About Nataki

A change-maker, trailblazer, and 2024 winner of the prestigious Doris Duke Artist Award, Nataki Garrett is the CEO and Executive Director of the The Ladder Leadership Services, as well as the co-Artistic Director of One Nation/One Project and is leading their national arts and health initiative #ArtsforEveryBody. In 2020, She co-founded the theater advocacy organization Professional Non-Profit Theater Coalition (PNTC) – a national advocacy coalition organized to help the theater industry advocate for the $15B Shuttered Venue Operators Grant of historicallyunprecedented funding from the federal government.

Washington, D.C. born and raised Oakland, CA her family of artists, educators and civil rights organizers instilled with a deep appreciation for collaboration, coalition building, and for centering access and cultural justice through performance. Garrett’s vision is to support artists; to manifest innovation; to inspire creativity and to ensure the future of performing arts by centering artists as thought leaders and change makers who transform culture.

Nataki Garrett received her MFA in Directing from California Institute of the Arts, School of Theater and her B.S. in English with a minor in Theatre from Virginia Union University.

Nataki Garrett was the first Executive Artistic Director and the sixth Artistic Director of the Oregon ShakespeareFestival (OSF) and the first Black woman in this role. She is the first female and person of color in the country to lead a $44M theater company. Nataki is lauded for saving OSF during the pandemic closure in 2020 by raising $19M from government, foundational and individual donors in less than 6 months. She previously served as Acting Artistic Director at the Denver Center Theatre Company (DCPA) and was the first woman and person of color inthis role. Garrett was the co-Associate Dean and Associate Artistic Director at CalArts Center for New Performance. Additionally, she was the co-head of the undergraduate acting program at CalArts School of Theater.

Advocating for the Creative Economy, Nataki testified before the US House of Representatives in January 2022, representing 5.2 million American workers in the arts sector. She provided insights on the sector’s slow recovery and offered recommendations for infrastructure investments and long-term recovery strategies. Her House testimony was published in The Hill as an Op-ed.

While working with the Anchor Arts Group of Oregon, a coalition of highly resourced/endowed arts organizations –Nataki worked with her colleagues to raise $8M in C.A.R.E.S Act support during the historic and unprecedented shuttering of public venues, mandated by Governor Brown during the Covid 19 epidemic. She spearheaded the creation of the Professional Non-profit Theater Coalition to advocate for access to the $15 billion Shuttered Venue Operators Grant and is credited for helping to save the non-profit regional theaters from collapse during the pandemic through her innovative approach to executive level collaboration across her beloved industry.

An accomplished writer, director and producer of Stage, Opera, Film and XR/VR Garrett has a passion for new and innovative work. She co-wrote and directed The Carolyn Bryant Project which premiered at REDCAT. She has directed and produced world premieres by some of the most important playwrights of our time, including Katori Hall, Branden Jacobs- Jenkins, Karen Zacarias, Dominique Morriseau and Aziza Barnes. Despite the historic pandemic closure which shuttered OSF for 18 months, her seasons there were stunningly successful. During the pandemic she focused on inverting OSFs traditional producing model to center the work of the artists, technical staff and craft artisans OSF is famous for. Driven by her vision for inviting artists into spaces that are intentional about the artistic processes, Nataki and her team worked to develop a successful producing model that aligned with her vision to create a thriving ecology for artists. Her directing credits at OSF include a modern-day Romeo and Juliet set in an unhoused encampment; a passionate production of Dominique Morriseau’s Confederates; and a beautifully heartening production of Christina Anderson’s How to Catch Creation. During her tenure at the DCPA, she produced a very provocative staging of Macbeth directed by Robert O’Hara, which became the most successful production in the Space Theatre’s 40-year history. Her opera stagings include The Central Park Five by Anthony Davis at Portland Opera and WET by Anne Lebanon at REDCAT.

Garrett conceived “Quills Fest,” for OSF – the first of its kind, intersecting XR and Theater in a virtual festival setting. She executive produced over 50 projects over 3 years through Quill Fest programs including the Visual Sovereignty Project which focused on producing XR projects and films focused on indigenous sovereignty. She conceived and produced The Cymbeline Project, a collaborative episodic production of the Shakespeare play in which each episode was interpreted by different directors. This digital production won the 2023 Young-Howze Award for Digital Theater. Garrett is the executive producer of the 2022 Sundance Award winning film YOU GO GIRL! and ASHLAND both by Shariffa Ali as well as Bottled Spirits, directed by Elizabeth Carter, starring Margo Hall. She directed the film North Loop which premiered at the Chicago Film Festival.

Additional awards and recognition include Bronze Telly Award (2023) and the OMPA Creative Innovation award, the Ammerman Award for Directing (2019), the United States Artist Fellowship (2022), and the National Directing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and Theater Communications Group (2005). Recognized for her commitment to supporting artists, Nataki has served on countless juries, panels and nominating committees including, the prestigious Herb Alpert Awards, the MacArthur Award, the Windham Campbell Prize, the Pew Arts and Culture Award, Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust Distinguished Playwright Award, Opera America New Music Grant, The Kilroys, Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship, the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation Playwrights Award Panel, the Hermitage Greenfield Prize, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and several award and granting panels for the National Endowment for the Arts.

Nataki Garrett is a frequently sought voice for her thought leadership and expertise across the non-profit arts sector. Garrett can be read, watched, or listened to regularly across regional and national news media, and speaking engagements.