Dr. Indira Etwaroo, an award-winning producer, director, scholar, and arts and culture executive who has worked across the world to create and build multiplatform spaces and original content that represent the diversity of the globe and lead towards institutional thrivability and equity, while lifting up the voices of underrepresented communities. Her most recent tenure was as the Inaugural Director of the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple in California, driving innovation and collaboration across the company.
Dr. Etwaroo led the efforts for the strategic design and fundraising for the first-ever national strategic initiative for Black theaters, The Black Seed, which pushed $10.5 Million dollars into the Black Theater field from 2021-2023. She also served as the Inaugural Executive for the Chadwick Boseman Foundation. Dr. Etwaroo led the Off-Broadway Billie Holiday Theatre in Brooklyn, awarded the Presidential Medal of the Arts for the artistic social justice work in 2020-2021 under her executive leadership. She led the theater through radical growth as its Executive Artistic Director: more than doubling the audience, increasing revenue by 212%, and producing groundbreaking content that won the AUDELCO Award for Best Play of the Year four years in a row under her tenure. She also led efforts to create the first Black Lives Matter mural in NY and the keepsake book in 2020 in response to the disproportionate killings and injustices of Black people in the U.S. and across the world.
Dr. Etwaroo was a major force for content innovation and inclusion in the public media field, as the Founding Executive Producer and Director of The Greene Space in NYC where she conceptualized the first-of-its kind multiplatform space in the nation, presenting content on air on WNYC and digitally via live video streaming with a multi-camera mix in 2009 in front of a live studio audience; and as the Founding Executive Producer of NPR Presents, the global live events platform to bring live, on-air and online content to audiences across the world. Indira’s work at BAM developed educational and humanities’ content that leveraged BAM’s adven- turous MainStage work. Dr. Etwaroo has been a professor of graduate studies at Temple University and at NYU, designing and teaching the course Leading Performing Arts Institutions in the 21st Century. She is a proud Board Member of The New Press.