Allen combines an extensive theatrical background with years of business experience. He has helped thousands of people from all walks of life define their personal visions and develop their own creative potential.

One of the most innovative thinkers and teachers on leadership and creativity in the United States, he has appeared on Good Morning, America to discuss the innovative techniques he employs as the "creativity coach" for business leaders, politicians and educators worldwide.

He has been a keynote speaker for many international organizations, and he is currently writing a book, to be published by Random House, on the fostering of creativity and its applications in business, politics and all walks of life.

An accomplished concert pianist, he presented a series of concerts in 1991 benefiting AIDS organizations in New York and Boston, where he won a citation from that city's Mayor Flynn for his humanitarian contribution. Allen was selected for inclusion in the 1998 publication of Who'’s Who, honouring outstanding corporate executives.

Allen holds a Bachelor of Arts from SUNY Potsdam (1971) and a Master of Fine Arts from Ohio University (1973). He has directed, acted in, and/or staged fights scenes for Broadway, off-Broadway, and regional theatre productions including The Trojan Women, Virtuosa, First Comes Love, Can-Can, and Program for Murder.

Gifford is an artist, coach and teacher. For more than 20 years he has been leading workshops and classes on self-expression and creativity throughout the world.

He has written and directed musical revues that have been produced in New York City, Boston, regional theatres, and Edinburgh, Scotland. Other theatre credits include Noh, Dorchester Noh and Incorruptible/Fearless in Boston in 1985, and Dancemakers and The Elinor Coleman Dance Ensemble in New York in 1989. Gifford is also the founder and director of TAI Gallery@The Actors Institute in New York City, which promotes all types of visual arts, from paintings and sculptures to computer art.

Gifford studied at the University of Kansas and the Wichita Arts Association and has a background in sculpture and painting as well as live performance. In Boston in the 1970s and 80s he headed TAI'’s Boston practice, and founded a live theatre company, The Mask Project, which featured actors, street performers, visual artists and photographers.

In addition to his work with TAI, Gifford is also a teacher and program manager at Wonder Works Studio. Wonder Works coaches entrepreneurs across the United States.

Twila heads TAI's education practice area, creating and directing programs for The Professional Performing Arts School, NYU Stern School of Business, The International Teachers Program and the Northeast Coalition of Educational Leaders.

She created Sources, an intensive workshop for adults with a family or personal history of addiction or abuse, which has run in New York, Toronto, Vancouver, London and Jerusalem. She has also created and has led numerous workshops and programs for health and educational not-for-profit organizations, including Greenwich House Alcoholism Treatment Center, The International Primal Association and the United Nations' Peace Quest, where she created and led a seminar for teenagers from Russia, Sweden and the United States. She also created workshops for welfare mothers at the Prince George Hotel in New York City and led the AIDS Mastery, a pioneering support program for AIDS sufferers.

Twila was one of the founders of Womens College Theater and toured the U.S. and Canada in Sirens, a two-woman show, which featured at the first National Women's Studies Conference in 1980.

Twila founded the Directors' Lab at TAI, and continues to direct for theatre companies in New York, including the Westside Repertory and TAI. She has a B.A. in Theater from Grinnell College.

Graeme's career combines a strong business background with an interest in high-performance leadership and the arts.

Before joining TAI, Graeme headed international public affairs, marketing and telecommunications organizations in Asia. This international business background includes Managing Director of Merit Communications/Burson Marsteller in South Korea, Head of Global Investor Relations and Public Affairs for Fortune 500 food company Goodman Fielder Ltd in Australia, and Director of Marketing for the Boston Consulting Group in Asia. He also headed strategy and business development for a Singapore-based telecommunications software company. Earlier, Graeme spent 10 years as a business and finance writer in New Zealand, the UK and the United States.

Educated in New Zealand, he has a degree in history, as well as qualifications in teaching and recreation and sport. He played professional cricket in New Zealand and England. Based in the U.K., Graeme is also a playwright and director of a music company.

She has performed at The Ensemble Studio Theatre, Eugene O'’Neill Center, the Samuel Beckett Theatre and the Mercury Theatre in London. Her film and TV credits include the independent film Sunday Afternoon and the CBS special Choices. As a modern and jazz dancer she performed and studied with Dance Space, the Hartford Ballet Company and Real Art Ways.

Lindy's interest in outreach theatre led her to work with the Living Stage of the Arena Stage, where she became a fervent supporter of using the expressive arts as a tool to engage diverse groups in dialogue on socially relevant issues. She has since created and led workshops in many community environments throughout the East Coast of the United States. She recently received an NCAA grant to develop a theatre and conflict resolution project that examined discrimination based on sexual orientation in women'’s athletics.

In addition to performing, Lindy has experience as a producer, administrator, and manager of multi-faceted projects in cross-cultural environments. A graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University, she has developed public interest-related initiatives at organizations including The Rockefeller Foundation, The Business Council for the United Nations, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Lindy's coaching work was recently profiled in a column for the magazine Business 2.0.

