General Director – Fort Worth Opera, Founder – BGM Consulting

Afton Battle comes to Fort Worth Opera following development and strategic consulting work with Red Clay Dance Company, the National Black Theatre, the African American Policy Forum, and Brooklyn arts and culture firm Red Olive Consulting. She was previously the Director of Development for the New York Theatre Workshop, Director of the Annual Campaign for America’s premiere ballet company, The Joffrey Ballet, and the Corporate and Foundation Relations and Individual Giving Manager for the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, Illinois. Prior to that, she served as the Program and Grants Manager for Bank Street College of Education in New York. A native of Amarillo, Battle graduated from the University of Houston with a degree in Voice Performance, before attending Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey and receiving a Master of Music in Voice Performance and Pedagogy. As Battle joins Fort Worth Opera this season, she gratefully acknowledges Angelique Power, President of the Field Foundation, and Mila Gibson, voice teacher, music educator, and founder of Amarillo Opera, for their mentorship, guidance, and career development advice that encouraged her to pursue a path in opera and arts administration.

Executive Artistic Director – Bishop Arts Theatre Center

Teresa Coleman Wash (she/her/hers) is a producer, writer, and founding artistic director for the Bishop Arts Theatre Center in Dallas, TX.  Wash is a National Arts Strategies fellow having studied at Harvard Business School. She holds an MA in Arts Management from Goucher College and a BS in Business Administration from Albany State University. She is the 2019 recipient of the Theater Communications Group’s prestigious Peter Zeisler Memorial Award for artistic integrity and ingenuity and in 2018, she received the National Guild for Community Arts Education’s Milestone Award and Business Council for the Arts’ Obelisk Award in the category of Visionary Nonprofit Arts Leader. Mrs. Wash has also earned several Irma P. Hall Awards including the 2020 Irma P. Hall Theatrical Excellence Medal.  She is the current recipient of the Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce’ Quest for Success Award. Teresa was elected to the Dramatists Guild of America Council in 2017 representing the Southern region where she also served on the steering committee.

Philanthropic Outreach – Embrey Family Foundation

Diane Hosey oversees philanthropic ‘reach out’ for the Embrey Family Foundation; a small and mighty woman led family foundation in Dallas Texas. In her twelve years of working with Lauren Embrey, and Sallie Beck, it has been her pleasure to support the organization’s artistic and social justice vision and mission which is to: Expand Awareness, Explore Possibilities and Elevate Consciousness. Diane was the incubator and lead champion for Dallas Faces Race, a 300 hundred plus member non-profit forum from 2013-2017,  and currently serves on the steering committee for Dallas Truth Racial Healing and Transformation. Diane has been a teacher, an actor, an orchestrator and an activist. Sometimes she is all that rolled up in one. It just depends on the day.

Production Designer

Yuki Izumihara is a scenic, projection, and production designer born in Shimonoseki City, Japan and based in Los Angeles. Ms. Izumihara’s work is influenced by years of martial arts training and is animated by a belief in discipline, ethics and craftsmanship. Recent engagements include scenic design for INTERSTATE  with East West Players; projection design for  The Cuban Vote with Miami New Drama; production design for Semele and Tosca with Opera Santa Barbra; scenic design for  The Capulets and the Montagues with Opera Omaha; Sanctuaries with Third Angle New Music; production design for QUANDO with Heartbeat Opera,The Fall of the House of Usher and desert in with Boston Lyric Opera. Her work has been featured at LA Opera, the New World Symphony, The Adrienne Arsht Center, San Diego Opera, the Hammer Museum, Getty Villa Museum, and various theaters in Los Angeles. As an artist, graphic designer, and animator with an emphasis on spatial composition and color narrative, Yuki aims to clarify, establish and amplify project identities through visual language, including Long Beach Opera’s 2022 vision//revision season art, title card design for Opera Philadelphia’s La voix humaine, Opera Omaha’s ONE Festival 2018-2022, and various projects in developmental stages.

Opera Director

Universally acclaimed as one of Europe’s most original and progressive directors, and widely celebrated as the founder of the global #OperaHarmony movement, auteur-director Ella Marchment has also taken on leadership roles for international arts organisations and spoken and lectured at world-renowned companies and conservatoires, including Opera Europa in the Netherlands, Italy, and Germany, The Royal Opera House in London, The Juilliard School in New York, and The Royal College of Music in London. Her work has been broadcast nationally on BBC Radio 3, and internationally on Opera Vision.

