e-commerce for an LED lighting retailer. Born and raised in Queens, she now lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The Field empowered Executive Director, JENNIFER WRIGHT COOK, to cut her teeth twice. First, as a fledgling arts administrator in 1996 when she was an exhausted dancer/waitress/personal trainer in need of a life change and then again in 2006 when her full-time performance life was waning and she was ready to hunker down and test her leadership skills. Her current role as Executive Director is firmly grounded in these two experiences - that The Field can truly change someone’s life. Jennifer officially joined The Field’s staff in 2006 as Development Manager and then Co-Director. In 2007 she was promoted to Executive Director where she oversees organization’s programmatic, technological, financial and organizational growth. Racial equity and social justice are core values in Jennifer’s personal and professional life. She actively participates in anti-racism learning, workshops and groups including PISAB’s Undoing Racism, Race Forward’s Innovation Lab, DCLA’s Diversity Committee and monthly Non-profit Executives Undoing Racism. In 2008 she launched an innovative mentorship program, Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists (ERPA) with multi-year funding from The Rockefeller Foundation. Jennifer's work has been recognized by the Wall Street Journal, Backstage, WNYC Public Radio, and by participation on adjudication panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, emcArts and Dance Theater Workshop. Jennifer is part of the Interim Board for New Yorkers for Arts and Culture and is active advocate for city funding. She has spoken on numerous panels for CUNY Prelude Festival, Alliance of Artists Communities and the Future of Music Coalition. She is also a proud alum of Coro Leadership NY XXI. As a dance/theater performer, teacher and art-maker, Jennifer has performed/created with the San Francisco-based Joe Goode Performance Group (1997-2005) and New York choreographers Neil Greenberg, Sarah Skaggs, Mark Dendy and others. She has performed her own work in Madrid, New York, San Francisco and Portland, OR. She sings in a gospel choir and lives in Brooklyn with her partner and daughter.  

SHAWN RENÉ GRAHAM, Deputy Director, Programs and Services, is a freelance writer and dramaturg from San Jose, California who has worked with many writers including Dennis Allen, France-Luce Benson, Nilo Cruz, Steve Harper, Walter Mosley, Lynn Nottage, Paul Rudnick, Susan Sontag, Dominic A. Taylor, Judy Tate, and Cori Thomas. She has been a guest dramaturg at the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, the Crossroads Theatre Company's Genesis Festival, the New Professional Theatre, and African American Women's New Play Festival and on many panels including, National Endowments for the Arts/Theatre Communications Group Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Artist Grants Panel in Playwriting and the Mark Taper Forum's New Works Festival and is currently the resident dramaturg of The American Slavery Project's Unheard Voices. She is the Literary Director for the Classical Theatre of Harlem’s Future Classics Series and Playwright’s Playground, and founder of All Creative Writes, an artistic assistance service designed to provide individual artists and performing arts organizations with administrative, fundraising and writing support. Ms. Graham holds degrees from the California State University, Los Angeles and the American Repertory Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University. She joined The Field in 2012 and lives in Bronx, NY.  

WILFREDO HERNANDEZ, Program Manager, is an artist (theatre/visual), cultural worker and educator. His artistic and scholarly pursuits are focused on exploring the intersections of myth, identity, politics and performance. He began his career as a self-producing artist when he, along with his family and close friends, founded Triple H Productions, Inc. in 2003 (NJ). Wilfredo served as Producing Artistic Director and led the organization through eight seasons (and directing over 35 productions). Before joining The Field in 2016 he worked at Disney Theatrical Productions, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Culture Hub, Dixon Place, NYU and Joe's Pub at The Public Theater. He served as founding program manager of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ “Boro-Linc”, which brought the best of LCPA’s eleven constituent organizations to audiences in the Bronx, Staten Island, and Queens in its first year. He is wholly committed to principles of access, equity and social justice in his life and work. He is proud to serve as Arts & Culture Group Leader at The Brooklyn Community Pride Center where he recently managed the launch of the "LGBTQ New Americans" oral history project with Immigration Equality. Wilfredo holds an M.A. in Directing & Producing Theatre from NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study.   

LIZ MCAULIFFE sashayed into her first full time administrative position as Program Associate, Development and Executive at The Field in the Spring of 2017. Liz grew up in Washington, D.C. and graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in Performance Studies and Creative Writing. In 2011, Liz moved to NYC and launched her dance career with the contemporary, butoh-influenced company Leimay. In addition to working as a dancer and choreographer, Liz has also worked in New York City public schools, teaching dance and puppetry to elementary school students. Liz values art-making as a tool for social change and invests in projects that are grounded in global, social, and political consciousness.       

CLAY SCHUDEL is The Field's Finance Manager. He has worked in nonprofit finance management since 1995, with a particular focus on arts and arts-related programs. Before joining The Field in 2014, Clay spent 18 years as the Finance Manager at The Alpha Workshops, a nonprofit organization that trains people with HIV/AIDS to work in decorative and applied arts. Clay is an avid traveler, culture consumer, and student (of Japanese, ceramics, and life in general). He lives with his husband in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

PELE BAUCH is a choreographer and dance dramaturg. As a dance dramaturg she has worked with Brian Brooks, Debra Black, Yanira Castro, Rachel Cohen, Barbie Diewald, Jody Oberfelder, Jody Sperling, among others. She has provided creative feedback to well over 100 artists. Pele was on The Field’s staff for 10 years, mainly as Associate Director, Programming. As a choreographer, she received residencies from The Joyce Theater Foundation, Dance Theater Workshop, the Chocolate Factory, and 92Y Harkness Dance Center. Her work has been selected for presentation at NYC venues including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Chocolate Factory, Danspace Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church, HERE's TALR and the Best of TALR, Dixon Place, and BAX. Pele has received funding from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Harkness Foundation for Dance, and Brooklyn Arts Council. “It’s a joy to see the bravery with which Ms. Bauch asks her questions, and the quiet force of her vision come to life and surround us,” - Dancing World. www.pelebauch.org

