I work across culture as a leader, producer and systems thinker. My work has taken me from theaters and artist-development programs to international collaborations, residencies, organizational strategy and new models for supporting creative practice.
Hi, I’m Christopher
About
I work across culture as a leader, builder and systems thinker, focused on the conditions that allow artists, organizations and ideas to thrive over time.
Much of my work has involved institutions in transition, moments when inherited structures no longer quite fit the people or purposes they are meant to serve. I am interested in what sits beneath the visible work: governance, funding, organizational design, cultural infrastructure, and the relationships between artists and the institutions built around them.
Across my career, I have worked inside established organizations and helped develop new models still taking shape. The through-line is a commitment to building systems that are more useful, more reciprocal and more responsive to the people they are intended to support. My work is grounded in long-term relationships, cultural specificity and the belief that structures should evolve when the work demands it.
Now
Right now, my work takes several forms. I serve as Interim Co-Executive Director of HB Studio, guiding strategy, operations and long-term infrastructure during a period of transition. I am also Director of The Enclave, a residency model connecting artists with spaces for sustained thought and creation.
Alongside those roles, I serve as Founding Chair of the Board of Trustees for Zoukak Theatre in Beirut, as a board member of Projekt Utopia, and hold advisory roles with the Under the Radar Festival and Catapult Opera. In 2026, I am a Fellow at Salzburg Global. I also continue consulting with organizations, artists and cross-sector initiatives on strategy, program design and institutional change.
Leadership
My leadership work has moved across theaters, artist-development organizations, international initiatives and cultural institutions, often in roles where programs, people and systems needed to evolve together.
At Sundance Institute, I spent more than a decade helping shape artist-development programs and international initiatives, working with artists, funders and institutional partners across the United States and abroad. Earlier, at the Guthrie Theater, I worked inside a large producing organization with a unionized staff and complex operational structure. I later served as Executive Director of Videos for Change, leading an international organization focused on youth, storytelling and social impact.
Across these roles, I have been drawn to organizations at moments of change. My work has included program design, organizational strategy, partnerships, operations, governance and the less visible work of building structures that make ambitious creative work possible.
Global Practice & Collaborations
My international work has been built less around one-off projects than around relationships that deepen over time. I have worked with artists, producers and cultural organizations across the Arab region, East Africa, Europe and other international contexts, often helping create the structures that allow exchange, collaboration and artistic development to continue beyond a single program or event.
That work has included long-term relationships with artists and organizations such as Zoukak Theatre in Beirut, as well as international labs, residencies, convenings and cross-border partnerships developed through Sundance and other initiatives. I have been especially interested in what changes when cultural work is designed with local context, reciprocity and shared authorship at its center rather than imposed through a single institutional model.
Across these collaborations, I have learned to treat cultural specificity as a condition of good strategy, not an obstacle to it. The strongest partnerships have been the ones built slowly, with enough trust to allow different priorities, histories and ways of working to shape the outcome.
Creative Direction & Values
I have often worked in places where artistic practice, public ideas and institutional strategy meet. That has included creative and producing work connected to projects such as Between the World and Me, as well as initiatives like Creative Tensions, where artists, designers, organizations and communities were brought together around difficult questions without requiring easy consensus.
I am drawn to work that creates conditions for participation rather than simply presenting finished answers. That has shaped collaborations with organizations and initiatives including IDEO, Rolex and the Rockefeller Foundation, and it continues to inform how I think about residencies, convenings, leadership and organizational change.
The values underneath that work are fairly consistent: reciprocity over extraction, curiosity over certainty, attention to place, and a belief that people do their best creative work when the structures around them offer both rigor and room. I am especially interested in how institutions can hold complexity without flattening it, and how cultural organizations can build systems that make belonging, experimentation and sustained artistic practice more possible.
Personal
I live in New York with my husband and our daughter. Outside of work, I write, collect art, travel when I can, and stay interested in the ways culture shows up in ordinary life, not just inside institutions.
Those parts of my life are not separate from the work. They shape how I think about belonging, place, care, ambition and the kinds of structures we build around one another.
Selected Work, Collaborations & Affiliations
Artist Development + Cultural Infrastructure
MASS MoCA · Ucross Foundation · LUMA Foundation / Maja Hoffmann · Sundance Institute · The Enclave
International Collaborations
Zoukak Theatre · Ettijahat – Independent Culture · Addis Ababa University · Nairobi Musical Theatre Initiative · Kampala International Theatre Festival · Wayne McGregor’s studio on Manda Island · Dar al-Ma’mun · Office of King Mohammed VI · Royal Air Maroc · Princess Rym Ali
Producing + Creative Work
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me at the Apollo Theater, later produced by HBO · Suffs · Appropriate · Stereophonic · Minnesota Boychoir · Theater Latté Da · Disney’s The Lion King on Broadway
Ideas + Institutional Collaborations
Creative Tensions / IDEO · Aspen Ideas Festival · NPR · Sundance Film Festival · CES · CreativeMornings · National Geographic · Core77 Design Award · Creative Capital · Rolex Mentor & Protégé Arts Initiative · Rockefeller Foundation · Regenerative Media Lab · Guild of Future Architects · FoodxFilm Festival · UN Food Systems Summit · Cinereach · National Geographic Society · NBCUniversal
In their words…
"Christopher is a virtuous leader with a profound ability to cultivate meaningful, long-standing relationships, which makes him a dynamic leader in the cultural and philanthropic field."
— Kamilah Forbes (former Executive Producer, Apollo Theater)“Christopher had a major hand in architecting some of the most nurturing, productive, inclusive structures for making work and community I have experienced in my thirty plus years of making theater. He has a great and rare gift for creating and managing systems that manifest an organization’s values in daily practice.”
— Lisa Kron (playwright & performer)“Christopher is a visionary in the truest sense. His capacity for empathy and sensitivity is limitless and his experience in international contexts has afforded him a profound understanding of the needs of artists and arts sectors all over the world. He faces challenges with immeasurable fresh insight, prodigious poise, and an unwaveringly constructive attitude. The extent of Christopher’s knowledge and drive are second to none: he is a natural leader, an acute listener, and a trusted, valued friend. “
— Abdullah Al-Kafri (Executive Director, Ettijahat-Independent Culture)