The Dance Data Project® Advisory Council
Limón Dance Company rehearsing Kayla Farrish’s “A Quake that Held Them All”
Photo by MJ Edwards
Advisory Council:
DDP is fortunate to have the following subject matter experts as a resource for Dance Data Project®. They help us design our research studies, check our methodology and statistical protocols, but also advise us on a myriad of leadership questions. We are grateful for their collaboration.
Raheela Gill Anwar
Raheela brings more than 25 years of experience in executive outplacement and financial services to Group 360, with expertise in M&A, executive compensation, corporate delayering, and building and leading diverse teams. She is a leader in guiding professionals and organizations through career transition, connecting them with networks and resources to help them find their next opportunity. Prior to launching Group 360, Raheela served in executive roles for BPI group and a national boutique executive outplacement firm, where she managed client relationships, developed growth strategies, and advised clients on opportunities to implement leadership coaching, succession planning, and talent development.
Learn more about Raheela’s work here.
Phil Chan
Phil Chan is a visionary advocate for diversity and representation in dance. As co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, Chan has worked tirelessly to eliminate outdated and harmful representations of Asian culture in ballet. He is also the author of Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing between Intention and Impact and President of the Gold Standard Arts Foundation, which advocates for cultural inclusion in the arts. Chan’s latest project, the 10,000 Dreams Festival at the Kennedy Center, featured the largest showcase of Asian choreographic talent on a single program.
Lauren Cramer
Lauren B. Cramer is Chair of the Firm’s Tax-Exempt Organizations department, where she provides advice concerning federal tax issues related to tax-exempt organizations including public charities, private foundations, social welfare organizations, trade associations, religious corporations and other 501(c) organizations. Her practice focuses largely on organizational structuring, governance and accountability issues, joint ventures between for-profits and tax-exempts, international grantmaking, and program-related investments. Ms. Cramer provides counsel on donor advised funds, restricted gifts and endowments, as well as executive compensation arrangements, unrelated business income issues, and issues related to private inurement, private benefit and excess benefit transactions. She is also Co-Chair of the Art Department. Ms. Cramer joined McLaughlin & Stern in 1995.
Learn more about Lauren’s work here.
Patrick Crocker
Patrick is an Assistant General Counsel supporting litigation management and business operations at Texas Health Resources, a non-profit health system in Dallas-Fort Worth with 29 hospital locations providing care for over two million patients per year. Prior to his current role, Patrick was an Associate Professor of Healthcare Practice at the M.J. Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University, a Senior Corporate Counsel for U.S. Anesthesia Partners, Inc., a healthcare strategy consultant for PwC, and spent over a decade in the U.S. Army as a Judge Advocate serving as a prosecutor, appellate counsel, and command legal advisor throughout the United States and during two combat deployments to Afghanistan. Patrick has been involved with dance throughout his life, including working as an accompanist, composer, and performer for the dance departments at Texas Christian University and the University of Richmond. He is thrilled to be able to contribute to the amazing work DDP is doing to support equity initiatives in classical ballet.
Patrick holds a BS, magna cum laude, in Psychology from Texas Christian University, a JD, cum laude, from the University of Richmond School of Law, and an MBA, with honors, from the University of California, Berkeley. Patrick is Former Board President for the Dance Data Project®.
MELANIE DOERNER
Melanie Doerner is a proven arts leader and fundraiser with 19 years of nonprofit management experience, and has raised over $15M for the arts. Melanie began her career in arts administration in 2001 with the José Limón Dance Company. She is currently the Director of Development for North Carolina Theatre in Raleigh, previously working for Carolina Ballet and Children’s Musical Theater of San Jose. She is a founding board member of sjDANCEco. Melanie holds a J.D. from Osgoode Hall Law School and formerly practiced as a corporate attorney in her native Canada. Her husband Michael Doerner is a ballet dancer, having performed with the National Ballet of Canada under Reid Anderson and James Kudelka, Alberta Ballet under Mikko Nissinen, and Ballet San Jose under Dennis Nahat.
Preetinder Gill
Throughout his career, he has prioritized digital and technological transformation and process restructuring while launching viable initiatives that streamlined and positioned businesses and innovations for growth and maturity, successfully recording 75+ new business ventures and maximized opportunities. He is a dynamic leader spearheading complex growth, change, and technological projects and interfaced with cross-functional teams, stakeholders, C-suite executives, customers, partners and clients for quality deliverables with minimum error through solutions and risk mitigation initiatives that high ROIs. Furthermore, he has enhanced overall deliverability and team performance, resulting in client satisfaction, budgetary optimization, timely delivery, and profitable return by innovating various business models. He has devised strategies that enhanced staff engagement, encouraged ingenuity, professional development, and promoted collaboration with measurable impact on overall global business operations.