RAJEEYAH FINNIE-MYERS is the Project Manager for The Field Leadership Fund. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, Rajeeyah earned a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Florida A & M University. In 2006 she launched her career in Arts Administration with her participation in The Field’s Artist Manager Partnership (AMP) Program. Since then she has designed, implemented and evaluated community arts programming and artist professional development at a number of  organizations in New York City such as DreamYard, The Laundromat Project, Community-Word Project and ArtsConnection. Professionally, she is dedicated to reviving socially engaged organizations and individuals to run at top form. Personally she is committed to the sharing of the performance, literary and visual arts in community settings. Over the years this commitment has translated into performance, exploration, and collaboration with a number of inspiring and creative entities such as The American Theatre of Harlem, The African Folk Heritage Circle, The Movement Theatre Company, Betty’s Daughter Art Collaborative and Kotchegna West African Dance Company. She lives in Harlem, NY with her husband and son.

SHALEWA MACKALL, a Fieldwork facilitator since 2004, belongs to the community of artists making work that embraces the Akan tradition of Sankofa, which invites creators to move forward in full awareness and embrace of what has preceded historically and culturally; she is inspired by aesthetic traditions and creative movements that recycle, repurpose and reinvent that which came before. In a way that reflects layers of identity and creative practice, Mackall embraces the possibility of making works as a teacher, choreographer, writer and performer which celebrate the idea of both/andand stand as an alternative to the either/or construct. With her dance company Movement for the Urban Village (MUV), she has crafted an original and distinctive movement language, Ancient Modern Dance, defined as contemporary dance which is grounded in the techniques and traditions of the African Diaspora. Since 2004 MUV has graced stages including BAM Fisher, Summerstage, Joyce SoHo, Irondale and the Kumble Theater. Presently a member of the faculty at Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, Mackall is currently developing new work joining personal ethnography, memoir and dance.

NAOKO MAESHIBA is a Fieldwork co-facilitator who performs, choreographs, directs, designs, and teaches, all from the body’s point of view. Rooted in the minimalism of traditional and contemporary Japanese theatre as well as dance improvisation principles, her work strives to awaken the unconscious and the invisible realm of human experiences through the interplay of kinetic, auditory, and sculptural elements. To date, she has presented over thirty solo, duo, and ensemble pieces in both traditional and non-traditional venues in the North America, Europe, and Japan, collaborating with the artists from a diverse disciplinary background. In 2015, she launched a solo project called Subject/Object which examines the constructs of her ‘self’ through human body systems. Since 2009 she has been engaged in Feldenkrais work and exploring a way to integrate its holistic inclusive view into her artistic practice. www.naokibi.com 

JAMES SCRUGGS, a writer, performer and arts administrator, creates large scale, multi-media, topical theatrical work usually focusing on race, and gender politics. He has received several grants including a 2016 NJSCA Fellowship for artistic excellence, a 2016 Creative Capital Grant, and a 2015 MAP Grant to write and produce 3/Fifths, performed by a large cast in two spaces at 3LD Art & Technology Center, NYC in 2017. It explores racism and mass incarceration. In 2005, when the phenomenon of unarmed black men being killed by policeman began rising, Scruggs wrote, performed, and was video designer for Disposable Men produced by HERE Arts Center, NYC. It was his solo work that examined the uncanny similarities that Hollywood monsters and African American men share; the unfounded fear of, and the creative ways they are killed. Disposable Men went on to be presented in Philadelphia, Boston, and Atlanta. He decided to use Disposable Men as a seed for 3/5, an up close radically interactive investigation of the historic whorl African Americans are caught up in: the historical slavery-emancipation-black codes loop to the more contemporary incarceration-decarceration-felon box loop. He has gained valuable experience making ambitious experimental theatrical work at 3LD Art & Technology Center. Deepest Man, a work he wrote and produced in 2014 exploring free-diving as a cure for grief, used a 40' Holographic Projection Surface, allowing underwater images to appear to float in front of the actors. He is currently a curator and resident artist at 3LD and works freelance at The Field, NYC as a Fieldwork facilitator for peer to peer critical feedback workshops for artists. Scruggs has a BFA in Film from SVA in NYC, and was also the recipient of a Franklyn Furnace Grant, an  Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Design Enhancement Grant, and an  Innovative Theater Award for Outstanding Solo Performance.  www.jamesscruggs.com

A lifetime ago, CHIKAKO YAMAUCHI was a dancer and an arts administrator. As an independent arts administrator she organized and executed projects for Arthur Aviles, Wally Cardona, and BLUdance Theatre. A program at The Field connected her to Donna Uchizono Company, where she was Company Manager for two years. Chikako stepped away from dance and arts administration to teach English in Japan for a few years, then continued her study of Japanese language and culture through a bachelor’s degree at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her master’s degree in Pacific Islands Studies is from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. University of Canterbury (New Zealand) conferred her Ph.D. in Art History in 2014. Chikako’s primary research interest focuses on creative processes and environments that encourage shifts in understanding and/or transformations in thinking. Her interview methods are informed by Hawaiian “talk story,” Tongan talanoa, Oceanic notions of vā (the space between), and trickster roles in art and life. As Research and Evaluation Consultant for Field Leadership Fund, Chikako contributed to the program's development through the feedback loop.