Carmen Morgan – Founder and Director of artEquity: “Without the arts, social justice work faces headwinds; with the arts, it gains momentum and creativity” (StageLync Podcast Ep.40)
Carmen Morgan is a national activist leading conversations at the forefront of the field on equity, inclusion, and racial justice issues. She is the founder and director of artEquity, a national organization that provides tools, resources, and training to support the intersections of art and activism. She has provided leadership development and organizational planning for staff, executives, and boards for over 100 non-profit organizations. She is the 2020 recipient of the Paul Robeson Award by Actors’ Equity Association and Actors’ Equity Foundation and a YBCA 100 honoree. She’s on faculty at Yale’s David Geffen School of Drama where she addresses issues of identity, equity, and inclusion in the arts.
For over twelve years she worked with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) on structural and organizational equity. With her guidance, OSF implemented innovative programming, policies, and new organizational structures to support ongoing inclusion efforts. In addition, she served as the consultant for Theatre Communications Group’s diversity and inclusion initiatives and programming, where she partnered with TCG to launch a national Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Institute for theatres. She has supported national and regional cohorts and provided customized resources to theaters and arts organizations in the US and Canada, including Art Institute of Chicago, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Theatre Workshop, Woolly Mammoth, Long Wharf Theater, Hubbard Street Dance, Stages Repertory, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Cal Shakes, Steppenwolf, New York Foundation for the Arts, Association for the Performing Arts Service Organization, League of American Orchestras, Opera America, Association of Performing Arts Presenters, and Professional Association of Canadian Theatres, to name a few.
Prior to founding artEquity, for fifteen years Carmen directed Leadership Development in Interethnic Relations (LDIR), a nationally-recognized social justice program co-sponsored by Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the Central American Resource Center, and the Martin Luther King Dispute Resolution Center. Prior to her work with the LDIR program, Carmen was the Associate Regional Director for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), an international human rights organization, where she oversaw human rights work on the US/Mexico border; gay liberation and sovereignty education work in Hawai’i; and tenant rights and racial/economic justice work in California and Arizona.
Carmen is a founding member of the California Chapter of the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME), a former Human Services Commissioner, and is currently on the Board of Directors for Black Women for Wellness, a community-based organization serving women in South Los Angeles. She has presented at numerous national conferences including the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity, National Association for Multicultural Education, Grantmakers in Health, Grantmakers in the Arts, Americans for the Arts, The California Endowment, and the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, to name a few. Carmen’s work is rooted in popular education, community organizing, and a commitment to social justice. She remains dedicated to community building and activism, and has worked in the non-profit sector for over 20 years.
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Credits for the StageLync Podcast
Host: Anna Robb
Editor: Rose Anne Fermocil
Music: Jeremy Willi
Design: Em Holt
Production Coordinator: Roselle Bernardo
Producers: Anna Robb and Andrea Honis
Editor's Note: At StageLync, an international platform for the performing arts, we celebrate the diversity of our writers' backgrounds. We recognize and support their choice to use either American or British English in their articles, respecting their individual preferences and origins. This policy allows us to embrace a wide range of linguistic expressions, enriching our content and reflecting the global nature of our community.
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