About Us

A.F. Mortiz

A. F. Moritz has written more than twenty books of poetry, and has received the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Award in Literature of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and the Ingram Merrill Fellowship. His collection, The Sentinel, won the 2009 Griffin Poetry Prize, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, and was a Globe and Mail Top 100 of the Year. His most recent collections are The Sparrow (2018) and As Far As You Know (2020). He lives in Toronto, where he is serving as the city’s sixth Poet Laureate.

Abigail Killeen

Credits include:

Portland Stage Company

Fenix Theatre Company

Adam Driver

Theater credits include:
Angels In America (Signature Theater)
Mrs. Warren’s Profession(Broadway)
The Retributionists (Playwrights Horizons)

Adepero Oduye

Broadway: The Trip To Bountiful. Off-Broadway: Her Portmanteau (NYTW). Regional: Eclipsed (Yale Rep), The Bluest Eye (Hartford Stage). Film & TV: The Dinner, The Big Short, My Name Is David, 12 Years a Slave, Pariah, Steel Magnolias, "Law & Order," "Louie," "The Unusuals."

Aidan Kelly

Credits include:

Eden

National Theatre Live: Treasure Island

Superstar

Alex Averbuch

Oleksandr (Alex) Averbuch, a native of Novoaidar, Luhans’k region, Ukraine (b. 1985), is a literary historian, poet, and translator. He is the author of three books of poetry and an array of literary translations between Hebrew, Ukrainian, English, and Russian. His poetry deals with the issues of ethnic fragmentation and in-betweenness, multiple identities, queerness, cross- and multilingualism, documentalist writing, and memory. He has organized numerous poetic performances and festivals, such as the International Festival of Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry (summer 2020), and edited a special issue of Ukrainian Literature: A Journal of Translations, dedicated to the poetry of this festival’s participants. Averbuch is active in promoting Ukrainian-Jewish relations. In 2022 he organized a first-of-its-kind series of bilingual (Ukrainian-Hebrew) literary events dedicated to contemporary Ukrainian poetry in Hebrew translation, which involved prominent Ukrainian and Israeli poets and translators. Currently he is compiling and editing an anthology of contemporary Ukrainian poetry in Hebrew translation. He earned his PhD in Slavic and Jewish studies at the University of Toronto. Since 2022 he has been an Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alberta.

Alex Grubbs

Credits include:

The 39 Steps (Regional)

The Glass Menagerie (Regional)

These Seven Sicknesses (The Flea)

Alex Morf

Credits include:

The Walworth Farce (Studio Theatre)

The Rainmaker (American Conservatory Theater)

Cymbeline (The Shakespeare Theater)

Alfred Molina

Credits include:

Spider-Man 2

An Education

Magnolia

Aliki Argiropoulos

Nurse Clinician II, Blood and Marrow Transplant, Oncology Critical Care, Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, The Johns Hopkins Hospital

Alysia Erin Pack

Adjunct Faculty Instructor, Old Dominion University- School of Nursing

Amari Cheatom

Theatre credits include:
On The Levee (LCT3)
Book of Grace (The Public Theater)
Zooman and The Sign (Signature Theatre)

Amy Dreffer

RN, Lincoln Hospital

Amy Ryan

TV & Film credits include:
Win, Win
Gone Baby Gone (Academy Award Nomination)
The Wire
The Office

Amy Smith

Nurse Practitioner, Northwell Health, Hofstra University

Ana Reeder

Theater credits include:
Hedda Gabler (Broadway)
Top Girls (Broadway)
Sight Unseen (Broadway)
Small Tragedy (Playwrights Horizons, Obie Award)
TV & Film credits include:
You Don’t Know Jack
No Country for Old Men

Andrea Patterson

Credits include:

Blue Bloods

Manifest

Grand Theft Auto

Andy Powers

Credits include:

The Good Wife

Crossing Jordan

ER

Anika Noni Rose

Credits include:
Caroline, or Change (Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical)
Dreamgirls
The Princess and The Frog

