Now Presenting the 2024 Board Slate
Voting is Open!
WAA’s Board of Directors plays a vital role in our capacity to serve you — our members. Our board supports us in fulfilling our mission to advance excellence in the performing arts, through innovative thinking and ground-breaking initiatives, by anticipating the future needs of the field, and through sound governance and stewardship. Board rotations take place each year, and our members play an essential part in the process — from nominating candidates, to approving the slate.
All current WAA member organizations are eligible to vote in the election. The person designated to vote on behalf of your member organization received an email with directions on accessing their ballot in the member portal.
The results of the election will be presented at the 2024 Annual Membership Meeting which will be held in San Diego at the 2024 Western Arts Alliance Annual Conference.
If you need to update your organization's designated voter or have other questions about the elections, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Need help renewing your membership? Get in touch with us at membership@westarts.org — and we will be happy to assist you!
Learn more about the nominees below.
Meet the 2024 WAA Board Nominees
Joseph Copley-Venturo Dìaz (he/him) | ODC/Dance
President — (two-year term expiring 2026)
Joseph Copley-Venturo Díaz (he/him) comes from a performing arts background, having danced professionally with Oakland Ballet, Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, Amy Seiwert’s Imagery, Dance Through Time, Robert Moses’ KIN, Madison Ballet, San Francisco Opera Ballet, and on and on.
"Blessed with both stage presence and striking technique, he whipped off cabrioles, tour jetés, tours en l’air and a coupé jeté menège with no break. His entrechat quatres and brisé volés were embroidered with épaulement. Even when he was just standing, his back to the audience, his powers of expression were impressive." (Dance Magazine)
"A Greek God." (New York Times)
Joseph received a Next Generation Arts Leadership Grant to attend business school at City College of San Francisco. Hired as Company Manager at ODC/Dance in 2013, he is now the Associate Director of Artistic Planning, and oversees programming ODC’s 52 weeks of artistic activities.
Outside of ODC, Joseph serves on the board of directors for the Western Arts Alliance, Isadora Duncan Dance Awards & Dance Through Time, sits on the Entertainment Committee of the BatterySF, is a member of the Dance/USA Dance Managers’ Council, and is on the advisory committee for Mark Foehringer Dance Project. He is a panelist for the San Francisco Arts Commission, is an alumni of Leadership SF, volunteers for political causes, and produces events at San Francisco street fairs, night clubs, and festivals.
Rob Tocalino (he/him) | Mondavi Center, UC Davis
Vice President — (two-year term expiring 2026)
Rob Tocalino is the Interim Associate Executive Director and Director of Programming at the Mondavi Center. In his current role, he is responsible for all external organizational communications and strategy, including advertising, public relations, and ticket office operations. As part of his work overseeing the ticket office, Tocalino has built successful revenue management and patron loyalty initiatives. He previously served as the Associate Director of Marketing for SFJAZZ, during which time he led a Wallace Foundation-funded effort to attract a younger audience for jazz. The resulting program, SFJAZZ Hotplate, is still in place at the new SFJAZZ Center. Prior to SFJAZZ, Tocalino served as the Managing Director of Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival.
Meghan Bush (she/her) | UCSB Arts & Lectures
Director — First Full Term (three-year term expiring 2027)
I am honored to have been nominated to Western Arts Alliance’s Board of Directors to support its mission to serve a thriving performing arts community in the West. Throughout my 20 year career, WAA has played an integral role in advancing my knowledge and understanding of the presenting and touring field, its challenges and dependencies, and the critical impact of arts, ideas and accessibility.
From my first WAA Conference (Albuquerque, 2005!), to my current tenure on the Membership and Communications Committee, WAA has helped me build my arts administrator toolkit while teaching me to advocate for my organization and the artists and speakers it presents. From the dynamic leaders and consortia that it wrangles, to the burgeoning and seasoned artists and artist representatives that it champions, WAA offers a diverse network and innumerable opportunities to connect and thrive – through meetings, showcases, professional development workshops, meetups, and so much more, new relationships are built, skills are honed, careers are launched! In my current leadership role at UCSB Arts & Lectures, I work tirelessly to guide one of the West Coast’s premier performing arts and lectures presenters, producing approximately 100 public and private events annually. My long tenure has enabled me to wear many hats and to collaborate on many business fronts, both creative and administrative, from marketing and revenue growth to strategic planning and curation, from fundraising and stewardship to operations.
My passions are arts accessibility, creative communications, and building a thriving forum for critical thinking and artistic engagement. Those passions have all been informed by the values I learned at the start of my career, at my very first conference, at WAA. Serving on WAA’s Board of Directors will afford me the opportunity to pay it forward and to foster the next generation of arts leaders with innovative new ideas.
Meghan Bush is the Associate Director at UCSB Arts & Lectures where she directly oversees the Marketing & Communications and Education & Community Engagement departments, which are concurrently tasked with all institutional messaging, ticket sales and revenue generation for all mainstage events while serving more than 25,000 students and community members with free ancillary masterclasses, workshops, lecture-demonstrations and enrichment opportunities annually. She joined the A&L team in 2004 as a Production Assistant, advancing to the role of copywriter and publicist, followed by Director of Marketing & Communications. Prior to A&L, she honed her arts administrator chops at Kaiser Permanente’s Educational Theatre Programs, where she had begun as a student at UC Berkeley while studying English and Performance Studies.
