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Presenter

Stephanie Ybarra

Program Officer, Mellon Foundation

Stephanie Ybarra is a program officer in the Arts and Culture program, with a focus on performing arts. Before joining the Foundation, she served as artistic director of Baltimore Center Stage, where she broke ground as the country’s first Latina artistic director of a League of Resident Theaters (LORT) member theater. During her tenure, she was instrumental in leveraging powerful artistic works as a catalyst for conversation, reflection, and action.

Prior to taking on the role of Artistic Director of Baltimore Center Stage in 2018, Stephanie served as the director of special artistic projects at The Public Theater where she led the Mobile Unit and Public Forum programs. She first launched her career in her home state of Texas at the Dallas Theater Center and Dallas Children's Theater, later transitioning to institutions including the Yale Repertory Theater, Two River Theater Company, and Citizen Schools, a national after-school program based in Boston. While in New York, she co-founded the Artists’ Anti-Racism Coalition, a grassroots organizing effort to dismantle systems of oppression in the Off-Broadway community. Stephanie’s work has been widely recognized, with awards including the Josephine Abady Award for producing from New York's League of Professional Theatre Women; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) 100 in 2019; the Congressional Award for Achievement in Excellence from Zara Aina, an international nonprofit dedicated to community-engaged artmaking; and for her sustained work around diversity and inclusion, she received the prestigious Nation Builder Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators in 2018.

Stephanie serves as a faculty member at The Juilliard School and New York University. She’s currently on the board of Citizen University, Make Believe Association, as well as the Artistic Council for the People’s Theatre Project. She holds her MFA from the Yale School of Drama and a BFA from Baylor University.

Our Sponsors

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    Dream Warrior Group provides graceful yet technologically savvy solutions for Arts organizations. The goal-driven services focus on audience and action. As your technology advocate, we will be your ally and can manage and fully implement your online presence. Our services (à la carte or contracted) include: Web site design and development, e-marketing, e-promotion, social media management and optimization. We implement your message in a digital environment.

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    Substrakt is a leading digital agency specialising in the arts and culture sector. We partner with over 70 cultural organisations around the world to create digital experiences that connect people to art, ideas and each other. We’re here to make cultural experiences more accessible, engaging and impactful through thoughtful design, smart technology and strategic thinking.

    We offer a full suite of digital services, including the design and development of websites and digital products, alongside strategic consultancy, training and ongoing support. Our consultancy work spans areas such as digital strategy, content strategy, SEO, user research, accessibility and analytics.

    We’re proud to work with some of the world’s most inspiring cultural organisations, including the National Theatre, PAC NYC, Malmö Opera, Henry Moore Foundation, Shakespeare's Globe, Scottish Ballet, Kettle’s Yard, Leeds Heritage Theatres, Southbank Centre, and the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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    InstantEncore connects Arts & Culture Organizations with their communities through beautifully designed, affordable and easy to navigate digital engagement tools. IE partners with Arts Organizations to bring their mobile apps and digital programs to life, ensuring a positive experience for audiences of all ages.

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    BroadwayWorld is the largest theatre site on the internet, covering Broadway, the West End and beyond to 100 US cities, 45 countries and in 12 languages worldwide. With over six million monthly visitors, BroadwayWorld delivers complete up-to-the-minute Broadway, off-Broadway, and regional theatre news, in-depth interviews, extraordinary photo coverage, entertaining video features, lively message boards, ticket discounts, reviews, and more.

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    F+H Partners offers tailored development and planning services for arts and culture organizations of all sizes. With our extensive experience as advancement professionals and consultants, we collaborate directly with you to strengthen your fundraising and deepen your impact. Our personalized approach, informed by best practices and pragmatic solutions, has contributed to millions of dollars raised for our partners. We focus on building organizational capacity, ensuring you internalize the tools and processes for long-term success by actively working with you to translate robust plans into ongoing achievements.

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    Spektrix is a complete solution for ticketing, marketing, fundraising, and CRM, designed specifically for the performing arts. With world-class technology and support, Spektrix helps 650+ organizations across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. grow their revenue and deepen patron relationships. Powerful, intuitive software, at-a-glance insights, frequent and seamless upgrades, training, support, and strategic consultation with experienced professionals come at no additional cost - making Spektrix the fastest-growing solution for arts organizations today.

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    CourseStorm is an easy-to-use class registration and marketing platform perfect for arts & culture education programs and kids camps. Our cloud-based system offers a single platform to manage individual and group course registration, payment processing, rosters, waitlists, attendance tracking, customizable registration forms, class communication, and more. Learn more at https://www.coursestorm.com

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    NEW Marketing Solutions is a full-service marketing and audience development firm built around the audience development trifecta: marketing, ticketing, and experience.

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    EleeHub was founded in 2021 to address a critical gap in the nonprofit marketing domain. It became evident that most nonprofits could be categorized into three groups: those unaware of the Google Ad Grant, those who had attempted to utilize it but were deterred by its complexity, and those engaged with costly consultants yielding minimal or expensive outcomes. EleeHub emerged as a beacon for small to mid-sized nonprofits seeking an efficient, cost-effective, and impactful marketing strategy.

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    Elevent is the multi-event ticketing & membership platform made to modernize all things ticketing for professionalized venues, festivals, and seasonal event organizers. White-label by design, high-scale, omnichannel, and holistically blended with a real CRM, Elevent digitally transforms your event organization into what you envision. https://readyset.goelevent.com/

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