Jacob G. Padrón is the Founder and Co-Artistic Director of The Sol Project. He was previously on the artistic staff of The Public Theater in NYC as the Senior Line Producer where he worked on new plays, new musicals, Shakespeare in the Park, and Public Works. At The Public he supported the work of Tarell Alvin McCraney (Head of Passes), Zell Williams (Urban Retreat), Mary Kathryn Nagle (Manahatta), Universes (Party People), Stew & Heidi Rodewald (The Total Bent), Tracey Scott Wilson (Buzzer), Lemon Andersen (Toast), Richard Nelson (The Gabriels), Suzan-Lori Parks (Father Comes Home From the Wars, Parts 1, 2 and 3), Anna Deavere Smith (A Rap on Race), Shaina Taub & Kwame Kwei-Armah (Twelfth Night), and Daniel Sullivan’s production of Troilus & Cressida, among others. Prior to his post at The Public, Jacob was the Producer at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago where he supported the artistic programming in the Garage, Steppenwolf's second stage dedicated to new work, new artists and new audiences. In the Garage he produced new plays by Ike Holter (Hit the Wall), Christina Anderson (Man in Love), Janine Nabers (Annie Bosh Is Missing), Edith Freni (Buena Vista), and Aaron Carter (The Gospel of Franklin), among others. From 2008 to 2011, he was an Associate Producer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Jacob was instrumental in producing all shows in the 11-play repertory. He was also a part of the producing team that transferred OSF productions to Seattle Rep, Berkeley Rep, Arena Stage and Brooklyn Academy of Music (Throne of Blood, Next Wave Festival). He was the producer of Suzan-Lori Parks "365 Days/365 Plays" for Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles under the guidance of Emilie Beck and his late mentor, Diane Rodriguez. In addition to his leadership with The Sol Project, Jacob is the Artistic Director of the Tony Award-winning Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. At Long Wharf he has commissioned, developed, and championed dozens of artists in the creation of new work including world premieres by Ricardo Pérez González (On the Grounds of Belonging) and Eliana Pipes (Dream Hou$e). During his tenure, Jacob has supported several new programs, including Black Trans Women at the Center, a new play festival curated by Dane Figueroa Edidi and Play On My Block, which brought the musical, Passing Strange, to local neighborhoods. During the pandemic he launched One City, Many Stages – a year of emergent virtual programming that featured play readings, curated panels, and an online convening called “The Artistic Congress.” In the 2021 season, Long Wharf Theatre was honored with 19 Connecticut Critics Circle Award nominations, including for best production, The Chinese Lady by Lloyd Suh. Jacob is on faculty at Yale School of Drama where he teaches artistic producing in the MFA theater management program. He has spoken on artistic leadership and cultural equity at universities across the country and was formerly on staff at Time Warner Inc. (HBO, Warner Bros., and Turner) in Cultural Investments where he supported the theater and film portfolios and identified storytellers for future media projects. He is an organizer with Elm City UROC and the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, and a member of the artistic council with People’s Theatre Project based in Washington Heights. He’s a proud alum of the SPARK leadership program administered by Theatre Communications Group. A graduate of Loyola Marymount University (BA) and Yale School of Drama (MFA), Jacob’s first artistic home was El Teatro Campesino in San Juan Bautista, California.​ He dedicates the work of The Sol Project to Diane Rodriguez and Lisa Garcia Quiroz, whose support and guidance made our initiative possible.

Adriana Gaviria is an actress, voice-over artist, writer, director, advocate and creative producer. She is Founding Member and Co-Artistic Director of The Sol Project, Producer of SolFest, and the Director of Technology and Innovation at Parent Artist Advocacy League. She is Founder of North Star Projects, an arts initiative hoping to create a better world, one project at a time. She previously worked as associate producer for Livin' the Dream web series and as a HowlroundTV producer and World Theatre Map ambassador for HowlRound. She serves on the national advisory boards of 50 Playwrights Project and FIU Theatre Alumni, and on the national steering committees of DRAMA and Latinx Theatre Commons, which was awarded the Peter Zeisler Memorial Award at the TCG National Conference in 2017. Adriana has performed at regional theaters across the nation—most notably Yale Repertory Theatre, Syracuse Stage, Dallas Theater Center, Denver Center, Arizona Theatre Company, Pasadena Playhouse, Marin Theatre Company, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Chicago Shakespeare Theater and Miami New Drama. In New York, she has worked with numerous theater companies and organizations including The Public Theater, Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, Repertorio Español, Working Theater, The 52nd Street Project, IATI Theater and New York Stage and Film. Her television and film credits include "Person of Interest,"​ "Law & Order: CI," "Sueños" and "Crabs in a Barrel," an HBO Latinx Short Film Competition wInner. Her passion for working with youth and young adults have led her to volunteer with literary arts organizations such as Young Playwrights Inc., The 52nd Street Project and BookPALS. Awards include the Los Angeles Theatre Center/Andrew W. Mellon Artistic Leader Fellowship, Fox Fellowship and National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts scholarship. She has participated in Cornerstone Theater Company's 2DI in Los Angeles, an intensive training in creating theater with and for communities. She is a graduate of the 2017 National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) Leadership Institute and the 2018 NALAC Advocacy Leadership Institute. Ms. Gaviria received her BFA from Florida International University and her MFA from The David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University. She is a proud member of The Actors Center, SAG-AFTRA and the Actors' Equity Association. Adriana embraces the human spirit and aims to empower, inspire and build community through her work.​ ​www.adrianagaviria.com

