caryn desai is the Artistic Director of International City Theatre. She is an award-winning director with awards and nominations from LADCC, Ovations, NAACP, LA Weekly, Robby and Drama-Logue. Recent credits: The Old Settler, Loving Repeating…A Musical of Gertrude Stein, The Clean House, Bright Ideas, Backwards in High Heels, Once on This Island (6 NAACP nominations including direction), Raisin (LADCC Best Production), and Dinah Was (the show with the most Ovation nominations).

She has served on grant panels for the county and city and as a speaker/panelist for the SRO Theatre Conference at USC on Best Practices, the Technical Theatre Conference about the role of a director, and more. She represented ICT as a National Participant for the Listening Post Project with John Hopkins University and was named “Enterprising Woman in the Arts” in Long Beach. caryn is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.

Additionally, caryn has taught college theatre classes for over twenty years. She has an MFA from UC Irvine, a certificate from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, and a BA from CSULB. Continuing education: certificates in Arts Administration, Marketing and Fundraising.

caryn completed the first Arts Leadership Initiative with the L.A. County Arts Commission and received a full Fellowship to complete and Executive Program at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, selected as one of fifty arts leaders in the nation. She also completed an Executive Coaching Initiative at the Hudson Institute, Santa Barbara. Previously she served as administrator for the Walt Disney Entertainment Arts Program.