Diane is a founding member of TAI. In addition to helping many corporate clients in developing and delivering speeches and conferences, she coaches voice, speech, singing and dialects and has coached the casts of off-Broadway productions, independent films, the Black Spectrum Theatre Company, the Broadway Kids and PPAS.

She has performed as an actress/singer on stage, film, radio, and television and has conducted her workshop Voice Power in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, and in Toronto, Dublin, and London.

Diane is the author of plays and video scripts including the libretto for the dramatic oratorio, The Way, Virtuosa, a drama with music about the life of Clara Schumann, and book and lyrics for the contemporary musical, First Comes Love. She wrote and produced a fund-raising DVD for the not-for-profit group, The Food Allergy Project, which was launched nationally in June, 2006, and is currently writing lyrics for the upcoming off-Broadway musical revue, Happy Hour, by composer Michael Valenti. Her articles and short stories have appeared in such theatrical publications as Playbill, Backstage, Stage Directions, Dramatics and Teaching Theatre.

Diane holds a BFA in Theatre from Boston University.

As an executive coach, Janice has combined an extensive theatrical background with years of business experience. She has created and coached innovative programs in many countries including the United States, Germany, France, Italy, England and Spain.

In addition to coaching and teaching, Janice is a professional actress and singer/songwriter. She has appeared in New York with companies such as adobe theatre company, En Garde Arts, Ontological Theatre, Manhattan Theater Club, Drama Department, Grove Street Playhouse, Rattlestick Theater, and HERE. Her regional credits include Shakespeare Express (touring the United States, the Globe Theatre in London and the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland), Actors Theater of Louisville, Portland Stage Company.

Her television credits include Law and Order.

Elise is an actor, teacher, and coach, and has a strong background in the performing and visual arts, acting in productions for The Theatre Project, Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival and Manhattan Theatre Source along with a wide variety of other regional theatre companies.

Elise has worked in production, set construction and scenic painting and design Off-Broadway in New York, Boston, and regionally. In addition to her performance background, Elise has led programs for The Boy Scouts of America, specializing in leadership and survival skills and has been leading creativity workshops for TAI for the last several years.

Elise has a BA in Performance/Theatre from S.U.N.Y. at New Paltz.

Ian is also a director of Essential Communications Ltd., and over the past two decades has developed and delivered many outstanding career and personal development programs to the public sector in Canada.

Originally trained in radio broadcasting, Ian began his career as a music specialist. Through eleven years with Standard Broadcasting Ian wrote and produced thousands of radio scripts and shows. Highlights include NightMusic, NightMusic Magazine, and Cross Canada Countdown. In the early 80s Ian was named Director of Music and Foreground Programming at CKFM radio, and continued in that role until he moved to CBC Radio '– as Music Director for the AM network - in 1987. Ian also worked as a music consultant for EZ-Rock in Toronto, and as Program Supervisor at CFNY.

For twenty-four years, as a member of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, she performed in more than 100 productions alongside some of our generation'’s greatest opera stars. Since leaving the Met in 1995, her work has encompassed coaching drama and text, and their incorporation with gesture, movement, stagecraft, and physical eloquence.

Aside from corporate coaching, she also coaches classes and workshops in audition preparation, dramatic presentation, and performance. Ellen has taught Master Classes at CAMI Hall in New York, and for, among others, the Apprentice Artists at The Santa Fe Opera, the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS), the Metropolitan Opera Guild, the Utah Festival Opera, the Manhattan School of Music, Mannes College of Music and the Juilliard School.

Ellen has featured in a Master Class presented by the New York Singing Teachers Association (NYSTA) on Marketing the Emerging Opera Singer, and in 2001, she coached and directed A Concert of American Song for NYSTA.

Prior to becoming a coach with TAI, Sandra studied with TAI for some years, working with both Diane Seymour and Allen Schoer.

Sandra is also a branding and marketing communications consultant. She has studied with the British American Drama Academy classical acting summer program run in association with The Juilliard School and UCLA, Deborah Mathieu Byers, the founder and artistic director of Streetlight Productions, and Jodie Lynne McClintock at her studio in New York City.

Sandra has also recorded several books-on-tape for the Jewish Braille Institute.

Born in England, Gary had a highly-successful stage career in the West End in London before moving to New York in the 90s.

An accomplished coach and teacher, he graduated from the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1978. In the U.K. he has taught Musical Theatre, Acting and Movement Workshops at the Actors Centre, TAI, The Rose Bruford School, The Richmond College and the Royal Academy of Music. In the U.S. he was a Master Teacher on the Cabaret Symposium at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center where he met Carol Hall (composer & lyricist of Best Little Whorehouse In Texas). This led to him collaborating with her and '“guesting'” in her shows celebrating her work.