Anthony Almojera

Vice President

Uniformed EMS Officers Union, Local 3621

FDNY, DC37, AFSCME, AFL-CIO

Anthony Edwards

Credits include:

Top Gun

ER

Zodiac

Anthony Swofford

Gulf War Veteran, Author of Jarhead

April Grace

Film credits include:
Magnolia
Fame
I Am Legend

Araya Mengesha

Defund

Mystery Hunters

Nobody

Tiny Pretty Things

Arliss Howard

Film credits include:
Amistad
Full Metal Jacket
Natural Born Killers
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Dandelion
He adapted, directed and starred with Debra Winger in Big Bad Love

Ashleigh Byrnes

Ashleigh Byrnes, Deputy National Communications Director

Ashleigh Byrnes, a combat veteran of the Afghanistan War, was appointed Deputy National Communications Director for the more than 1 million-member DAV in August 2014, assigned to the DAV National Service and Legislative Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

As Deputy National Communications Director, Byrnes’ responsibilities include managing and producing a wide variety of written, photographic and multi-media projects for DAV’s internal and external communications programs.

A life member of DAV Chapter 10 in Fairfax, Virginia, Byrnes enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in January 2004. Following duty as a broadcast journalist with American Forces Network Tokyo in 2009, Byrnes deployed to Afghanistan where she established and led the American Forces Network Kandahar news bureau to expand military broadcast coverage of combat operations.

Following her combat tour, Byrnes served as a supervisor and reporter for the Pentagon News Bureau where she managed daily production for the news bureau covering Defense Department news, policies and operations. She served as the military announcer for the 2009 Presidential Inaugural Parade.

Byrnes holds numerous decorations and awards for combat service and humanitarian assistance as well as national awards for military broadcast journalism. She was honorably discharged in October 2011, and joined DAV as an Associate Communications Director at the Washington headquarters. In August 2012, she was promoted to Assistant National Communications Director, prior to being appointed to her current position.

A native of Oxford, Michigan, Byrnes holds a B.A. in English and an M.S. in Public Relations Management from the University of Maryland. She is also a graduate of the Basic Public Affairs Writers Course, Basic Public Affairs Broadcaster Course and Advanced Electronic Journalism Course from the Defense Information School at Fort Meade, Maryland.

Byrnes resides in Alexandria, Virginia with her husband Brad and their two sons.

Ato Blankson Wood

At the New York Shakespeare Festival, Ato has starred in Twelfth Night, As You Like It & The Total Bent (Drama League, Lucille Lortel nominations). Other stage credits include Hair (Broadway and West End), the Foundry Theater’s production of O. Earth, Iphigenia in Aulis at ‪Classic Stage Company and Lysistrata Jones off and on Broadway. Film/TV: Spike Lee’s Black Klansman, The Kindergarten Teacher opposite Maggie Gyllenhaal, Detroit, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, "The Marvelous Mrs Maisel" (Amazon) "She's Gotta Have It" (Netflix) and “The Good Fight” (CBS) He is a 2017 recipient of the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship, a member of The Actors Center and holds a B.F.A. from NYU & M.F.A. from The Yale School of Drama.

Ato Essandoh

Credits include:

Django Unchained

Blood Diamond

Garden State

Austin Pierce

Theater credits include:
Dancing At Lughnasa
A Funny Thing…Forum
A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Ayanna Pressley

U.S. Representative for Massachusetts's 7th congressional district.

Belena Stuart Marquez

Maj (Ret) Belena Stuart Marquez commissioned into the United States Air Force in 2008 from the Virginia Women’s Institute for Leadership at Mary Baldwin College. She served as a Public Affairs officer until her retirement in 2021. Her notable assignments include deployment to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, serving as the Media Operations Officer for Air Force Special Operations Command, and work for the Secretary of the Air Force’s Public Affairs Plans and Strategies Division. Notable decorations include the Bronze Star Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal, and is currently petitioning for the award of the Purple Heart Medal due to injuries she received in combat.

