Faculty
August 12, 2026 2026-08-12 23:28Faculty
The Conservatory at NYPAA is taught by working professionals. The faculty below teach in the studio while continuing to perform, direct, choreograph, and coach in New York.
Conservatory Leadership
Direction and admissions for the Conservatory.
John L. Stepanian II
Executive Director
Founder and Executive Director of The New York Performing Arts Academy and The Conservatory at NYPAA, and founder and Chief Executive Officer of The MusicSquared Group. He founded FutureStar Studios in 2011 and built it into an organization that has awarded hundreds of scholarships. An ASCAP composer, arranger, and lyricist, he releases the indie opera album Vissuto d'amore in 2027 under the name J.Stepanian & Co.
Bryce Russell
Director of Enrollment
Director of Enrollment at The NYPAA and a member of the Musical Theatre faculty, with more than fourteen years in the New York entertainment industry and years spent on audition panels. He is also a talent manager, so he teaches not only how to perform but how to be hired.
Drama
Acting technique, scene study, audition craft, voice and speech, and script analysis.
Karina Arroyave
Founding Instructor
Colombian American actress and playwright with nearly four decades on stage, film, and television, including Jamey Farrell on the first season of 24, Karla Cordova on Orange Is the New Black, and the Academy Award winning Crash. A founding instructor at The NYPAA, she is a Founding Instructor at The NYPAA and teaches acting from the standpoint of emotional truth on command.
Caris Vujcec
Instructor
New York based actor, director, producer, and writer with more than twenty-five years across television, film, Broadway, and regional theater, best known for her recurring run as Detective Louise Campesi in the Law & Order franchise. In Scene Study she holds students to the standard of a professional rehearsal room.
Katya Campbell
Instructor
New York actor and teacher whose Broadway work includes the Pulitzer Prize winning Disgraced and Manhattan Theatre Club's Mary Jane, and who trained with William Esper at Rutgers. Still auditioning and still booking, she teaches Audition Technique as a repeatable professional skill that is separate from talent and can be trained.
Maury Ginsberg
Instructor
Stage, film, and television actor with more than three decades of work, including Marvel's Jessica Jones, NBC's Manifest, and The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey opposite Samuel L. Jackson. Because he books guest and recurring roles continuously, he teaches Acting for the Camera from a working set rather than from theory.
Colleen Gleason
Instructor
Designated Linklater Teacher and Certified Louis Colaianni Speech and Phonetics Practitioner who has taught voice, speech, dialects, and acting technique for well over a decade in BFA programs, conservatories, and professional theatres. In Meisner Technique she builds actors on repetition, genuine listening, and behavior that is spontaneous rather than performed.
Alan Rackham
Instructor
Director and filmmaker who worked professionally as an actor before earning his MFA in Directing at New York University, where his two short films screened internationally and won directing awards. In Script Analysis he teaches students to read a script the way the people hiring them do.
Voice
Private voice study across musical theatre, opera, and contemporary commercial music.
Edwin Lugo
Founding Instructor
Grammy winning certified vocalist and songwriter, Broadway actor, and founding instructor at The NYPAA. He originated Babu Charlie Cruz in Paul Simon's The Capeman and is featured on Norman Brown's Just Chillin', which won Best Pop Instrumental Album. He coaches singers one on one and has endowed a named vocal scholarship at the Academy.
Mike Walsh
Instructor
Voice, speech, and dialect coach for theater, film, and television who has coached actors including Cameron Monaghan and Brian Geraghty, and served as dialect coach on Titanic. Highly proficient in the International Phonetic Alphabet, he trains the instrument and the articulation together in Voice & Diction.
Olivia Russell-Botto
Instructor
Belter and soprano and a voice teacher whose work bridges musical theatre, opera, and contemporary commercial music, with a Master of Music in Vocal Performance and Vocal Pedagogy from the University of Colorado Boulder. Her private lessons build healthy technique first, then a repertoire book built around the individual singer.
Musical Theatre & Dance
Tap, ballet, contemporary, and hip-hop, taught as performance rather than exercise.
David Thomas
Founding Instructor
Bronx born dancer, choreographer, and founding instructor at The NYPAA, who founded We Run This: The Collective and has danced with Missy Elliott and performed at the MTV Video Music Awards with Travis Scott. On faculty at the Joffrey Ballet School, he teaches Hip-Hop as a culture rather than a set of steps.
Joe Barros
Instructor
New York based stage director and award winning choreographer and writer whose work spans Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional, international, and film, and Artistic Director of New York Theatre Barn. In Tap he works rhythm, precision, and performance quality while showing students how dance functions as storytelling inside a musical.
Mikael Pasini
Instructor
Sicilian dancer who trained at the Accademia Nazionale di Danza in Rome and came to New York on a full scholarship to Peridance, where he has been a soloist and lead dancer with Peridance Contemporary Dance Company since 2017. He has taught at The NYPAA since 2022 and teaches ballet and contemporary side by side.
