Bio

Dana is currently the executive director of SPARK Movement, a national activist movement working to end the sexualization of girls. With SPARK, she collaborates with a team of girl activists to create and launch actions nationwide. SPARK’s petitions have received more than 100,000 signatures and have ignited national conversations about LEGO’s line of toys “for girls” and Seventeen Magazine’s airbrushing of teenage models. Prior to her work with SPARK, she founded and served as executive director of viBe Theater Experience from 2002-2012. viBe is a nonprofit performing arts education organization that offers free afterschool arts programs to underserved teenage girls in New York City. She produced and co-directed more than 60 plays and 7 CDs of original music all written/ performed by girls aboput the issues girls face daily. She has over 15 years of experience as a teacher and leader in arts and advocacy programs with teenage girls.

Dana’s activist and arts work with girls and young women has been the focus of articles in the New York Times, and New York Daily News, CNN.com and she has spoken as an expert on girls’ issues on ABC’s 20/20, Good Morning America, Fox News, and the BBC.

Dana has taught theater and social change, education, and qualitative research methods courses to undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students at New York University, Manhattan Marymount College, Bard College Prison Initiative at Bayview Women’s Prison and the City University of New York. She has a BA with honors in Classics/Ancient Greek from Brown University, an MFA in Theater Directing from Columbia University and a PhD in Educational Theater from NYU.

Follow Dana on Twitter @vibedana.

SHARE

[SHARE]

Expert DirectLink