Represented by Day Macaskill of Cruickshank Cazenove Limited in London, Ella’s career has seen her working successfully as both a director and an arts-company manager, and she is currently the Artistic Director of Opera Festival of Chicago, Director of Opera and Associate Professor at Shenandoah Conservatory, Artistic Director of Opera in the Rock, and has been the Director of the International Opera Awards since 2017. Additionally she was part of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama vocal faculty from 2019-2021, the head of opera and an Instructor at Northern Illinois University from 2020-2021, and a 2020-2021 Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity associate artist. She is also a founding member and creative associate of the campaign group and charity SWAP’ra—Supporting Women & Parents in Opera. During the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, Ella founded an international community group called #OperaHarmony which developed new operas remotely for broadcast worldwide on Opera Vision, and since the war in Ukraine broke out has been working in partnership with San Francisco Opera, Opera Vision Opera Lviv, Polish National Opera, Teatro Opera dell’Roma, Finnish National Opera, The Royal College of Music, Opera Europa, and Shenandoah University to record a Ukrainian Opera called The Golden Crown for distribution on World Opera Day. The filmed works were showcased worldwide by OperaVision. She is currently writing a book on arts management for Nick Hern Books, and is in the first year of an online distance PhD at Bristol University writing a treatise on gender inequity in the opera industry.

Ella has worked throughout the United Kingdom, Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, and America, and her directing credits include L’inganno felice (Wexford Festival Opera, Opera Festival of Chicago); Il Tabarro, Segreto di Susanna (Opera Festival of Chicago), Native American Inspirations (La Biennale di Venezia); (Scalia Ginsburg (Opera in the Rock); Little Women (Opera Holland Park); The Turn of the Screw and Mad King Suibhne (Bury Court Opera); International Opera Awards Ceremony (ENO London Coliseum and Sadler’s Wells Theatre, for the International Opera Awards); Operatic Mass Actions (European City of Culture, AUT DK); SWAP’ra Gala (Opera Holland Park); Tryl / Magic Flute (Copenhagen Opera Festival); Sideshows (Sadler’s Wells Studio); Il Letto and Hathaway (Buxton International Festival, Copenhagen Opera Festival, Grimeborn); L’occasione fa il ladro (CCF Glasgow, Teatro Signorelli, Teatro di Cortona); Say Hello, Wave Goodbye (Teatro Tuoro sul Trasimeno); King Roger (a film for Random Acts / Channel 4); Salon Russe (National Portrait Gallery); Il Tabarro (LSO St Luke’s); Macbeth and Un ballo in maschera (Opera Integra); María De Buenos Aires (The Vaults London, for a A Curious Invitation); Louise and Otello (Buxton International Festival); An Evening with Lucian Freud (Leicester Square Theatre); Stand and Deliver (King’s Head Theatre); Rock Tosca (Tête à Tête Festival); Façade and Eight Songs For a Mad King (Rose Theatre Kingston, Arcola Theatre, St Petersburg Philharmonia); Triptych (Mariinsky II); and a triple- header production of The Bear, Red as Blood, and Bare (Rose Theatre Kingston, Sage Gateshead, Greyfriars Kirk, St Cyprian’s).

Upcoming productions include Highway One (Opera in the Rock), The International Opera Awards (Teatro Real, Madrid), and Midsummer Nights Dream (Shenandoah Conservatory)

Director of Community and Learning – Houston Grand Opera

Jennifer Bowman joined Houston Grand Opera (HGO) as Director of Community & Learning after five years as the Director of Music Education at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Bowman leads HGO’s Community & Learning division (formerly HGOCo): which has been celebrated for providing authentic and enriching experiences through collaborative partnerships with schools, families, community organizations, and curious members of society since 2007.

As the Kennedy Center’s Director of Music Education, Bowman developed performances, programming, and educational initiatives in collaboration with the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO), Washington National Opera (WNO), and the Center’s hip hop, jazz, and chamber music programs. Among her notable achievements, she served as the Center’s lead representative for the Washington Musical Pathways Initiative for young BIPOC artists wishing to pursue advanced study in music; spearheaded WNO’s 18-month community engagement project in support of Blue, an opera about a Harlem family’s experience with police brutality; revamped the Center’s training programs for young musicians; commissioned new works that reflect the population of the region served by the Center; and introduced youth and family audiences to diverse artists making their Center debuts.

The Houston, Texas native’s career began at the Kennedy Center, where she coordinated professional development programs for chief executives and staff for over six hundred arts and cultural organizations in the U.S. and abroad. She also spent six seasons managing The Folger Consort, the early music ensemble at the Folger Shakespeare Library. In 2020, she co-led Music Academy of the West’s transition to an online summer festival in response to the pandemic. She serves on Music Academy’s Innovation & Education Committee as well as on the Board of Directors for the National Instrumentalists Mentorship & Advancement Network (NIMAN).