Staffs

Debra Cash is Executive Director of Boston Dance Alliance. In terms of Deepa Iyer’s Building Movement   guide to the social change ecosystem, Debra acts as a Weaver, seeing (and facilitating) the through-lines of connectivity between people, places, organizations, ideas, and movements. She has reported, taught, and lectured on dance, performing arts, design, and cultural policy for print, broadcast, and online. Her roles in the Boston cultural community have spanned journalism, education, consulting, and advocacy for the rights of creative professionals.

Under Debra’s leadership, Boston Dance Alliance was named one of four statewide finalists for a 2017 Nonprofit Excellence Award in the Small Nonprofit category by the Massachusetts Nonprofit Network. She also was honored by OrigiNation Cultural Arts Center with its 2017 Champion of the Arts award.

A longtime consultant to the National Endowment for the Arts and New England Foundation for the Arts, Debra has served on panels and nominating committees for the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Maine Arts Commission, The Boston Foundation, The LEF Foundation, The Yard, Boston Center for the Arts, and the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. She has presented regular audience engagement lectures for Global Arts Live and other regional presenters and served as Scholar in Residence at Jacob’s Pillow and the Bates Dance Festival. She is proud to be a founding member of the Leadership Council of MassCreative.

Debra was a dance critic for the Boston Globe for 17 years, followed by a five year stint at WBUR, and seven as a founding Senior Contributor to The Arts Fuse, for which she now is a Board member. Debra has taught at Emerson College, the Boston Conservatory, and Northeastern. She earned her B.A. at Brandeis University and a Master’s degree in Design Studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Before coming to Boston Dance Alliance in 2015, she led an international research consultancy.

Debra is also an award-winning poet whose work is currently being translated into Italian.

Rohan Barthelmy is Boston Dance Alliance’s Operations and Membership Associate. He is a native of Saint Lucia, where he danced with the Helen Folk Dancers, a traditional dance group, and developed a passion for preserving the nation’s folk arts. He has worked as a liaison between the Minister of Heritage and Creative Industries and youth pursuing higher education and was Artistic Director of a Youth Summer Arts program for the St. Lucia Cultural Development Foundation, where he developed its training syllabus and worked with instructors. Recruited as a dancer to the White Mountain School, a private boarding school in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, he is excited about contributing his talents to Boston Dance Alliance and dancing with the Boston community. Rohan serves one weekend per month as an air traffic controller for the United States Army National Guard.

Miranda Brown is BDA’s Operations and Management Associate, ably supporting us from her home in Brooklyn, New York where she also serves as Administrative and Facilities Assistant at the Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) and teaches Vinyasa yoga. Miranda has taught at Boston Ballet, interned at Boston Center for the Arts, and volunteered at both The Dance Complex and at Dance for PD in New York. She recently graduated from Barnard College with a double major in Dance and American studies. Miranda has a depth of experience with social media, project management, and customer relationship management technology, and a background in food justice and hydroponics.

Almudena “Almu” Garcia Campos, who is helping Boston Dance Alliance with special project research, is a candidate for a masters degree in arts administration at Boston University, where she is studying on a Fulbright scholarship. She has worked in arts administration in St. Petersburg and in her native Spain, where she was in the corps de ballet of the Chamber Ballet of Madrid.

Carmen Rizzo is Boston Dance Alliance’s Operations and Management Associate. Carmen, a native of Brazil, went from organizing dance productions and talent shows to statewide model UN conferences in high school to activism in student government and founding the Council of Diversity and Equity (CoDE) at Manhattanville College, where she completed a dual major in dance and business management summa cum laude. Carmen has interned with Bodystories Teresa Fellion Dance and the Dance on Camera Festival, and will supplement her BDA responsibilities with her skillset that has been further developed in her time as the Outreach Program Administrator for Eryc Taylor Dance in New York. Carmen currently teaches Pure Barre, jazz, ballet and contemporary dance classes in studios across the Boston area and dances with Kairos Dance Theater, Holly Stone and Grant Jacoby, and is fluent in four languages. Besides working on expanding her dance career to bring more light to her choreography, Carmen has a wide range of hobbies from baking, to photographing and anything crafty. She is also a huge fan of discovering the world and has been to over 15 different countries. The next big goal is to go to Thailand.