Stephanie Ybarra

Stephanie Ybarra began her tenure as Artistic Director of Baltimore Center Stage in 2018. Prior to working and playing in the Charm City, Stephanie served The Public Theater as the Director of Special Artistic Projects, where she led the Mobile Unit and Public Forum programs. Her career started in her home state of Texas, working with Dallas Theater Center and Dallas Children’s Theater. She then fled to cooler climates, spending time at Yale Repertory Theater, Two River Theater Company, and Citizen Schools, a national after school program based in Boston. Stephanie serves as a faculty member at The Juilliard School, and repeatedly finds herself guest lecturing for artists and producing students at NYU, Yale School of Drama, and more. During her time in New York, she co-founded the Artists’ Anti-Racism Coalition, a grassroots organizing effort to dismantle systems of oppression in the Off-Broadway community. Stephanie’s awards include the Josephine Abady Award for producing from New York’s League of Professional Theatre Women, the Congressional Award for Achievement in Excellence from Zara Aina, an international nonprofit dedicated to community-engaged art-making, and for her sustained work around diversity and inclusion, she received the prestigious Nation Builder Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators in 2018. In 2019, she was named to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts YBCA 100 list in recognition of her leadership in using her platform to enact social change. Stephanie serves on the boards of The Make Believe Association and Citizen University. She holds an MFA from Yale School of Drama.