Ben Burdick

Credits Include:

Arrested Development

The Glades

CSI

Ben Viccellio

Theater credits include:
Oedipus Complex (The Goodman Theatre)
Cherry Orchard (Steppenwolf Theater)
Hamlet (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre)

Bentley Munseli

BSN, RN, CEN

Bill Camp

Theater credits include:

Diary of a Madman (Yale Repertory Theater)
Saint Joan (Broadway)
The Seagull (Broadway
TV & Film credits include:
Tamara Drewe
The Dying Gaul

The Queen's Gambit

The Night Of

The Bourne Ultimatum

Dark Waters

The Outsider

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Bill Irwin

Theater credits include:

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Broadway, Tony Award)

Waiting for Godot (Broadway)

Film credits include:

Rachel Getting Married

Bill Murray

Saturday Night Live

Ghost Busters

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Coffee and Cigarettes

Lost in Translation

The Royal Tenenbaums

Blythe Danner

Broadway:
Butterflies Are Free (Tony Award)
Film credits include:
Woody Allen’s Alice
Sylvia

Bob Braswell

Credits include:

Boardwalk Empire

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (New York Theater Workshop)

Hot L Baltimore (TACT)

Bohdana Yakobchuk

Bohdana Yakobchuk

Bohdana is a second-year exchange student from Rivne, Ukraine. In their alma mater, UCU, Bohdana studies linguistics and literature, so at Notre Dame they take courses from classics and English, as well as Ceramics.

Brendan Griffin

Theater credits include:
Clybourne Park (Playwrights Horizons)
TV & Film credits include:
Taking Chance
Generation Kill

Brent Harris

Theater credits include:
Dido, Queen Of Carthage (American Repertory Theater)
The Lion King (National Tour)
Richard III (Pearl Theatre)

Brian F. O'Byrne

Theater Credits Include:
Doubt (Broadway)
The Coast Of Utopia (Lincoln Center Theater)
TV & Film Credits Include:
Mildred Pierce
Brotherhood
Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead

Bryce Gill

Credits include:

Merchant of Venice (Broadway)

Double Falsehood (Classic Stage Company)

Chain of Fools (Guthrie)

Bryce Pinkham

Theater credits include:
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson(Broadway)
Concert Reading of Knickerbocker Holiday (Lincoln Center)
Horton Foote’s The Orphan’s Home Cycle (Signature Theater)

Carol Lemen

Caseworker, City of Toronto

Cary Cronholm Rose

Stage credits include:

Angels in America

Gruesome Playground Injuries

Cedric Sanders

TV & Film credits include:
The Social Network
American Gangster
The Least Among You

Chad Coleman

TV & Film credits include
The Wire
Boldly Going Nowhere
The Green Hornet

Charlaine Lasse

Registered Nurse, IV Therapy, Neonatal Intensive Care

Charles S. Dutton

Broadway:
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Tony Award Nomination)
Jo Turner’s Come and Gone
The Piano Lesson
TV & Film credits include:
The Practice
Without a Trace
Oz

Chinasa Ogbuagu

New York: Nothing But the Truth (Lincoln Center); The Overwhelming (Roundabout Theater); A Family Of Perhaps Three (Target Margin); 365/365 (The Public); Talking To Terrorists (Impact Theater Festival); The Deepest Play Ever (NY Fringe). Regional: Ruined (OSF); The Seven (La Jolla Playhouse); Breath, Boom (Huntington Theatre); Venus (Olney Theater); The Story (ACTCo); Film/TV: Petunia; Nurse Jackie; Fringe; Law & Order; Law & Order:SVU; BFA Boston University.

