Dr. Laura Brown (Ph.D., The University of Texas at Austin, 2015) is an Assistant Professor of Practice in Communication Studies and serves as Program Director for the University of Texas Semester in New York (UTNY). She teaches the Leadership & Urban Engagement course. Dr. Brown’s health communication research appears in Journal of Clinical Outcomes Management, American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, and Journal of Applied Communication Research. She currently resides in Manhattan with her partner and their Boston terrier.

Eric Tang is an Associate Professor in the African and African Diaspora Studies Department and director of the Center for Asian American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He also directs the university’s undergraduate major in Race, Indigeneity, and Migration. His first book, titled Unsettled: Cambodian Refugees in the NYC Hyperghetto (Temple University Press, 2015), is an ethnographic account of refugee life in some of New York City’s most impoverished and socially marginalized neighborhoods.  A former community organizer, Tang has published several articles on race and urban social movements.

Erin has been a professional actor since 1992 and a member of Actors’ Equity Association since 2001. In addition to her performance work, she has worked as a musical theatre educator, director, and choreographer. Prior to her role at UTNY, she worked as the Dancers Outreach Coordinator at The Actors Fund, where she made meaningful connections with thousands of artists and arts organizations in NYC and across the country, and served on the Dance/USA Service Council. Erin is a freelance writer and journalist whose work has appeared in publications across the country. She also leads the diversity, equity, and inclusion content for one of NYC’s prominent nonprofits. She holds a BA in Musical Theatre Performance from Weber State University.

Thomas Mellins teaches Modernism in American Architecture and Design: NYC. He is the co-author of three volumes in a book series on the architecture and urbanism of New York City: New York 1880, New York 1930, and New York 1960. Additionally, he has curated numerous exhibitions on the built environment for museums and cultural institutions nationwide. Most recently, he curated an online exhibition about Washington's Tidal Basin for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

In addition to his role at UTNY, Ed Salvato is also an Adjunct Instructor in Tourism and Hospitality at New York University’s Tisch Center of Hospitality. Ed co-authored the Handbook of LGBT Tourism & Hospitality Marketing: A Guide for Business Practice (Columbia University Press). Ed graduated cum laude from Harvard College with a BA in Applied Mathematics and received his MBA from Northeastern University. An avid cyclist, amateur photographer and passionate traveler, he currently resides in Upper Manhattan with his partner.

Abigail Levine is an artist working between New York and Los Angeles. Rooted in dance but moving across media—performance, text, drawing, sound—Levine focuses on the poetics of our bodies’ work, how we record and value it. Her ongoing Restagings series, with presenting partner Fridman Gallery, has been supported by a MacDowell fellowship, Bogliasco Foundation fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts emergency grants, Atlantic Center for the Arts residency, New Music USA project grants, and the Center for Performance Research Mellon Artist-in-Residence program. Levine collaborated recently with pioneering electronics composer Alvin Lucier on a staging of his Orpheus Variations at ISSUE Project Room (2020) and performed with both Marina Abramovic (2010) and Yvonne Rainer (2018) in their retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art. Levine’s critical writing has been published in Documents in Contemporary Art, Art21, Performance Art Journal (PAJ), and her creative works in Interim Poetics, Women & Performance, and Imagined Theatres. She is a contributing editor to the Movement Research Performance Journal. Before joining the UTNY faculty, Levine taught in the Dance Departments at Wesleyan University and Florida State University. Her latest work, Redactions, will premier at The Chocolate Factory Theater in June 2022.

Court Stroud is a writer, university adjunct, and media strategy consultant who has worked at Univision, Telemundo, TV Azteca, CBS, and several startups. He founded The Cledor Group, a boutique practice helping companies navigate today’s tumultuous media landscape. Past clients include firms such as Comcast, NBCUniversal (NBC, Telemundo, NBC Sports), Sony Entertainment Pictures, and BBC Studios. As an adjunct at Columbia, NYU, and his beloved alma mater, The University of Texas, Stroud has designed and delivered courses such as "Diversity in Media & Advertising,” “Digital Media & Advertising," and “Urban Communication." His byline appears in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Forbes, where he’s a contributing writer. Stroud holds undergrad degrees from UT-Austin and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Matthew Cronin lives and works in New York City. He holds an MFA in Studio Art from University of Texas at Austin as well as a BFA in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Cronin’s process makes use of preexisting photographs which he reimagines through montage, multiple exposure, and alternate methods of capture. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States and Canada including The Visual Arts Center, Austin; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Back Gallery Project, Vancouver, and the NARS Foundation, Brooklyn. Cronin’s work can be found in the Ogden Museum of Southern Art’s permanent collection and in the archives at the Center for Creative Photography.

Jason Borge is a Professor of Latin American Cultural Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UT Austin.  His research and teaching explore the hemispheric dimensions of Latin American and Latinx cultural production, and specifically the critical reception and imaginative re-appropriation of US mass culture of the early and middle 20th century, with a focus on Hollywood and popular music.  His most recent book, Tropical Riffs: Latin America and the Politics of Jazz (Duke University Press, 2018) examines the ways Latin American and Latinx musicians, music critics, writers, and filmmakers defined and shaped jazz as a performative practice, political and cultural touchstone, and emblem of transnational modernity from the 1920s through the 1980s.

Avani Desai (BS, BBA '16) currently leads Brand Success for Archive, a tech company enabling fashion brands to participate in brand-owned resale. Prior to Archive, Avani led US Strategy & Operations for Depop. Avani is a 2016 graduate of The University of Texas at Austin (BS, BBA), and she earned her MBA from Harvard Business School in 2021. She began her career at Boston Consulting Group in the Fashion, Beauty, & Luxury group and went on to serve as the Chief of Staff at Bergdorf Goodman. Avani's experience in tech and resale in the fashion industry has led her to teach this course on sustainability for this industry.

Jane Ashen Turkewitz has been a career services professional and executive recruiter in NYC for more than 15 years. Since 2020, Jane has been the partnership lead and program manager for UTNY. Jane is also an avid blogger on career-related topics, and has been picked up by The Business Insider, Adweek, iMedia, Elle, TheLadders, Real Simple, and Dice to name a few. You can also find her advice in Wanted – A New Career: The Definitive Playbook, for Transitioning to a New Career or Finding Your Dream Job, by Marlo Lyons. Jane is a graduate of the University of Michigan, and is an avid traveler, cook, tennis player and boxer (bags only!). She lives in Westchester County, NY with her husband, two kids and her dog, Tucker McDoofus Pants.