Jennifer Heimlich
Jennifer Heimlich is a freelance journalist covering dance along with health and wellness for publications including TIME and National Geographic. A graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, she was previously the editor in chief of Dance Magazine and senior editor of Pointe. She has served on panels and been an adjudicator for American College Dance Association, Future Dance Festival, Youth America Grand Prix, and New York City Dance Alliance Foundation.
YESSICA HERRERA
Yessica Herrera, born and raised in Mexico, is a network science researcher exploring the art world as a complex system. She obtained her PhD in Social Complexity with the highest distinction at the Universidad del Desarrollo, in Chile. She is currently affiliated at the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University, and as Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University. Her research interests are rooted in the use of network science and data-driven methodologies to understand the network effects on gender inequalities and career success in the arts. She is also interested on the psychological factors influencing human performance and creativity.
ISABELLE VAIL LAROE
Isabelle Vail Laroe joined the Advisory Council in 2021, after four years of leading DDP’s research and special projects teams. Isabelle oversaw DDP’s initial collaborations with institutional and independent research partners, coordinated groundbreaking examinations of the state of gender equity in ballet, and spearheaded strategic engagement through DDP’s social media channels and auxiliary programming. She began consulting for DDP in 2017 as a part-time research assistant, first hired to translate the Paris Opera Ballet’s repertoire from French to English and evaluate its gender split, marrying her interests in classical ballet and French. Isabelle went on to play an active role in the founding of DDP as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, leading the organization’s early research endeavors and engagement before becoming the team’s first full-time consultant in 2019. Prior to that, Isabelle worked as an English teaching assistant in Rouen, France for a year and attended Wake Forest University as a Presidential Scholar of Dance, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in Psychology and French. Today, Isabelle resides in New York City and works in AdTech. She remains a passionate follower of the international dance scene and a fierce advocate for women in the arts and beyond.
KIERSTEN MAREK
Kiersten Marek, LICSW, is the founder and publisher of Philanthropy Women. A former Senior Editor for Inside Philanthropy, Kiersten is the author of hundreds of articles on gender equity funding as well as two books: Know Thyself: A Kid’s Guide to the Archetypes and Cooking for Emotional Wellness: Recipes to Nourish Your Archetypes. Kiersten served as Board Member and Treasurer for the Rhode Island Center for Law and Public Policy from 2008 to 2016, working to support legal services for those with limited financial means. In 2004, Kiersten helped her family facilitate the creation of the Stoppleworth Conservation Area in Tolland, Connecticut, a 55-acre open space hiking park.
For over 20 years, Kiersten has been practicing clinical social work, specializing in trauma recovery and identity development for all ages. She lives with her family in Rhode Island.
JAMES MARRONE
Jim Marrone, PhD, is an economist with over a decade of experience in government, public policy, and tech research. He spent seven years at RAND Corporation where he worked on research projects funded by Departments across the federal government including Defense, State, Treasury, Commerce, and Homeland Security. The arts and artistic labor markets have always been one of his core research interests. He worked with FEMA, the Department of the Interior, and the Puerto Rico government after Hurricane Maria to help develop the rescue plan for cultural heritage resources (including the island’s working artists). He has also published numerous articles about the black market for antiquities. In 2020 he published multiple research briefs examining how the pandemic affected working artists. More broadly, his work at RAND was at the intersection of economic and national security, focusing on military family mental and financial wellbeing, as well as effects of counterterrorism and counter-extremism programs. He is now a senior economist at Amazon where he works in advertising measurement. His current research focus is on how to use generative AI for causal inference. His writing and speaking appearances include the Los Angeles Times, Barron’s, the Freakonomics podcast, and numerous invited talks at academic and professional conferences.
Jim has a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago. The arts are an integral part of his life: he is a lifelong classical pianist and is married to a musical theater actor. He and his husband live with their young son in New Jersey.
JERMAINE MCGHEE
Jermaine McGhee, MFA, is Lecturer of Dance at Troy University and a nationally engaged dance educator, choreographer, scholar, and multidisciplinary performance artist. His teaching, research, and creative practice center Somatic Jazz, African and African Diasporic aesthetics, trauma-informed pedagogy, and movement as a site of cultural memory, authorship, and social transformation. Grounded in curiosity, technical rigor, and embodied inquiry, his work prepares students to become versatile artists, critical thinkers, and culturally responsive contributors to the evolving field of dance.
McGhee earned an MFA in Creative Practice with Honors and Distinction from Saint Mary’s College of California. His thesis, “Da Vibe: Exploration of African Aesthetics in American Culture,” examined Africanist lineages within American performance. He also holds a certificate in Dance Stage Management, with additional training in production management and Progressive Ballet Technique. His scholarship includes the co-authored
chapter “Meme as Performance: Cultural Memory, Identity, and Embodied Meaning,” which expands his research into performance, cultural identity, and embodied communication.
