Saya is…

A multi-hyphenate creative & joyful educator building community & belonging

Welcome!

Born and raised in Silicon Valley, I always felt like a fish out of water as a kid who was more excited about musical theatre than high tech. These days, I’ve found ways to bridge these two worlds, both of which require creativity, collaboration, and innovative thinking.

I found that so many of the skills I learned from theatre world are broadly applicable soft skills: skills that help people communicate more effectively, build trust with collaborators, and create supportive environments where creativity can thrive.

In a nutshell, I:

  • Develop and facilitate engaging workshops that allow teams to practice and embody the skills that creativity, storytelling, collaboration, and communication require

  • Teach theatre to people of all ages and backgrounds, from graduate acting students at NYU to UX engineers to Pre-K kiddos to partners at law firms (yes, really)

  • Research ways that theatre practices can make people’s lives better, from building belonging at organizations to using theatre to improve public health

  • Center equity & inclusion in my teaching and research

I help humans meaningfully connect in all types of settings, from classrooms to corporate events.

Workshops & Facilitation

I design and facilitate workshops based in personal storytelling, theatre practices, and applied improvisation to help people strengthen their communication and leadership skills.

I am currently improv-based workshops to build social cohesion and fight social isolation in Seattle. I am partnering with a community resource center, the University Heights Center, and was honored to receive a grant from 4Culture to support this community-building work.

As a lead facilitator with On Deck Workshops, I have led workshops for clients including Bloomberg, Google, Covington & Burling, Moloco, UC Berkeley, and more.

I also work with the Miranda Fellows at The Public Theater to train early-career theatre professionals from historically underrepresented backgrounds. I recently presented on this work at the national conference of the American Alliance for Theatre & Education.

Teaching

I have taught theatre in PreK-12 classrooms, at the undergraduate and graduate level at New York University, and in many community settings, from after-school programs to adult education classes. As an adjunct professor at NYU, I taught a mixed undergraduate and graduate course called Applied Theatre Praxis in which educational theatre students identified a need in a community they are a part of, and then designed workshop series that used theatre practices to address that need. I was also a guest lecturer in an arts-based research course, Methods and Materials of Research in Educational Theatre.

I strive to make my classrooms places where even the shyest student can gain the confidence to command their peers’ attention, and where all students feel that they belong.

Academic Research

I am currently working on my dissertation as a PhD student in NYU’s Program in Educational Theatre. My research explores culturally responsive theatre pedagogy in Asian American communities. My work has been published in Teaching Artist Journal and ArtsPraxis.

I have also worked as a research assistant on projects exploring the use of theatre as a way to prevent discrimination in healthcare, a means of promoting democratic civil discourse, and as a way to investigate nonprofit organizations’ impact.