Rebecca Martinez is a director, writer, producer, choreographer and facilitator living in New York City. She is an ensemble member of Sojourn Theatre and with the company she has worked as a lead artist on projects including DON’T GO (USC), How to End Poverty in 90 Minutes (Cleveland Public Theater & Vanderbilt University), On the Table, Finding Penelope, Islands of Milwaukee, and keynote performances for several national conferences, including Americans for the Arts, Network of Ensemble Theaters, and Independent Sector. Directing projects include: [Upcoming]: I Am My Own Wife (Long Wharf Theatre), Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles (Repertory Theatre of St. Louis), Songs About Trains (Radical Evolution, New Ohio, NYC). [Recent]: Miss You Like Hell (Baltimore Center Stage), Wolf at the Door (Milagro Theatre, NNPN rolling world premiere), Anna in the Tropics (Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, Henry Award for Outstanding Direction), and is collaborating on new works in association with WP Theater, New Georges, Sojourn Theatre, Working Theater among others. A long-time collaborator with Milagro Theatre in Portland, OR, Rebecca wrote the book for Oye Oyá (music by Rodolfo Ortega) and directed productions such as La Muerte Baila, American Sueño, La Noche Eterna, Xandu Ya’, Ardiente Paciencia and Sonia Flew. Rebecca has worked with INTAR, Working Theater, Signature Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, the Lark, The Playwrights Realm, New Dramatists, the 52nd Street Project, Brave New World Repertory Theatre, and Artists Repertory Theatre among others. She served as a board member of PLG Arts and with them produced and created the participatory performance event INTERSECTIONS: Prospect Lefferts Gardens (CCNY Grant recipient). Rebecca is a member of: The Sol Project Collective, INTAR’s Unit52, Latinx Theatre Commons Advisory Committee, 2019 Audrey Resident, New Georges Affiliated Artist, 2018-2020 WP Lab, Drama League Directing Fellow, SDCF Observer, Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, member of SDC. Awards: four Portland, Oregon Drammy Awards; Lilla Jewel Award for Women Artists. Rebecca is an artist with Center for Performance and Civic Practice.

David Mendizábal is a director, designer, producer, and the associate artistic director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre. They are one of the producing artistic leaders of the Obie award-winning The Movement Theatre Company and a founding collective member of the Obie award-winning Sol Project. Directing credits include the bandaged place (Roundabout), Mushroom (People’s Light), Sanctuary City (Berkeley Rep/Arena Stage), Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Board Members (Soho Rep/Sol Project - also costume designer), This Bitter Earth (Theatreworks Hartford), and Don't Eat the Mangos (Magic Theatre/Sundance). David is an alumnus of the Soho Rep Project Number One Residency, Ars Nova Vision Residency, Drama League Directors Project, Labyrinth Intensive Ensemble, artEquity, NALAC, LCT Directors Lab, and TCG Leadership U. They are the recipient of a 2021 Princess Grace Award Honoraria in Theater. David earned a BFA from the New York University Tisch School of the Arts. davidmendizabal.com

Julian Ramirez is a talent manager at Lasher Group where he works with clients including Academy Award, Emmy, and Tony award winner Viola Davis, Academy Award and Tony winner Alan Arkin, and Academy Award nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno, amongst other artists recognized in the film, television, and theater spaces. ​Prior to working as a talent manager, Julian worked in casting at the Manhattan Theater Club, and in production at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. He has returned to the Kennedy Center to associate direct the Artes de Cuba Festival as well as to work on the Hispanic Heritage Awards broadcasted on PBS. He has also served as a mentor at the TIDE Film Festival held in Brooklyn, New York. ​A native of Bogotà, Colombia, Julian and his family immigrated to the United States in the year 2000 and settled in Denver, Colorado. He attended the University of Denver where he received his degrees in Music and Marketing, graduating magna cum laude. Julian is a trained singer, specializing in art song and opera, but really enjoys singing Mariachi music as well.​

