The Team - Town Stages

Executive Team

Robin Sokoloff

Chairwoman & CEO

Robin Sokoloff is the Founder & CEO of Town Stages: A new women-led cultural arts space, event venue, and cocktail bar in Tribeca providing mentorship, sponsorship, and fellowship to artists and innovators. As a lifelong dance and theatre professional committed to transforming leadership and representation on our stages and screens, Robin advances equity for women, poc, queer, and immigrant voices in New York City by building accessible spaces for public assembly, creativity, and conversation. As owner and Executive Director of Loft227, Robin pioneered a self-sustaining home for New York City’s visionary and enterprising artists; seeing nearly 70,000 in her doors in under 5 years while supporting close to 900 innovative works and small business owners.

In Town Stages’ inaugural year, Sokoloff and her team built a landmark venue 6X the previous footprint that supported over 300 events, created over 1,000 local jobs, and subsidized over 2,500 hours of arts programming to the public while supporting a Creative Fellowship Program for 59+ recipients through her non-profit Sokoloff Arts (501c3).

Robin Sokoloff is a scholarship recipient and alumna of Jacob’s Pillow School of Dance, NYSSSA, Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center, HDCNY, Skidmore College Studio Art Program, Coupé Theatre Studio, and New York University. Robin holds a BA in Sociology from NYU's College of Arts and Sciences, she’s a graduate of N.E.W. (Non-Traditional Employment For Women), and a former member of The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America with Local #157. Robin serves as Vice President of the Board for the Musical Theater Factory, and Chairwoman of the Board for Sokoloff Arts.

Staci Jacobs

Vice President

In 2015, Staci began working with Sokoloff Arts as an event manager at Loft227. A Founding team member of Town Stages, Staci executed a landmark sales strategy supporting a new storefront Tribeca venue 6X the previous footprint in Chelsea.

In Town's inaugural year, Staci oversaw 300 events, created over 1,000 local jobs, and subsided over 2,500 hours of arts programming to the public and supported a Creative Fellowship Program for 59+ recipients - all while weaving a new self-sustaining Public Assembly space into the tapestry of New York City's cultural landscape.

With more than 15 years experience in destination management and customer relations, Staci is a hospitality-focused professional specializing in all things New York. She's developed incredible experiences for some of NYC's Legacy 5-Star Hotels: The Westin, The Waldorf, The Hilton, and the Grand Central Hyatt. Beginning as a NYC Licensed Tour Guide, Staci found her niche connecting a global audience to the city's most coveted Film and TV Sites, while developing her own film production work. Her award winning comedic web-series, Saving Unicorns, is featured on the indie streaming platform Seed & Spark. From laptops to live audiences across the country, Staci has appeared in numerous musicals, including the national tour of Titanic, and many regional productions.

Staff

Rainey Rowan

Operations Manager

Born and raised in sunny Los Angeles, Rainey found her way to New York City as a performer, theatrical producer and event coordinator. She has overseen projects with Eating Their Words, Slant Productions, Quiet Theater, Frames Bowling Lounge, Teens For Food Justice, Port Cities NYC, and the Theatrical Culinary Project. She served as an operations manager and event coordinator at Steps On Broadway, assistant directed the world premier of the new musical Up And Away at the Pittsburgh CLO Cabaret Theater, and most recently was the Producer of Partnerships and Event Services at the Tribeca Film Festival. She is a co-producer of NeverTheLess: A Night Of, which gives performers and artists of every genre a safe place to express their work based on ever evolving themes. When she is not organizing all the things, she cultivates her other artistic side by continuing to be an avid yogi, dancer, singer, and actor.

Emilyn Kowaleski

Assistant to the Executive Director

Emilyn Kowaleski is a writer, and new play director, storyteller and all around mover and shaker. Her work is focused on explosively interrogating paradigms of power. She has directed and presented work at theaters such as, The Bushwick Starr, Ars Nova, The Brick, JACK, University Settlement, Dixon Place, Corkscrew Theater Festival, and The Nasty Women Unite Festival. Some highlights include: Animal Wisdom by Heather Christian (Co-Director with Mark Rosenblatt), Heart and Soul Yoga Studio by Olivia Clement, Delicious Filth by Brett Solomon Evans and Everyday Afroplay by Daaimah Mubashshir. Emilyn is a former Associate Director of Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company and has worked with companies such as Big Dance Theater, Target Margin Theater, The Martin E. Segal Center at CUNY, The League of Independent Theater and The Public. In addition to joining the team at Town Stages, she is currently earning an MA in Women’s and Gender History at Sarah Lawrence. BFA: Experimental Theater and Psychology at NYU.

