Jasmine L. Blanks Jones

Executive Director

Jasmine L. Blanks Jones is a dynamic theatre nonprofit leader, award-winning educator, and holds a dual PhD in Education and Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research on theatrical performance as a civic engagement praxis illuminates global race-based inequities in education and health, lifting the potential of knowledge co-creation through the arts and digital cultural production. As founder of Burning Barriers Building Bridges Youth Theatre (B4YT), a cultural performance company dedicated to community empowerment through the arts, she has more than twenty years of experience in youth development in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. Having developed a track record of leadership in arts and advocacy in communities of color globally, in 2018 Jasmine extended the scope of B4YT to include a consulting practice, Creating Brave Stages, which provides support and guidance for advocacy organizations looking to integrate the arts into their movements and artists aspiring to create positive change through their performances. She holds a Masters of Public Policy degree from the University of Minnesota and Bachelor of Science in Music Education from Florida A&M University. She is a lecturer in the Program in Racism, Immigration and Citizenship at Johns Hopkins University where she conducted research and public scholarship as an inaugural Postdoctoral Fellow with Inheritance Baltimore.