Laurie Woolery is a director, playwright, educator, facilitator and producer. She has worked at the Public Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Yale Repertory, Trinity Repertory, Goodman Theater, Cornerstone Theater Company, South Coast Repertory, Mark Taper Forum, Denver Center, Los Angeles Philharmonic, East West Players, Los Angeles Theatre Center, Inge Center for the Arts, Plaza de la Raza/RedCAT, Ricardo Montalban Theatre, Deaf-West Theatre, Highways Performance Space and Sundance Playwrights Lab as well as the Sundance Children's Theater. Woolery has directed world premieres of plays by Tanya Saracho, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Marisela Trevino Orta, Aditi Kapil, K.J. Sanchez, Julie Marie Myatt, Cody Henderson, Allison Carey and others. Currently, Woolery is the Director of Public Works at The Public Theater an initiative that seeks to engage the people of New York by making them creators and not just spectators. Working with partners organizations in all five boroughs, Public Works invites members of diverse communities to join in the creation of ambitious works of participatory theater. Recently, she launched a new program called "ACTivate" (Artist, Citizen, Theater maker) that takes an ensemble of community members and puts them in the “artistic driver’s seat” by partnering with a professional playwright and devised an original play. With collaborators Shaina Taub and Sonya Tayeh, Woolery co-adapted and directed a new musical adaptation of "As You Like It" which debuted at the Delacorte Theater with 200 New Yorkers and was named one of The New York Times best shows of 2017. Woolery develops and directs new works with diverse communities ranging from incarcerated women to residents of a small Kansas town devastated by a tornado. Laurie has created site-specific work ranging from a working sawmill, parking lots, to the banks of the Los Angeles River. Woolery curated and produced a two-week festival in Los Angeles that explored issues of hunger that brought artists, activists, community and thought leaders together. In keeping with her lifelong commitment to community engagement, Woolery is partnering with Trinity Repertory Theater to deepen their artistic work in collaboration with the Latinx community in the larger Rhode Island area. As a playwright, Woolery’s plays have been produced throughout California. Her solo play Salvadorian Moon/African Sky was commissioned by Cornerstone Theater Company and performed in their citywide Festival of Faith. Ms. Woolery is the former Associate Artistic Director of Cornerstone Theater Company, Conservatory Director at South Coast Repertory and former artist-in-residence at Hollygrove Children’s Home in Los Angeles. Woolery teaches at Princeton, NYU, Brown, USC, Cal Arts, Citrus College, California State University at Northridge, California State University at Los Angeles. Woolery serves on the Board of the Latino Producers Action Network, Latinx Theatre Commons and is the founding member of The Sol Project in New York. Woolery is a proud recipient of the Fuller Road Fellowship for Women Directors of Color. Ms. Woolery is a graduate from University of California, Los Angeles.

Isabel Pask is a Brooklyn-based, Texan-born director, actor, writer, and producer with Puerto Rican roots. Isabel is a contributing artist for the femme-millennial production company CNT Productions, for which she wrote, starred in, and coproduced the short film This is Not a Love Letter (176K+ views on YouTube). She is also the producing associate for The Sol Project, and an associate producer at Sunshine Films. She is a member of the theatrical ensemble The Bellwether Project, where she writes for the series (in)alienable. She is a cast member and Creative Producer for the interactive live show Please Don't Kill Us. Isabel has written two feature length scripts and is in post-production for a short film based on her feature script GET LOST, directed by Victoria Pedretti (You, Haunting of Hill House) and starring herself and Libe Barer (Sneaky Pete). Her work as a writer, producer, and actor has been recognized by Ms. Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, and numerous international film festivals, including Madrid International Film Festival, Toronto Indie Filmmakers Festival, and Women’s Voices Now Film Festival. Isabel recently ventured into the world of stand-up comedy, opening for Amy Schumer at City Winery and the Comedy Cellar in NYC. As an actor, she has performed with various theatre companies in NYC and around the country (McCarter Theatre Center, Dorset Theatre Festival, Santa Cruz Shakespeare, Chautauqua Theatre Company, Ars Nova, Ashland New Plays Festival, Quantum Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, Art House NJ). Film/TV credits include Life & Beth (Hulu), Succession (HBO), the indie feature Revelations of Divine Love, and the upcoming Paul Schrader film Oh, Canada. ​Education: Carnegie Mellon University, London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (Certificate in Classical Acting).​​ Representation: DGRW Inc.