Brandon Webster

Operations & Community Coordinator

Brandon Webster is a Brooklyn-based Composer/Playwright/Dramaturg. His storytelling-through-music focuses on Afro-Futurist and Afro-Surrealist stories that center Joy, Connection, Liberation and Community and is currently in the Musical Theatre Factory MAKERS residency as a part of the Inaugural 2019 Cohort. Brandon is also an alum of the BMI Musical Theater Workshop Alum Class of 2013. Current Co-Moderator for the MTF POC Roundtable; a monthly meeting ground for theatre makers of color to be in, and build community. 2017 MCC Theater Artistic Fellow and Student of Xavier University of Louisiana. Works include METROPOLIS(2020) HEADLINES (2017), BOOGIE NIGHTS (2015), TEA&COMPANY (2013).

Obinna Okani

Business Development

Obinna Okani is an entrepreneur and skilled connector of people and organizations that is focused on creating lasting value on the African continent. He is the Co-founder/ Chief Business Development Officer of an online media platform called Naija Made Me. Over the past 4 years, Obinna has sharpened his business acumen in a number of sectors including strategic partnership and the start-ups through connecting seemingly unrelated ideas to drive fresh and innovative solutions to any given problem. Obinna joined the Town Stages team early 2019 as an Event Venue Associate aiming to increase visibility and new business clients for the space.

With a B.S in Biology from Howard University and a M.A. in Management from Wake Forest University, Obinna seeks opportunities that are invaluable in nature thus allowing him to work creatively, analytically, and entrepreneurially in spaces of ambiguity with little direction.

Brandon Tyler Harris

Head of Bar Operations

Brandon is an actor, bar professional, handyman, and voiceover artist. After receiving a BFA in Acting from UNCSA, Brandon moved to New York, talked his way into his first bartending job, and threw himself into the NYC acting scene.

As an actor, Brandon has appeared on Law & Order: SVU, Blue Bloods, The Big C, and The Intern, as well as starring in the LGBT short films Pink Moon, Stay, and Goodbye Blue Sky. He’s also a committed Voiceover Artist and is determined to one day be the voice of a cartoon.

As a bar professional, Brandon has spent over 7 years in the NYC nightlife industry. Having cut his teeth for years at the Manderley Bar in the McKittrick Hotel, Brandon has slung cocktails in all kinds of environments, from fine dining to frenetic nightclub, and prides himself on his ability to thread the needle between high-quality cocktails and high volume events.

Brandon is also a freelance handyman, operating under his company The Handy Actor. In his little spare time, Brandon enjoys traveling, sailing, Burning Man, and nerdy games like Magic and DnD.

Connor Sampson

Content Manager & Board of Directors Liason

Connor is a writer and performer based in Brooklyn, NY. As a story-teller and content creator, his work has been featured and shared across the world on platforms like The Advocate, SinglePlatform, Buzzfeed, The Satirist, and many more. An ensemble member of The New York Neo-Futurists since 2014, he can regularly be seen writing for and performing in their award-winning weekly show, The Infinite Wrench. He is a Goldberg Play Prize Finalist, a Nut Island Creative Colony Artist-in-Residence and the inaugural recipient of the Jeffrey Melnick New Playwright Award from Primary Stages. His plays have been performed across the country, including Parading the Noose (Primary Stages, Cherry Lane), The Great American Drama (A.R.T./NY, NYNF), Boy Meets Girl (Suffolk University), Capture My Heart (Cherry Lane) and The Art of Cannibalism (NYU). He is a two-time national champion of performance poetry and holds a B.F.A in Dramatic Writing from Tisch School of the Arts.

Financial

Scott Sokoloff

Chief Financial Officer

Scott Sokoloff transforms mountains of data on consumer’s behavior to actionable data-driven insights. Offering a track record of generating billions of dollars in value for diverse companies by encouraging a transition to an analytics-driven enterprise, Scott provides over a decade of leadership experience in the field of data science, analytics, and business intelligence. Scott Sokoloff holds an MBA in Finance from the University of Florida and a BA in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Magan Wiles

Books & Finance

Magan Wiles is the hustle behind Hustle Creative, a boutique business management firm specializing in providing entrepreneurs and start-ups the backbone they need to expand. From bookkeeping to financial reporting to technology consulting, Magan loves working with clients who know where they need help, and empowering them to clearly focus on what they’re most passionate about. Her clients are wide-ranging, from small businesses to non- profits to film productions, but her goals are always the same: find ways to save money, and distill back-end processes until they can be managed from a smartphone. Magan began her journey with Sokoloff Arts over 4 years ago, building Loft227's corporate infrastructure into a lean, mean, art-making machine. No stranger to the stage, Magan is a working AEA theater professional, film producer for Jono Freedrix's side-splitting Super Twisted Shorts, and Co-Owner of world-renowned Argentinian Tango school Oxygen Tango in Los Angeles.