Chinaza Uche

Chinaza Uche just closed "Sugar In Our Wounds" at Manhattan Theatre Club and appeared last season in the critically acclaimed "Sojourners/Her Portmanteau" at New York Theatre Workshop, a NYT Critics Pick. He has also performed in productions with Playwright’s Realm, Transport Group, La Mama, The National Black Theater and regionally at Seattle Rep and Everyman Theatre in Baltimore. He has also appeared on television in “Golden Boy” (CBS), “Deception” (NBC), and “Blue Bloods” (CBS), and in the films "Mother of George" (Sundance), Terry Richardson’s "Last Hours" (Cannes), and "Shookum Hills," and stars in the feature film "Nigerian Prince" which premiered this year at the Tribeca Film Festival and will be in theatres this Fall.

Chris Henry Coffey

Chris Henry Coffey, is an accomplished stage, TV, and film actor who as worked with Theater of War Productions for several years and also serves as facilitator. Recent theater: Happy Hour a new play by Neil LaBute (LaMama, ETC); Bronx Bombers (Circle in the Square & Primary Stages); The Dining Room(WCP, Connecticut Critics Circle, Best Ensemble); the Pulitzer Prize-winning Water by the Spoonful at 2ST, (dir. Davis McCallum); Richard Nelson’s Frank’s Home (Playwrights Horizons, Goodman - Robert Falls, Dir); How Shakespeare Won the West (Huntington), Arthur Miller’s Resurrection Blues (Old Globe); Lips Together, Teeth Apart (Westport), The Front Page (Long Wharf); major roles at the Alley, DTC, Yale Rep, Williamstown, others. Selected film: Diverge (upcoming), Little Tin Man, Epilogue (Tribeca FF 2013), Neil LaBute’s BFF (Tribeca FF 2012) and David Schwimmer’sfeature Trust (“one of the year’s best” – Roger Ebert). Recurring and guest stars: “Law & Order: CI”, “The Good Wife”, “Cupid”, others. Graduate of the Yale School of Drama.

Chris Myers

Selected Theater: Henry IV Parts 1 & 2 (Shakespeare Center of LA -- with Tom Hanks), Julius Caesar (The Public/Shakespeare in the Park), The Winter's Tale (The Public), An Octoroon (Soho Rep; Obie Award for Acting), Whorl Inside A Loop (Second Stage Theater), On The Grounds of Belonging (The Public), Little Children Dream of God (Roundabout Underground), War (Lincoln Center/LCT3), Brownsville Song (Lincoln Center/LCT3), Fences (McCarter/Long Wharf; Dir: - Phylica Rashad), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare Theater DC). TV: "Sneaky Pete" (Amazon), "She's Gotta Have It" (Netflix - Dir: Spike Lee), "The Break with Michelle Wolf" (Netflix), "The Good Fight" (CBS), "The Breaks" (VH1) and upcoming "The Resident" (Fox). Chris has also written and produced two short films, "Post-Emma" and "The Interruption" along with a half hour comedy about gentrification called "GUAP."

Chris Noth

Theatre Credits: Broadway: That Championship Season Gore Vidal’s The Best Man (Theatre World Award). Off Broadway/regional: Faustus (Classic Stage Company) Farragut North(Atlantic Theatre); What Didn’t Happen (Playwright’s Horizons); Arms and the Man (Roundabout Theatre); American Buffalo (Berkshire Theatre Festival). TV: Manhunt: Unabomber(Netflix/Discovery), The Good Wife (Golden Globe nom.), Law and Order, Sex and the City (Golden Globe nom.), Gone. Film: Lovelace, Elsa & Fred, Sex and the City 1 & 2 and Mr. 3000, White Girls and Chronically Metropolitan.

Clarke Peters

The Wire

Harriet

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Claudine Bruff

BSN, RN

Consolee Nishimwe

Rwandan Genocide Survivor

Corey Hawkins

Straight Outta Compton

BlacKkKlansman

Iron Man 3

Craig Manbauman

Craig’s experience as a former military medic, tending to both the visible and the invisible wounds of war, brought to his attention the necessity that traditional medical interventions be supplemented with the healing mechanisms endowed by culture, community, and the arts. For Craig, healing has thus taken on a more holistic model that integrates his social science education and his nursing background to center on communal listening and the holding of space for the breadth of human expression. His poetry is grounded in this work.

