Research Lab Management 

Mark Comesañas serves as Executive Director of My Brother’s Keeper Newark, a strategy of the Opportunity Youth Network. Prior to this role, Mark was the Head of Schools and a founding board member of LEAD Charter School, an educational leader within Newark Public Schools, and served as a middle and high school teacher. He is also an active member on several community non-profit boards. Comesañas holds a Bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University, a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership from Montclair State University, and is currently working towards a Doctoral degree in Educational Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania.

Demetria Hart (she/her) is the Senior Coordinator of Faculty Relations at New Jersey Performing Arts Center. She observes the development and trajectory of NJPAC Arts Education teaching artist faculty and their artistic practices. Some of her responsibilities include faculty recruitment, faculty onboarding and surveying the effectiveness of the training and professional development opportunities NJPAC Arts Education provides to teaching artists. From January 2022 to January 2023, Demetria served as the Project Coordinator for City Verses, a jazz poetry program offered through the partnership between NJPAC and Rutgers University-Newark.

Ashley Mandaglio (she/her) is the Associate Director of Professional Learning and Program Development at New Jersey Performing Arts Center. She is an equity-centered learning expert with over 10 years of deep fieldwork in high-needs schools. She works to curate impactful arts learning opportunities reaching over 5,000 educators, teaching artists and Arts administrators across over 20 school districts in New Jersey and beyond. She partners with artists and practitioners from around the world to develop curricula that meet the current challenges facing our communities.

Taylor Masamitsu (they/he) is the Senior Director of Research and Impact at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, where they use interdisciplinary qualitative methods to study student agency, curricular and instructive efficacy, and education policy. Outside of NJPAC, Taylor uses their research to consider and advocate for more holistic approaches to education policy analysis, paying particular attention to issues of Asian Americanness, queerness, and power in American politics and educational settings. Some of their recent publications are available in Educational Policy,The American Educational History Journal, and The Journal of LGBT Youth.

New Jersey Performing Arts Center Manager of Professional Learning & Training Angela Peletier (she/her) is a teaching artist and choreographer from Milltown, NJ. She is passionate about inspiring and cultivating budding teaching artists, and collaborating with others to develop innovative, artistic teaching practices and to bring the arts to the larger community. In her first year at NJPAC, Angela has helped cultivate several new school partnerships for professional development opportunities while also assisting in the relaunch of in-person professional development workshops at off-site locations.

Shannon Pulusan (she/they) is a Fil-Am writer, illustrator, educator and the Special Assistant to the VP of Arts Education at New Jersey Performing Arts Center. She taught jazz poetry as a teaching artist for NJPAC City Verses, a multidisciplinary program that explores the intersection between music and the written word, and collaborated with local NJ poets and musicians for virtual and in-person classes. At the pulse of their teaching and creative practice is the interplay of art mediums, specifically fiber art, poetry, culinary, and illustration. They believe that engaging in the experience and conventions of other art mediums outside of one’s primary medium can re-instill playfulness and experimentation to artmaking and can alleviate burnout.

Gene Fellner, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Education at the City University of New York. He teaches research and pedagogy in the special education program at the College of Staten Island and arts-based research at the Graduate Center. After getting his bachelor’s degree in political science and teaching certification from Boston University, Gene Fellner joined the Attica Brothers Legal Defense, the organization defending the 61 prisoners accused of leading the 1971 Attica Prison uprising. Years later, when the trials were over, he began his career as a fine artist though he continued activist work, going to Nicaragua as a brigadista in the 1980s to support the Nicaraguan Revolution. Professor Fellner explores the spaces where art and research meet and collaborates with his students to develop methodologies that illuminate and scaffold their many strengths.