Before joining Troy University, McGhee taught at Loyola Marymount University, Scripps College, and Long Beach City College. His courses have included advanced jazz, choreography, musical theatre dance, contemporary fusions, performance, and the historical and cultural foundations of the jazz tradition. He has also led master classes, workshops, and residencies for universities, schools, studios, and community organizations nationally.
His professional performance career spans opera, concert dance, television, film, commercial performance, and live entertainment. McGhee performed the principal role of “The Figure” in the Pulitzer Prize–winning opera Omar with LA Opera and later appeared as the “Ancestral Figure” with San Francisco Opera, where he was elevated to Principal Artist within the corps de ballet. He served as the principal dance body double
for Season 12 of FOX’s The Masked Singer and performed as a principal mainstage artist in Disney Theatrical’s Mickey and the Magical Map. His screen credits include the feature film Fame, Cold Case, and Two and a Half Men. He has also performed with international recording artist Kanye West and appeared as Principal Dancer and Assistant in Melanie Fiona’s “I Choose You” music video.
McGhee has served on the Dance Data Project Advisory Council since 2022, contributing an artist-educator perspective informed by higher education, professional performance, workforce development, and arts advocacy. His work supports DDP’s commitment to equity, visibility, accountability, and sustainable leadership pathways throughout the dance ecosystem. He also serves as Chair of Education & Dance Programming on the Board of Directors for cU360, guiding curriculum development, community engagement, artist-educator partnerships, and equitable access to dance education.
In 2026, McGhee was selected as a California Arts Council Arts and Youth grant panelist and named a Lynn Simonson UPROOTED Teacher Scholar. His broader service includes statewide arts grant review, career technical education advisement, faculty advocacy with SEIU 721, and initiatives connecting educational access to creative workforce development.
Across classrooms, stages, institutions, and communities, McGhee advances artistic excellence and data-informed change that remain accountable to lived and embodied experience. His work champions more inclusive systems of training, leadership, representation, and opportunity for artists and educators across generations.
SANDRA PARKS
Sandra Shih Parks is currently the Executive/Artistic Director for Colorado Conservatory of Dance. She holds her B.F.A. from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and her M.F.A. from Smith College, MA. Originally from Taiwan, Sandra danced with Four Seasons Ballet and Wu-I Dance Company in Taipei; toured nationally and internationally with a Broadway production of The King And I. She also danced with Bosoma Dance Company, Dance Collective, and Impulse Dance Company in Boston, MA. Sandra has presented work in Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Boston, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, in addition to Beijing, China and Taipei, Taiwan. She has created work for professional dance companies including Bosoma, Cangelosi Dance Project, and Of Moving Colors. Sandra served as a faculty member at Boston University, Bridgewater State College, Colleges of Fenway, Drexel University, Kennesaw State University, Louisiana State University, Smith College, and taught master classes in China, France, and Taipei. In 2013, Sandra founded Women in Dance to celebrate and promote female leadership in dance, and she is the director of the international Women in Dance Leadership Conference.
TIM RUSSELL
Timothy M. Russell is currently the Vice President of Community Engagement and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion of Chicago-based Window to the World Communications, Inc. (WWCI), parent company of public television station WTTW and classical music station WFMT. Tim is responsible for leading WWCI’s community engagement and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts focused on shaping the organization’s vision and strategy with relevant influencers, nonprofits, foundations, and business partners ensuring that they align with the organization’s strategic plan.
Tim received his Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology and religion from Oberlin College, earned a Masters of Theological Studies with a concentration in Ethics and Society from Garrett Theological Seminary and completed a certificate program in Business Administration at Loyola University Chicago. Tim and his wife, Joi-Anissa, and their children – Mark and Ava – live in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, IL.
ADAM SKLUTE
Since 2007, Adam Sklute has expanded Ballet West’s outlook, repertoire, and visibility with exciting Company and world premieres, increased touring, heightened public exposure, and greater focus on the Ballet West Academy. He began his career with The Joffrey Ballet, as one of the last two dancers personally picked by Robert Joffrey. He rose through the Joffrey ranks from dancer to Associate Director. His stewardship of Ballet West has been marked by both financial growth and elevated artistry and was the subject of The CW Network’s docudrama, Breaking Pointe, which aired for two seasons. From September 2016 to October 2017, Sklute took on the dual position of CEO and Artistic Director overseeing both administrative and artistic operations of Ballet West. An internationally sought after teacher and adjudicator, Sklute has received numerous awards, including Utah’s Enlightened 50 (2014), The Bronze Minuteman Award for Outstanding Service to Utah and The Nation (2015), Utah Diversity Connection’s Business Award for outstanding commitment to diversity initiatives (2017), and Westminster College’s Unsung Hero Award for his efforts to build community, unity, and diversity across Salt Lake City and Utah (2020). Most recently, Sklute was included in Deseret Magazine’s 25 Changemakers of the West for his efforts to build greater equity and inclusion in classical ballet.
