Meet Our Team

Charles Chip Mc Neal
Director of Diversity, Equity and Community

Charles Chip Mc Neal is an award-winning arts educator and dance specialist with a background in musical theater, television and film. He is a certified Integration Learning Specialist with expertise in social-emotional learning, cultural competency, and culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy. Mc Neal’s expertise is at the intersection of arts, education and social justice, and he is currently and Ph.D. candidate in transformative studies in education with an emphasis on emancipatory pedagogies. McNeal lectures worldwide on organizational change, human consciousness and healing-informed teaching practices.

Ryan Marchand
Community Engagement Manager

Ryan Marchand is an actor, stage director and theatremaker. He is experienced in new work development, devised theatre and traditional Japanese Noh and Kyogen theatre. Marchand works with inner city youth facilitating a range of culturally responsive capacities. He has also worked extensively with leading Bay Area tech, finance, and governmental institutions in workforce development. Marchand is a fervent believer in, and witness to the transformative power of the arts, and he is able to leverage all of his skills and talents in his work at San Francisco Opera.

Hannah Dworkin
Educational Development Manager

Hannah Dworkin is an accomplished educator, performer, director and choreographer who has dedicated her career to bringing the arts to children throughout the Bay Area and beyond.  She has extensive experience creating new works for young audiences and developing educational programming for mainstream and special day classes.  In addition to Dworkin’s work at SF Opera, she is a professor of teacher education at the San Francisco Conservatory of music and lectures regularly in best practices in classroom management and healing informed teaching practices.  Dworkin holds a California Multiple Subject Teaching Credential and an MA in Music and Music Education from Columbia University’s Teachers College.

Cole Thomason-Redus
Educational Content Curator

Fifth-generation San Franciscan, educator, conductor and composer, Cole Thomason-Redus, serves as a Program Manager for the company's Department of Diversity, Equity & Community. As a member of the San Francisco Boys Chorus, he performed in sixteen productions with the company between 1987-1994 and went on to train boy choirs for numerous SFO productions. His diverse credentials include Director of Education for the renowned vocal ensemble, Chanticleer, Curator of Classical Music for Apple, Inc., Classical Music Analyst for the Music Genome Project at Pandora Media, Inc., and over two decades of teaching for schools and organizations throughout the Bay Area.

Chelbi Harvin-Dickens
Community Engagement Coordinator

Chelbi (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist with a background in dance, theatre, and music. They are dedicated to arts education and have worked within academic and artistic institutions in Washington D.C., New York, and California. Chelbi specializes in bold ideas that elicit the implementation and expansion of DEI initiatives. In their work,Chelbi focuses intently on devising creative ways to build safe, affirming space for marginalized communities, with particular emphasis on intersectionality, social justice, and reform. Chelbi is driven by the belief in artistic storytelling as the most powerful form of communication, education, and expression. Beyond their professional work, they have an intense love of reading, writing, photography, film, fashion, and painting. Chelbi’s mission is to illuminate ways for institutions to reflect, respect, and collaborate with the communities that they serve and expand community access to institutional resources.

Eteya Trinidad
Community Engagement Associate

Eteya Trinidad (she/her/hers) is an arts administrator, stage manager and playwright. She holds a bachelor's degree in Critical Diversity Studies from the University of San Francisco, where she assisted the Performing Arts and Social Justice department both in the office and backstage. She is a resident playwright at PlayGround and the 2021 recipient of the June Anne Baker Prize. Through all her work, Eteya believes wholeheartedly in the power of the arts to affect social change. She is passionate about growing representation onstage, connecting communities, and using performance as a tool to heal and transform.