Brian Eugenio Herrera is, by turns, a writer, teacher and scholar — presently based in New Jersey, but forever rooted in New Mexico. Brian’s work, whether academic or artistic, examines the history of gender, sexuality and race within and through U.S. popular performance. He is author of The Latina/o Theatre Commons 2013 National Convening: A Narrative Report (HowlRound, 2015). His book Latin Numbers: Playing Latino in Twentieth-Century U.S. Popular Performance (Michigan, 2015) was awarded the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism and received an honorable mention for the John W. Frick Book Award from the American Theatre and Drama Society. With Stephanie Batiste and Robin Bernstein, Brian serves as co-editor of Performances and American Cultures series at NYU Press. Also a performer, Brian’s autobiographical storywork performances (including I Was the Voice of Democracy and TouchTones) have been presented in venues large and small across the United States, as well as Beirut and Abu Dhabi. Brian is also the Inaugural Resident Scholar for The Sol Project, an initiative dedicated to producing the work of Latinx playwrights in New York City and beyond; he also serves as part of the Core Facilitation Team with ArtEquity. Brian is presently at work on two scholarly book projects: Next! A Brief History of Casting, a historical study of the material practices of casting in U.S. popular performance, and Starring Miss Virginia Calhoun, a narrative portrait of a deservedly obscure early 20th century actress/writer/producer. Brian Eugenio Herrera is associate professor of theater in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, where he is also a core faculty member in the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies and a faculty affiliate with the Program in Music Theater and the Effron Center for the Study of America.

Stephanie Ybarra is an artistic producer currently in her first season as the Artistic Director at Baltimore Center Stage. Prior to working and playing in the Charm City, Stephanie served The Public Theater as the Director of Special Artistic Projects, where she led the Mobile Unit and Public Forum programs. Her career started in her home state of Texas, working with Dallas Theater Center and Dallas Children's Theater. She then fled to cooler climates, spending time at Yale Repertory Theater, Two River Theater Company, and Citizen Schools, a national after school program based in Boston. Because teaching is a hard habit to break, Stephanie continues to serve as a faculty member at The Juilliard School, and repeatedly finds herself guest lecturing for artists and producing students at NYU, Yale School of Drama and more. In light of the current state of the world, she co-founded the Artists’ Anti-Racism Coalition, a grassroots effort to help the Off-Broadway community dismantle systems of exclusion and oppression. She has received the Josephine Abady Award for producing from New York's League of Professional Theatre Women, 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, Stephanie received the prestigious Nation Builder Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators in 2018. In 2019, she was selected as a YBCA 100 honoree. Stephanie holds an MFA from Yale School of Drama, and a deep belief in the power of the post-it note.

Claudia Acosta is an actor, director, producer and teaching artist. As an arts educator of over twenty years she serves many organizations in addition to GIVE including Arts Connection, MTC, and New York Theater Workshop among others. Claudia has been part of the faculties of Creative Arts Team of CUNY, Lincoln Center Education and directed college productions at Lehman and SUNY New Paltz. As an actor dedicated to new play development, Claudia has worked with Page 73, WP Theater, New York Theater Workshop, HERE, INTAR, Rattlestick Playwright’s Theater, Kyoung’s Pacific Beat, Hip Pocket Theater, Cara Mia, and Teatro Dallas. She directed A Grave is Given Supper in Ice Factory 2021 at New Ohio in partnership with Teatro Dallas. Claudia was a founding member of New York Latino theater initiative, The Sol Project. Claudia has been featured bilingual narrator for Performing Arts Fort Worth and Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in their annual Children’s Educational Programs at Bass Performance Hall for almost twenty years. She is currently co-producing and co-leading Echoes Writing Group with Primary Stages uplifting emerging women, trans and non-binary playwrights.