His West End productions include Chicago, The Mikado, Phantom of the Opera, News Review and his own one man show Can'’t Help Singing.

Gary has won several awards, Mac, Bistro and DaVinci, for his one-man shows and songwriting. He directed Tovah Feldshuh in her one-woman show Tovah Feldshuh: The Tour,, Amy Beth Williams in her one-woman show The Little Barmaid and his songs have been sung and recorded by Julie Wilson and Tovah Feldshuh. Gary co-wrote the play Exclusive Yarns with Stewart Permutt, which was produced for Channel 4 television in the U.K. and then went on to the West End. Gary also wrote the highly successful Christmas show Cinderella and Her Ugly Sisters (also music and lyrics), and with Helen Kluger wrote Table Hopping at Joe'’s (also music and lyrics).

Sam Carter is also a writer and composer. His numerous New York credits include Mister Gallico, a musical throttling from yesteryear, performed at the Dorothy B. Williams Theater at HERE 2003, Joyride, a new play performed as part of adobe theatre company'’s Fleet the Time Festival, the musical play Post-Code, and I'’ll Take the Octopus, an instantaneous play directed by Michael Scheman as part of adobe theatre company'’s 24 hour play festival, and The Secret Machine.

Sam trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and at New York University'’s ETW in both New York and Paris. He studied under Erhardt Steifel of the Theatre du Soleil (Paris) and Richard Armstrong of the Roy Hart Theatre (London), and was a member of Companie Bufons Theatre in France. In New York he continues to work as an original member of the Widemouth Theater Group.

Aside from his work at TAI, Robert is president of McDonald Anderson, a group of international professionals specialising in leadership and communication training based in New York City.

Since 1989, he has worked with clients in 35 countries throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America. Robert'’s specialties include cross-cultural communication, executive coaching, leadership training, spoken and written communication, and performance management.

He has been a guest speaker on adult education and cross-cultural communication at NYU'’s Stern School, Columbia University, Pace University, and universities in China, Hong Kong and Japan. Robert has also taught courses at Columbia University under the auspices of the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Teachers College.

Before founding McDonald Anderson, Robert was a training manager for Salomon Brothers Inc, The Executive Technique, and the National Puerto Rican Forum in New York City. He has also done extensive work for the United Nations, where he has conducted training programs in French, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Robert holds an M.A. in Spanish from the University of Michigan, and a doctorate in adult education from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Helen brings 15 years experience in operations, administration and event management, marketing and production primarily in the media industry.

She is a lyricist and manager for a NYC rock band. Helen holds a degree in Sociology from SUNY Albany and has continued her education with an MBA certificate from Tulane University and marketing at NYU.

Zakeha is an administrative professional with more than 15 years'’ experience in the corporate sector. She has managed the event planning and administrative affairs for companies in several industries including: media and communication; television and film; architecture, interior design and engineering; and publishing.

As a life-long lover of storytelling, she is working on her first novel and is completing a collection of miniature story quilts scheduled to be shown in the Georgia Heritage Museum in 2007. She is a member of a coalition of New York-based event planners and designers and also volunteers with several local community organizations. Zakeha attended the University of Rochester and is currently completing a degree in Creative Writing at New York University.

Aside from her work at TAI, Debbie is deeply involved in theatre and family dynamics. After several years'’ teaching, Debbie became involved in parenting and women'’s issues. This led her to lead Parent Education Workshops in a variety of venues.

Her interest in family and human dynamics next led her to the Rockland Players, a Mental Health Improvisational Acting Troupe serving as both actor and facilitator in various public and school settings. When the Helen Hayes Performing Arts Center opened in Nyack, NY in 1995, Debbie turned a group of 10 into a spirited and hardworking 250-strong ensemble as the first Volunteer Coordinator. She now combines her love for theatre and people as an associate director for Centerstage, a high school drama club.

Rachel is the co-ordinator of our education-related programs including our relationship with PPAS in New York.

Prior to joining TAI, Rachel was a Project Director at Art Start Inc. in New York, an innovative and privately-funded arts-based enterprise to provide opportunities for under-privileged young people. With a background in student counselling, Rachel also has considerable experience as a therapist working with emotionally disturbed children.

Mark is a self-taught pianist, writer, comedian, poet and collage-maker. He began his career in the arts at The Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA. After moving to NYC in 2000, Mark edited the Keith Haring line of calendars at TeNeues Publishing, while pursuing a career in television production. In 2001, he worked with Sydney Lumet on the Emmy-nominated A&E series, 100 Centre Street.

Mark has made several short films; played tambourine for the power-pop group The Pop Tarts; performed and written sketch comedy with the NYC troupe, HomeGroan, and studied improvisation with The Upright Citizens Brigade. Currently, Mark writes a poetry blog called Stream of Consciousness and is working on a one-man show.