Cynthia Nixon

Sex and the City

Hannibal

The Big C

Cyrus Farmer

Theater credits include:
A Raisin in the Sun (Broadway)
TV & Film credits include:
Notorious
The Wire

Damian Lewis

Billions

Homeland

Band of Brothers

Dan Butler

Credits include:

Frasier

House

Crazy, Stupid Love

Daniel McRath

Recreational Therapist, Missouri Department of Mental Health

Daphne Rubin-Vega

Theater credits include:

Rent (Mimi; Original cast, Tony nom: Best Actress/Musical)

Anna in the Tropics (Tony nom)

Film credits include:

In The Heights

Jack Goes Boating

Sex and The City (film 1)

Daren A. Herbert

Dreamgirls

Kim's Convenience

2012

David Cale

Theater credits include:
Present Laughter (Broadway)
The Threepenny Opera(Broadway)
Obie Award Winning Lillian and Palomino

David Deblinger

Co-Founder, Labyrinth Theater Company, Numerous Productions
TV & Film credits include:
Damages
Sex and The City
Sopranos

David Denman

The Office

Brightburn

Logan Lucky

David Elliot

TV & Film credits include:
Kajaki: The True Story
Inland Road
Sleeping Beauty

David Patrick Kelly

David Patrick Kelly has an expansive body of work that includes iconic roles in Water Hill cult-classic The Warriors and the David Lynch series “Twin Peaks”, which was recently rebooted on Showtime.

Highlights of Kelly’s feature career which spans over 3 decades include: O.G. (opposite Jeffrey Wright, TriBeCa Film Festival Premiere), Spike Lee’s film Chi-Raq, opposite Samuel L. Jackson and Jennifer Hudson; John Wick; Flags of Our Fathers; Café Society; Malcolm X; Justice; In Too Deep; Last Man Standing; The Crow; Commando. On television, DP appeared in roles on “Succession,” “Feed the Beast,” “The Blacklist,” “Blue Bloods,” “Bored to Death,” “Gossip Girl,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “Louie,” “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” “Third Watch”.

A veteran of the stage, DP most recently starred Off-Broadway in Lear deBessonet’s Miss You Like Hell at The Public Theater. On Broadway, DP was last seen co-starring with Keira Knightley in Therese Raquin for the Roundabout Theater Company. His other Broadway credits include in Once (originated Off-Broadway), Festen, Uncle Vanya, Twelfth Night, The Government Inspector, The Suicide, Knockout, Working and the original company of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Off-Broadway credits includes Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ newest play Everybody at Signature Theater; When I Come to Die (Duke Theater), The Glorious Ones(Lincoln Center Theater), Ghosts (Classic Stage Company), Kit Marlowe (Public Theater) and many more.

David Strathairn

TV & Film credits include:
Lincoln
Temple Grandin (Emmy Award)
Good Night & Good Luck(Academy Award Nomination)
The Uninvited
The Bourne Ultimatum

David Zayas

TV & Film credits include:
Gotham
Dexter
Oz

De-Rance Blaylock

Lead Soloist,

Former Teacher of Michael Brown Jr.