Rebecca Carson (she/her) | Lisa Smith Wengler Center for the Arts, Pepperdine University
Director — First Full Term (three-year term expiring 2027)
I am honored to have been nominated for service on the WAA Board of Directors. I have learned so much from my colleagues in this organization, and am thrilled about the prospect of giving back to an organization that has given me so much. I believe in the power of the arts to help inspire and create community, and believe that organizations like WAA are crucial to give presenters, agents, and artists the connections and tools they need to do their best work.
Rebecca Carson is the Managing Director of the Lisa Smith Wengler Center for the Arts at Pepperdine University. The Center for the Arts serves more than 50,000 people annually through performances, rehearsals, and exhibitions in Smothers Theatre, Raitt Recital Hall, Lindhurst Theatre and the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art. Rebecca is known for her commitment to vibrant, engaging, and diverse programming, as well as her passion for providing performance opportunities for emerging artists. Before moving to California in 2007, Rebecca was the director of performing arts at COCA (Center of Creative Arts) a multidisciplinary community arts center in St. Louis, Missouri. Rebecca served as Vice President and Conference Chair for California Presenters from 2013–2017, and remains active on various committees with California Presenters, WAA (Western Arts Alliance), APAP (Association of Performing Arts Professionals), and Pepperdine University. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in theatre from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in theatre management from the University of Maryland. She and her husband, storyboard artist and illustrator Dan Murphy, live in West Los Angeles.
Christopher Nicholas (he/him) | Ensemble Mik Nawooj
Director — First Full Term (three-year term expiring 2027)
I’m honored and grateful to be nominated to the Western Arts Alliance (WAA) Board of Directors. This is very special to me because WAA is the reason I have a career in the performing arts. When my Oakland (CA) based Hip-Hop Orchestra Experience (HHOE) pivoted into the performing arts field, WAA accepted us into the Launchpad Program. This program’s mentorship eventually led to signing with our booking agency, Opus 3 Artists.
My hope is to help position WAA as a tastemaker in the field in which new and adventurous artists and talented performing arts professionals are cultivated. By making WAA a platform of discovery for the innovative artists and young arts professionals, I would like the conference to be impactful in the field at large as well as attracting the attention of the general public. As a Professional Development Committee member, I’ve been serving to create fulfilling conference experiences for the WAA community and am very excited to contribute further on the WAA Board.
Christopher Nicholas is the co-founder and executive director of the Hip Hop Orchestra Experience (HHOE) based in Oakland, CA. In addition to administrative work, he has overseen all of HHOE’s marketing campaigns resulting in features on BBC, Wall Street Journal, PBS, NPR, Fox News, and more. Christopher also helped secure partnerships with organizations such as Global People Summit at the UN General Assembly, ESPN for their SuperBowl 50 coverage, National Geographic for their live orchestral presentation, “Symphony for Our World '' which premiered at Davies Symphony Hall, SF, CA.
In 2023, Nicholas was the executive producer of Method Sampling: How to Build the Future Together. The documentary went on winning the Best Music Documentary at DTLA Film Festival, securing a distribution deal with Cinema Libre Studio. Method Sampling is being acquired by Voice of America, the largest and oldest of the U.S. international broadcasters with a weekly worldwide audience of approximately 326 million. Following the release of Method Sampling documentary, Chris is leading a tv film project for All Arts, PBS’ digital platform for performing arts, as the executive producer and producer. The filming is tentatively scheduled for Nov., 2024 in NYC.
Christopher is a professor at Diablo Valley College and Santa Rosa Jr. College, teaching History of Hip-Hop Music & Culture as well as History of Jazz.
Nadhi Thekkek (she/her) | Nava Dance Theatre
Director — Second Full Term (three-year term expiring 2027)
Nadhi Thekkek is a dancer, choreographer, and the Artistic Director of Nava Dance Theatre. Nadhi uses the south Indian dance form of bharatanatyam to navigate place, identity, and politics through the lens of her lived experience as a child of immigrants and an unapologetic South Asian, diasporic woman. She reimagines how bharatanatyam can serve marginalized narratives that need to occupy space in the US right now. Her nationally touring work “Rogue Gestures/Foreign Bodies” sources community interviews, historical texts, and poetry to explore the intersections of labor, agency, and belonging in our South Asian ancestry. Nadhi’s body of work has been supported through the NEFA National Dance Project, The MAP Fund, National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, San Francisco Arts Commission, and others.
Through Nava, Nadhi also produces and co-facilitates the Unrehearsed Artist Residency Program, where South Asian dancemakers create art that challenges the status quo. She is one of the co-founders of Varnam Salon and serves on the board of the Western Arts Alliance and has been a co-chair of the WAA Hyphen + Asian Affinity Group.
Nadhi has learned bharatanatyam from Guru Smt. Sundara Swaminathan (Kala Vandana Dance Company, San Jose) and Guru Smt. Padmini Chari (Nritya School of Dance, Houston). As of 2012, she has continued training under Guru Sri. A. Lakshmanaswamy (Chennai).