Careers, Life, and Yale Thursday Show: Supporting Your Creative Career

Patrice D. Bowman is an award-winning director and a colorist. She graduated with a B.A. in Film Studies from Yale University in 2015 and lives in New York City. As a writer/director, her work focuses on the mental and spiritual lives of women of color -- particularly, of Black women. Her short films have screened nationwide at many festivals, including the Academy Award-qualifying Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival & Lecture Series, Roxbury International Festival, and Micheaux Film Festival, amongst others. Her work has been supported by the PANO Microgrant. She was a 2023 artist-in-residence at the Ucross Foundation. She is also a Stowe Story Labs alumna. As a colorist, she works with independent storytellers and major creative agencies. Dedicated to making the art of color more accessible, she conducts color grading workshops at various universities and festivals –– both virtually and in-person.

Zina Ellis (she/her/hers) is a singer, actor, writer, and 2015 Theater Studies alumna. While at Yale, she was a member of Something Extra and Whim 'n' Rhythm, in addition to participating in numerous Dramat and YDC productions. For her senior thesis, she channeled her experiences as one of a few students of color in a predominantly-white institution into a solo show investigating how the musical theatre reinforces historical stereotypes about Black women. She later performed this project at Augustana College's 2018 Symposium Day and has plans to mount an updated production in the near future. She is now based in New York, where she has worked on theatre projects ranging from a new play devised in a bar basement to playing Marie, the Fairy Godmother in the last national tour of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. Other favorite credits include Belle in Beauty and the Beast, Jo in The Legend of Georgia McBride, and Phoebe Meryll in Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Yeomen of the Guard. As a writer, her pilot Divine Intervention has placed as a quarter- and semifinalist in multiple screenwriting competitions, and she is currently in pre-production to film it. She also hosts and produces a podcast (currently on hiatus) about the films of director/choreographer Kenny Ortega. When not working on creative projects, she is an educator with experience helping students of all ages achieve their academic goals.

Catherine Futter is the Director of Curatorial Affairs and Senior Curator, Decorative Arts at the Brooklyn Museum. Previously, she was at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City for almost eighteen years. While there, she held the positions of director, curatorial affairs, and the Helen Jane and R. Hugh “Pat” Uhlmann Curator of Architecture, Design and Decorative Arts. Catherine has a bachelor’s degree in medieval and Renaissance studies from Duke University and earned her doctorate from Yale University, where her focus was American decorative arts.

Catherine has curated a number of permanent-collection installations of European and American art as well as numerous exhibitions. Her recent endeavor American Art Deco: Designing for the People, 1918-1939 had a four-venue national tour. She also curated the international loan exhibition Inventing the Modern World: Decorative Arts at the World’s Fairs, 1851–1939, which was accompanied by an award-winning catalogue. While at the Nelson-Atkins she was the project lead for community cultural district led by the museum. A generalist in the history of design and decorative arts, Catherine’s scholarly focus is on transcultural connections and nineteenth-century decorative arts

From architecture to play designer at The LEGO Group! Since graduating from Yale in 2017, his creative journey has blended sustainable architecture, cutting-edge material research, with a dash of entrepreneurship thrown in. After some years studying and working at MIT, he's glad to now be back in his hometown of Singapore. 

With performances that express a breadth of tradition, guitarist Kim Perlak has been recognized as an inspired voice in new American music. Her playing was praised by The Austin-American Statesman as, “thoughtful, enchanting, vivid…a songwriter’s circle without the lyrics,” and by another Austin reviewer as, “moving…the most patriotic thing I’ve experienced in many months.”

At Berklee College of Music, Kim served as Assistant Chair of Guitar for five years before becoming Chair of Guitar in September 2018. She authored the book Classical Technique for the Modern Guitarist, and curated Berklee Guitar Theory and Berklee Essential Guitar Songbook, all published by Berklee Press/Hal Leonard. Kim hosts Berklee Guitar Department's “Coffee Talk”, a seasonal podcast broadcast on all platforms. Kim is the author and professor of the Berklee Online course, Berklee Guitar for Beginners. 

Kim holds degrees from The University of Texas at Austin (DMA ’08), Yale University School of Music (MM ’01), and Stetson University (BM ’98), and a certificate of completion from the Harvard University Management Development Program (2014). Kim concertizes on guitars by Thomas Humphrey and Kirk Sand, and uses D’Addario Strings.

For information on Kim’s projects with new music, education, scholarship, and public service, please her website. 

Asher Young is a New York-based artist who began as a magician and creator of theatrical haunted houses instead of trick-or-treating as a kid, later expanding into designing and directing theater and music shows. Credits include Nevermore, Inferno, Reverie, tours for DPR and Opia, and large scale installations such as a projection festival with the Beinecke Library; living artwork for Sotheby’s with collaborators as diverse as A$AP Rocky and the Edward Albee Estate; events with Virgin Voyages; the reimagination of Big Apple Circus; and most recently, Pathways at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. He’s been on the design teams for several new entertainment venues, hotel concepts, and retail projects. Asher graduated from Yale University with a degree in Computing and the Arts and received the Susan J. Smith Prize for Outstanding Contribution in the Arts.