David J. Roberts (faculty, Theater Management ’08) was recently named President of Building for the Arts (BFA) and officially began his tenure on December 13, 2022. With over 20 years’ experience in the performing arts, David comes to BFA with an extensive background as a producer, manager, and executive leader, with a track record of leading organizations through moments of transformation with roles at institutions including 651 ARTS, Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation, Classical Theatre of Harlem, Pearl Theatre Company, and Siti Company. Most recently, he consulted for Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival serving as Interim Managing Director and BFA’s Theatre Row as Interim Director of Theatre Operations.
David is on faculty at The New School’s College of Performing Arts, where he teaches graduate students a course on Arts Management and Nonprofit Governance. He is also a lecturer in theater management on faculty at David Geffen School of Drama at Yale (DGSD), where he teaches a course on Identity-Specific Theaters and co-teaches the Management Seminar. He serves on the editorial advisory board of DGSD’s Theater Management Knowledge Base and is a co-founder of the Artists’ Anti-Racism Coalition, a grassroots organizing effort to help the Off-Broadway community dismantle systems of exclusion and oppression. He is a 2021 Rockwood Leadership Fellow.