Dana Edell, Ph.D.

Dana is an activist-scholar-artist and the executive director of SPARK Movement (www.SPARKmovement.org), an intergenerational girls’ activist organization where she collaborates with girls to launch successful action campaigns including a media campaign that led to Seventeen Magazine’s public promise to never Photoshop girl models and to commit to race and body size diversity in their pages. She trains and supports girls (ages 13-22) to take action, produce theater, create videos and write blogs. She partnered with Google to create and launch SPARK: Women on the Map, a cellphone app that maps women’s history globally. Dana also consults with organizations to create feminist curricula for youth programs. She was the co-founder/executive director of viBe Theater Experience (www.viBeTheater.org), from 2002-2012 and has produced and directed more than 70 original plays, 7 albums of new music, and 8 arts-based resource guidebooks, all written and performed by girls. Through her writing, presentations and media appearances, she advocates for girls’ activism and the need for performing arts experiences for girls. Dana was co-chair of the Girls’ Participation Task Force at the United Nations and she teaches Applied Theatre and Theatre and Activism at New York University and the City University of New York. Dana has a BA with honors in Classics/Ancient Greek & Theatre from Brown University, an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University and a PhD in Educational Theatre from NYU.