Development & Advancement Lead
Joan’s played a pivotal role in national theater for three decades and is a committed community organizer. A core member of Youth Speaks since 2000 – she was Director of Narrative Change and Field Building until 2026. She is now a Narrative Change Consultant for Youth Speaks, the Gerbode Foundation and The Peace Studio. She is also Producing Director for The Living Word Project and Campo Santo. As cultural organizer – she works on behalf of national networks, and has sat on the board of directors of the National Performance Network, and the Consortium of Asian American Theaters and Artists, The Magic Theatre, and AHAS : Archive for Health, Arts, and Spirit – a 501c3 Non-Profit based out of Hawai’i.
She has been recognized for her work as Cal Shakes Awardee for Community Engagement, and was named a recipient of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, YBCA 100. She was the inaugural recipient of the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Artist and Communities Partnership Grant, Theater Bay Area’s Award for Excellence in Video Design and the Surdna Foundation’s Artists Engaged in Social Change Award. Plays and films for Campo Santo include Garuda’s Wing and Richard II by Naomi Iizuka, Alleluia: The Road & The Travelers, by Luis Alfaro, Hookers from Mars, Eventually, Josephine’s Feast and Side Effects by Star Finch and Dirty White Teslas Make Me Sad by Ashley Smiley. Producing for The Living Word Project includes commissions, premieres and tours of Prieto, by Yosimar Reyes, SPIRITRIALS and Try/Step/Trip by Dahlak Brathwaite directed by Roberta Uno, First People’s Fund’s We The Peoples Before at the Kennedy Center, Otto Frank, and Casa de Spirits by Roger Guenveur Smith, The N??Lover’s by Marc Anthony Thompson, and Word Becomes Flesh, Scourge, the break/s, red, black and GREEN: a blues and peh/LO/tah by Marc Bamuthi Joseph. Current work includes Pictures from Home, directed by Jonathan Moscone, rasgos asiáticos by Virginia Grise Created in collaboration with designer Tanya Orellana, Jerry Garcia in the Lower Mission by Richard Montoya, and Rashomon by Ashley Smiley. She is awardee of Creative Capital’s Wild Futures grant supported by the Creative Capital Foundation, the Creative Work Fund, the MAP FUND, the Jefferson Award for Public Service on behalf of her work with Arts Organizations in the Bay Area, and the RAW Stage Awards for Projection Design for The Travelers.
As a producer of projects in socially engaged practice – she has mounted projects for the Guggenheim, CalShakes, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts including Reflections of Healing by Brett Cook, Plantation Remix by Cristal Truscott, EARTH SEED by Peoples Kitchen Collective, Moving & Passing by Marc Bamuth Joseph, and LIFE IS LIVING in association with partners in 10 distinct cities including One Nation/One Project, in the City of Oakland CA, Teens with a Purpose in Norfolk, VA, Words, Beats and Life in Washington DC, Riverside Church, Harlem, Kuumba Lynx in Chicago, Project Row Houses and the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center in Houston, and Philly Urban Creators in Philadelphia. She has been recognized for her work as a photographer from Artslant, Prix de Photographie, Laguna Arte Prize and has exhibited locally and internationally since 2009 including exhibitions at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Venice Arsenale.