Director, Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State

Sita Frederick (Director, Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State) is a Dominican and Canadian-American performing arts professional, artistic director, cultural worker, life-long learner, and dancer who was raised between New York and New Jersey. Sita has led and developed many creative and cultural initiatives, from national programs to multimedia and site-specific performance collaborations. Prior to Penn State, Sita served as the Director of Community Engagement at Lincoln Center, where she led a team that presented inclusive family arts engagements on and beyond the Lincoln Center campus and developed community artist residencies and built out creative youth development programming. Sita co-founded a dance theater company, Areytos Performance Works, to create multi-disciplinary community-based projects that explore themes of power, colonization, migration, race, gender, and culture. She serves on the board of Happy Valley Adventure Bureau in Centre County, PA, as a mentor for Women of Color in the Arts, and as a board member of Word Up Community Bookstore. Sita completed her Bachelors of Arts Special Major: English and Dance, at Swarthmore College, and holds a Master of Fine Arts in New Media Art and Performance from Long Island University, Brooklyn.