Debra Winger

Film & TV:

In Treatment

Rachel Getting Married

An Officer and A Gentleman

Terms of Endearment

Shadowlands

Dee Hope

Program and Community Services Coordinator at Sound Times

Deena Aziz

Deena Aziz

Desmond O. Croker

RN, Dip. OHS, BSN, CCDE, MSN Nurse Educator at the Turks and Caicos Islands Community College

Devika Bhise

Credits include:

The Man Who Knew Infinity

The Accidental Husband

Elementary

Dianne Wiest

Film/TV Credits include:

In Treatment

Bullets Over Broadway

Edward Scissorhands

Dionne Audain

Credits include:

The Wire (HBO)

Toe to Toe (Showtime)

Law & Order

Dmytro Zaleskyi

Medical doctor, psychiatrist, analyst

Head of the Mobile Medical Center of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense

Former Chief of Armed Forces Battalion Medical Services Unit

Donetta Lavinia Grays

Broadway:
In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play
Lisa Kron’s Well
TV & Film credits include:
The Wrestler
The Sopranos

Duane Foster

Soloist

Original Cast of Ragtime

Former Teacher of Michael Brown Jr.

Dustin Tucker

Stage credits include:

The Rainmaker (Broadway)

Henry IV: Part I

Boeing-Boeing

Eisa Davis

Eisa Davis is an award-winning performer, composer, and writer. Notable live performances include Kings (Drama League nomination), Julius Caesar (Shakespeare in the Park), Grace Notes by Carrie Mae Weems, Preludes, The Call, Luck of the Irish, Angela’s Mixtape, Passing Strange, and June and Jean in Concert by Adrienne Kennedy.

On television, Eisa has played recurring roles on Succession, The Looming Tower, Rise, House of Cards, Blindspot, The Wire, Hart of Dixie, and Smash. Her work as a writer includes seasons 1 and 2 of the Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It, Cirque du Soleil’s Crystal, and the plays Angela’s Mixtape, The History of Light, Ramp, Warriors Don’t Cry, Hip Hop Anansi, and Mushroom.

She is currently developing the music theatre works Flowers Are Sleeping and Devil In A Blue Dress. Her albums of original music are Something Else and Tinctures, selections from which she performs at venues throughout New York and the US. Fellowships and residencies at New Dramatists and Cave Canem have fueled her generative work.

Her awards include an Obie for Sustained Excellence in Performance, a Helen Merrill, and the Herb Alpert Award in Theatre. She was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Drama for her play Bulrusher.

Elise Santora

TV & Film credits include:
Orange Is The New Black
Iron Fist
Shades of Blue

Elizabeth H. Blackburn

Elizabeth H. Blackburn, PhD

Nobel Laureate

Professor Emerita, Biochemistry and Biophysics

Throughout her long career in science, Dr. Blackburn has been a leader in the area of telomere and telomerase research, having discovered the molecular nature of telomeres – the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes that serve as protective caps essential for preserving the genetic information – and co-discovered the ribonucleoprotein enzyme, telomerase. She is also known for her championing of diversity and inclusion in the sciences. Currently, Dr. Blackburn and her UCSF research team continue their work with various cells (including human cells), with the goal of understanding telomerase and telomere biology. She and her research team also collaborate in a wide range of investigations of the roles of telomere biology in human health and diseases, through clinical and other human studies.

Born in Australia, Dr. Blackburn earned her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the University of Melbourne, and her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in England. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Molecular and Cellular Biology Department at Yale University. Professor Blackburn has won many prestigious awards throughout her career including Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the Albert Lasker Medical Research Award for Basic Medical Research, and in 2007 was named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People.

Elizabeth Hazlewood

Elizabeth Hazlewood (RN, BSN, MSA)

Elizabeth Marvel

credits include:
The Seagull (Broadway,)
St. Joan (Broadway)
Top Girls (Broadway)
Little Foxes (New York Theater Workshop)
Film credits include:
True Grit
Burn After Reading
The Dying Gaul

Emily Nguyen

MSN, RN-BC, CNML

Eric Bogosian

Credits include:

Law & Order: Criminal Intent

Talk Radio

Cadillac Records

Eric Jensen

Theater credits include:

The Bronx is Burning

The Exonerated

Film and Television credits include:

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Law and Order CSI

Erica Newhouse

TV credits include:

Law & Order

The Good Wife

Blue Bloods

The Blacklist

Mozart in the Jungle