Denise Kumani Gantt is currently the director of education at the Lyric Baltimore. Her plays and performance pieces have won numerous awards and accolades in the last two decades, including the Artscape 1997 Best Play Contest, Best New Play by The Baltimore Alternative, the Theatre Project Outstanding Vision in Theatre award and more. Her play, The Gift, a brief history of everything we have ever known, received staged readings at theaters in Seattle, New York and New Jersey. Her poetry collection, conjuring the dead, was awarded the Maryland Emerging Writers Award. She has vocally trained with Richard Armstrong, Rhiannon, and Bobby McFerrin, and was a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow at the prestigious MacDowell Colony (NH). She has also received fellowships at institutions in Washington, New Mexico, New York, India and Finland.
She held various positions at Baltimore Center Stage for 14 years and was director of a $1.2M Wallace Foundation program that tripled the theater’s young audience between the ages of 14 to 30. She was the executive artistic director of the Village of Arts and Humanities in Philadelphia, PA, for 5 years. Gantt currently serves as the co-chair of Maryland Citizens for the Art’s Events Committee, is an advisory member of the GBCA’s Urban Arts Leadership program and a member of the Baltimore Arts Education Initiative. She is a founding board member of the Greater Baltimore Culture Alliance and served for many years on the Greater Philadelphia Culture Alliance board. She is a graduate of Goucher College, where she was an Association for Public Policy and Management Fellow. Gantt received her MFA in Theater from Towson University and is an adjunct professor in theater at Coppin State University.
David Nevins is president & CEO of Nevins & Associates, a highly regarded strategic communications company and proactive public relations partner. The firm’s regional and national client base is a unique mix of organizations across a variety of industries including: healthcare, professional service firms, finance, not-for-profits, distributors, state agencies, national media companies, technology, political and grassroots campaigns, real estate development, sporting events, and more.
With more than 30 years of experience in marketing, public relations, and community and government relations, David is a talented and seasoned executive. Prior to founding Nevins & Associates in 1983, David served as the Director of Marketing for both Towson University and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. In 2001, he was tapped by the CEO of Comcast to employ his marketing expertise as President of the company’s regional sports network, Comcast SportsNet Mid-Atlantic. David is a Past President of the Board of Governors for the Center Club and is a former Chairman of the Board of Regents for the University System of Maryland, a position to which he was appointed by the Governor of Maryland. David has chaired the Maryland Public Broadcasting Commission and the Maryland Higher Education Loan Corporation, served as President of both the Jewish National Fund and the Towson Business Association and was a member of the PNC Bank board.
David is highly involved in the business, civic, and political communities, and his many years of active leadership in numerous organizations have built a network of contacts that he regularly puts to use for the firm’s clients. For more information, visit www.nevinspr.com.
