Welcome PlayCo’s New Board Members
It is our great pleasure to announce the six new board members joining PlayCo's leadership. They bring an abundance of talent and knowledge to our team, from personal histories with roots across NYC, the U.S. and the world, and professional backgrounds in the arts, business, and law. Alongside our current board members and staff, they will play a vital role in shaping PlayCo’s future. We're so proud and honored they've chosen to join us!
Christine Dauchez is a Knowledge & Innovation Attorney at Fenwick & West. Prior to joining Fenwick, Christine was Strategic Counsel at the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. She is a member of the American Bar Association Senior Lawyers Division Diversity & Inclusion and Pro Bono & Public Service Committees and the Experience Magazine and Voice of Experience Boards. Christine also serves on the Board of Advisors of Decode, a technology, innovation and entrepreneurship community hosted with UC Berkeley and Stanford, and as a mentor in Harvard’s Office of Career Services’ Firsthand Advisers program, the Berkeley Women in Business Law Initiative’s Mentorship Program and the International Legal Technology Association MyMentor Program.
Victoria Detres is a Puerto Rican and Albanian producer born and raised in New York City. She is passionate about building a platform for contemporary theatre’s innovative voices, particularly those of the global majority. Victoria, while highlighting these voices, also aims to dismantle the structures that do not allow for access, and restructure for equity and accessibility. Victoria is a graduate from the New York Theatre Workshop 2050 Producing Fellowship for the 2018-2019 season. Formerly, Victoria has worked as the Producing Assistant at Octopus Theatricals and Associate Producer at Broadway & Beyond Theatricals. Currently, Victoria is the Project Coordinator for RISE Theatre, a program of Maestra Music. This program proudly launched the RISE Theatre Directory in partnership with the Miranda Family Fund. Victoria was an inaugural member of the Shubert Organization’s Artistic Circle Initiative and a recipient of the “The Stacey Mindich ‘Go Work in Theater' Award”, Lilly Awards 2021. She is currently a member of SOCIETY Theatre Collective and a founding member of the re-launch of Theatrical Happy Hour. Additional credits include THE KITE RUNNER (The Hayes Theatre, Associate Producer), SOCIETY Theatre Collective’s productions of Mona Mansour’s BEGINNING DAYS OF TRUE JUBILATION and Emily Zemba’s THE STRANGERS CAME TODAY (The New Ohio, Line Producer), BRICKS (Weeksville Heritage Center, Lead Producer) and Broken Box Mime Theatre’s BKBX Kids!ASKS WHY and TAKE SHAPE (Producer for Audience Design). Learn more at www.victoriadetres.com.
Femi Odunuga is a strategy, technology, and operations executive with over 20 years of experience. He is currently a strategy and operations executive and chief of staff to the CEO of Mastercard. In this role, he works with Mastercard’s leadership team, the Board of Directors, and external partners to support the delivery of Mastercard’s strategic priorities. Prior to this role, he was global head of consumer innovation at Mastercard Labs where he led platform innovation, new product development and digital partnerships. Before joining Mastercard, he worked at various consulting firms (including McKinsey, PwC and Accenture) serving as a partner to financial services executives. He has also had experience in the banking industry, and across various apprenticeships in venture development as a founder, advisor, and investor.
Femi is interested in philosophy, art, technology, Manchester united, and tacos.
Aya Ogawa is a Tokyo-born, Brooklyn-based theater-maker and translator whose work centers women/non-binary perspectives and utilizes the stage to explore cultural identity and the immigrant experience. Most recently, they wrote, directed, and performed in The Nosebleed (Japan Society with The Chocolate Factory Theater, 2021; Lincoln Center Theater, 2022; Woolly
Mammoth Theatre, 2023) for which they were awarded an Obie Award. They have translated numerous plays by contemporary Japanese playwrights including Toshiki Okada, Satoko Ichihara and Yudai Kamisato. Resident playwright, New Dramatists; Foundation for Contemporary Arts
Grants for Artists; President’s Award in Performing Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. ayaogawa.com
Ayo Renée Schwartz (they/she) is an Afro-Indigenous Two-Spirit Queer Feminist with a background in theatre operations, event production within film/theatre/media, general management, and human resources. Ayo currently serves as the Head of Human Resources at the National Theatre of Scotland.
Nella Vera is the current Director of Marketing at BFV Management and oversees marketing and sales for 54 Below (“Broadway’s Supper Club,”) as well as all of the company’s theatrical ventures including the recent Broadway productions of The Encounter and The Parisian Woman (starring Uma Thurman), and the revival of Smokey Joe’s Café, among others. Her other Broadway credits include Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, HAIR, The Merchant of Venice (starring Al Pacino), Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk, Chicago, John Leguizamo’s Freak, On The Town, and. Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.
She previously served as a Group Director for Broadway’s largest advertising agency, Serino Coyne. From 2012 to 2014, she was the Director of Marketing and Communications at Theatre for a New Audience, where she was part of the executive team that opened a new classical theater in downtown Brooklyn. Prior, she was the Director of Marketing at The Public Theater where she oversaw marketing, advertising, sales, and audience development for five
theaters in the Public’s downtown space, as well as Shakespeare in the Park and Joe’s Pub. Other experience includes positions at New York’s award-winning Signature Theatre Company, Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles, and Manhattan Theater Club. Nella also worked at Broadway’s very first full-service marketing firm, FourFront Press & Marketing, in the very early days of Broadway marketing. As a consultant, she has worked with companies such as
Culturadar, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Shakespeare Society, The Play Company, Children of Bellevue, and others.
Nella is an Adjunct Professor at NYU and Brooklyn College, where she teaches Arts Marketing and has been a guest instructor at Columbia, Yale, Hunter College, and Marymount Manhattan College. She is a prolific speaker and has presented on Marketing, Audience Development, and Social Media at the National Arts Marketing Project Conference, the Theatre Communications
Group Conference, the LORT Annual Meeting, and Columbia’s Social Enterprise Conference, among others. She is a proud graduate of Georgetown University and received her MFA in Theatre Management from Columbia University.