Elena Araoz is a stage director for theater and opera. This season, in NYC, she directs Hilary Bettis’ Alligator (New Georges, The Sol Project), Octavio Solís’ Prospect (Boundless Theatre Company), Dipika Guha’s Mechanics of Love, and will devise She-She-She with Virginia Grise and Hook & Eye (Ice Factory Festival, New Ohio Theatre). She will direct Naomi Wallace’s The Retreating World (Great Plains Theatre Conference) and Two Arms and a Noise (Bucharest International Theatre Platform, Romania) which she wrote and directed as a New York Theatre Workshop fellow. Elena was named The Drama League’s inaugural Beatrice Terry Resident, where she wrote Plastic Drastic, an eco-aware musical adaptation of The Odyssey, and directed for the Rose Theatre. Other recent productions: Architecture of Becoming (Women’s Project), two Carl Djerassi plays (Off-Broadway), Li Tong's The Power (Beijing), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Prague Shakespeare Company), Mac Wellman’s Wu and Horrocks (Sleeping Weazel, ArtsEmerson), Natalia Naman’s Lawnpeople (Cherry Lane Mentor Project), La Traviata (New York City Opera, BAM), Lucia di Lammermoor (Opera North), Falstaff (Brooklyn Philharmonic, BAM), Latin Lovers (Glimmerglass Opera), Monika Bustamante’s Thirst (HERE), Naomi Wallace's The Fever Chart (Underground Railway Theatre), Jaclyn Villano’s The Company We Keep (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre) and Araoz’s acclaimed operetta War Music, which she adapted from Christopher Logue's retelling of the Iliad and devised with six performers (Aurea, FirstWorks Festival, New York Institute for the Humanities, Chicago Humanities Festival, Chorus of Westerly, New England tour). She has worked extensively with Sir Jonathan Miller as Choreographer and Associate Director, and with Sir Richard Eyre as Associate Director. The New York Times has praised Araoz's productions as "striking," "primal," "wild," "stirring" and "refreshingly natural," and The Boston Globe as "riveting," "dreamy" and “vivid.” As her productions are critically acclaimed for superb acting, she regularly teaches acting at universities and young artist programs. In September 2016, she will join the faculty at Princeton University, teaching acting. Araoz is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect, a Time Warner Foundation Fellow Alum of the Director’s Lab at Women’s Project Theatre, and a recipient of the Dr. David Farrar Opera Stage Director Grant. She holds her MFA in Acting from the University of Texas at Austin.

Kyoung H. Park is a North Korean playwright/director, born and raised in Santiago, Chile, currently living in unceded territory of the Lenape. As Artistic Director of Kyoung’s Pacific Beat, a peacemaking theater company, he has devised three full-length plays — DISORIENTED (“Kyoung’s most intensely personal play”—American Theatre Magazine), TALA (“an epic tale of the historical, hysterical, and personal” — New York Theater Review), PILLOWTALK (“very much of this moment”—The New York Times) — and created over 35 community-based, experimental projects including performances for new media. His work centers stories of (im)migration, queerness, trauma and the way these intersect in communities of color. He’s published in Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas by Duke University Press. Kyoung’s Pacific Beat has been a resident company at The Tank, Bushwick Starr, Baryshnikov Arts Center, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, BRIC Arts Media, Performance Project @ University Settlement and Kyoung has worked internationally in Santiago (Chile), Rio de Janeiro, London, New Delhi, and Seoul. Kyoung has been Writer-in-Residence at Sanskriti Pratisthan (New Delhi), Vermont Studio Center, Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral (Santiago, Chile) and he is a member of the Ma-Yi Writer’s Lab, NYTW Usual Suspect, and co-founder of The Sol Project. He is currently a Steering Committee member of the Mosaic Network and Fund, Advisory Council member of HueArts NYC, and 2022 APAP Conference Committee member. Kyoung is recipient of numerous fellowships including the 2021 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship (Recommended Alternate), 2019-2020 Dramatist Guild Fellowship, 2018-2020 APAP Leadership Fellowship, 2018-2019 Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellowship, 2017 Creative Mellon Fellowship, 2015-2017 Field Leadership Fund Fellowship, 2014 Target Margin Theater Inst. for Theater-Making Fellowship, 2009-2011 Columbia University Dean’s Fellowship, and was named a 2010 UNESCO-Aschberg Laureate (Paris). He is recipient of commissions from Mixed Blood Theater Company (Minneapolis), Latinx Theater Commons/Howlround (New York) and Kyoung has received grants from the Arvon Foundation (London), GK Foundation (South Korea), MAP Fund, Venturous Theater Fund, TCG Global Connections, Brooklyn Arts Council, Howard Gilman Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, and has been a grant panelist for the NEA, TCG, ART/NY and NALAC. He holds an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University (Dean’s Fellow), an MA in International Politics from Kyung Hee University’s Graduate Institute for Peace Studies, and BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (Founder’s Day Award). ​ Kyoung lives in Brooklyn, New York with his husband, Daniel Lim, and continues his self-education in Buddhism, having made his refuge vows with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India.