SUSAN WEST
Susan West is an active supporter of the arts and an advocate of diversity in the workplace. She joined the Dance Data Project® in 2016 as Lead Researcher. Susan has spent her career working for and with higher education institutions. She is a Director in the Higher Education Strategy & Operations practice at Huron Consulting Group where she leads numerous efforts to support, promote, and recruit women in higher education consulting. Prior to joining Huron, Susan was Associate Director, Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO), at Yale University. While at Yale Susan served as Co-Chair of Yale’s LGBTQ Affinity Group from 2013-2015 and co-founded the organization Women in IT (WIT) @ Yale in 2013.
Susan holds an M.A. in Higher Education and Student Affairs from The Ohio State University and a B.A. in Communication Studies from Furman University.
CHARLES WHITAKER
Charles Whitaker is Dean and professor at Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. Before joining the Medill faculty, Whitaker was a senior editor at Ebony Magazine. Whitaker has also led a prolific journalism career, working with institutions such as the Miami Herald and the Louisville (Ky.) Times, and contributing articles to the Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Magazine, Jet Magazine, Essence Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Saturday Evening Post, Chicago Parent magazine, and Folio, the magazine of the magazine industry. Among Whitaker’s many notable roles and endeavors, he authored four statistical analyses of the hiring of women and minorities in the magazine industry, co-directed Project Masthead (a program designed to encourage students of color to consider careers in the magazine industry), and has served as an adviser on diversity issues for the Magazine Publishers of America.
GREGORY YOUDAN
Gregory Youdan Jr. (he/him) is a human movement scientist specializing in dance science and dance for health. He is on faculty in the Dance Division at The Juilliard School, teaching Anatomy and Kinesiology for Dancers. He has been published in several academic journals, including Clinical Biomechanics, Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation, and Human Movement Science. Greg has served on the faculty at Columbia University, New York University, Hollins University, and CUNY Lehman College. He previously held a dance research assistantship at Brown University. He has presented scientific research at various academic conferences, including the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine and the Performing Arts Medicine Association.
Greg has served as the chair of the development committee for the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science (IADMS), served on the research committee for the National Organization for Arts in Health (NOAH), and as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). He was a 2021 National Association for Latino Arts and Cultures Advocacy Fellow and 2021 Latin Impact Honoree. He is a Latinx Dance Educators Alliance member and served on the steering committee to plan the inaugural Convivencia.
As a dancer, Greg performed with the NY Baroque Dance Company, Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble, David Parker and the Bang Group, and Heidi Latsky Dance, where he served as a board member. Greg is a Wertheimer Fellow through Mark Morris Dance Group’s Dance for PD® program and is a teaching artist in their Dance for PD en Español program.
MELISSA M. YOUNG
Melissa M. Young is a Honduran American artistic leader and educator whose career spans more than three decades of performance, curation, teaching, and executive arts leadership. A graduate of The Ailey School, she later strengthened her executive acumen through graduate-level certifications in Leadership, Management, and Analytical Skills from Michigan State University’s Eli Broad College of Business. She is also a certified instructor through the inaugural Ailey Horton Teacher Certification Program.
Melissa’s 30-year career with Dallas Black Dance Theatre progressed from company dancer to Artistic Director (2018–2024). During her tenure, she commissioned more than 30 choreographers, expanded national and international partnerships, and developed a paid virtual programming model that extended the organization’s reach to audiences in more than 40 states and 35 countries.
An internationally sought-after educator specializing in Lester Horton Technique, Melissa has taught for universities, conservatories, professional companies, and major festivals throughout the United States and abroad. She currently serves on the Dance Data Project® Advisory Council, Canada’s National Ballet School Assemblée 27 Core Committee and Creative Lab Jury, and is a leading practitioner for the groundbreaking MA in Black British Dance and Performance at the United Kingdom’s Northern School of Contemporary Dance, pioneered by Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage.
In 2026, she was named Artistic Director of Bruce Wood Dance Dallas, Dallas’s premier contemporary dance company. She also serves as Co-Founder and Chief Artistic Officer of Artistic Directors International (ADI), an international membership organization supporting artistic directors across disciplines, and is the founder of The Presence Whisperer™, a leadership advisory practice equipping high-visibility leaders to align presence, authority, and decision-making in consequential settings. Through these ventures, Melissa remains committed to advancing artistic leadership and strengthening the infrastructure that supports the arts.
