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The Touhill Performing Arts Center
1 Touhill Circle
St. Louis, Missouri, 63121
United States

Anna Blair

Anna Blair has been a professional actor/singer for the past 35 years. She has worked at The Muny, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, St. Louis Actors' Studio & New Jewish Theatre, Westport Playhouse. Other regional credits include Little Theatre on the Square in Sullivan, IL, The Old Creamery Theatre in Amana, IA & Toby’s Dinner Theatre in Columbia, MD, The Ensemble Theatre in Chattanooga, TN. Anna has been featured in several St. Louis film projects and commercials. As a performer, she has traveled and entertained audiences all across the United States, Canada and in England, France, Belgium, and Italy. Anna is also a recording artist, cabaret singer, Patsy Cline impressionist, and founder of Three-Legged Productions. During COVID lockdown, she created Curbside Cabaret Cocktails Entertainment, where she delighted hundreds of shut-ins hungry for live entertainment from their curb.

Betsy Cohen

Betsy Cohen, Executive Director of the St. Louis Mosaic Project, a public-private partnership that aims to attract and retain international talent in St. Louis. The project's goal is to make the St. Louis region the fastest-growing major metropolitan area for foreign-born individuals by 2025.

Cynthia Chapple

Cynthia is an innovative scientist, an advocate for black girls and women, and a champion of equity. In keeping with this work, she is the founder of Black Girls Do STEM an organization offering exploration of STEM career pathways through a hands-on engaging curriculum in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics to middle and high school black girls to expose them to career pathways and empowering them to become STEM professionals. Cynthia looks for ways in which she can act as a conduit exposing young black girls to STEM industries and a diversity, equity, and inclusion voice within the STEM workforce space to create welcoming policies, practices, and cultures for Black people and women to thrive. As a founder, she sets strategic focus, foundational policies, practices and culture around the program design and student experience for Black Girls Do STEM. Subsequently, she launched CC Black Lab, a research manufacturing consulting firm catering to the cosmetics and beauty industry. Cynthia received her Bachelor of Chemistry Degree from Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) and her Master of Science in Chemistry from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE). She subsequently spent five and a half years as a Research and Development Chemist in the manufacturing industry. Upon her exit from college, she was a steady member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. She has been a member of both the American Chemical Society and the Society of Cosmetic Chemists for over 5 years combined. Cynthia serves as an executive leader for the St. Louis Section of the American Chemical Society and was Chair during her 2022 year of service. During her tenure as chair, she successfully led a new 10-year strategic planning session which hasn’t been done in section history, while introducing its first inclusion training. Cynthia most recently joined the National Association for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBBChE). Cynthia’s superpower is leveraging her expertise and power to freedom dream on behalf of Black liberation.

Julie Antonic

Julie Antonic is an actress, poet, and playwright for Prison Performing Arts. She is a St. Louis native and a graduate of both St. Louis University and the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is also a small business owner of her art company, ArtTonic.net.

Legacy Jackson

Legacy is the Founder of Little Legacies Community Service Organization; committed to changing the world, one service project at a time. Join us for Legacy’s talk discussing ordinary kids doing extraordinary things to change the world and create a legacy of service.

Mary Ruppert-Stroescu

Mary Ruppert-Stroescu earned her PhD in Human Environmental Sciences from the University of Missouri. Her dissertation research resulted in the “Typology for Creativity in Fashion Design and Development,” a framework for understanding diverse aspects of creativity for fashion design. Ruppert-Stroescu cultivates creativity by stimulating the learning process through a student-centered system that supports different learning styles, continuously challenging students to increase knowledge and develop independent, critical thinking. Her professional network includes successful former students in fashion industry positions around the world. Her research focuses on the study and application of creativity, particularly through the exploration of sustainable fashion design and production, as well as interdisciplinary collaborations with engineers and medical scientists on wearable electronic textile-based sensing systems that address health and well-being. Ruppert-Stroescu has numerous peer-reviewed publications, has given research presentations, and exhibited her creative scholarship at conferences internationally. She holds intellectual property protection for four inventions, including a patent for “Textile repurposing and sustainable garment design.” Her service-learning work has been recognized twice by Oklahoma State University. She was also recognized as the Spears School of Business Riata Entrepreneurship Fellow of the Year and received WashU’s 2022 Advisor of the Year Award.

Naomi Wheeless

Naomi Wheeless is a C-suite Executive and Board Member. She leads efforts to scale global businesses and drive billion-dollar outcomes through operations excellence, customer experience, revenue generation, digital transformation, GTM strategy, sales, product, globalization, cybersecurity, and organizational development. She is a mission-driven leader with 20 years across B2B/B2C emerging to high-growth leaders – Square (NYSE: SQ), Capital One (NYSE: COF), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), TMX Finance, and ServiceMaster.