Shaunda McDill

New Managing Director
The Pittsburgh Public Theater

Shaunda McDill joined The Heinz Endowments in October 2017. As program officer for arts and culture, she works to promote the strength and vitality of a suite of Pittsburgh-based artists and arts organizations through general operating support and a programming portfolio comprised of the Investing in Professional Artists program, the Small Arts Initiative, the Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh initiative and the foundation’s first cross-programmatic social justice initiative, Just Arts, which she helped to found. Alongside her colleagues, she has also been instrumental in fortifying the role of the Endowments’ Creativity Strategic Area in utilizing art to combat stereotypes and improve outcomes for veterans as part of the foundation’s “Rethink Vets” campaign.

Shaunda has more than a decade of non-profit executive and arts management experience, working for theater companies across the country, including The Goodman Theatre of Chicago, Second Stage Theater, Yale Repertory Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse and Cornerstone Theater Company. In 2006, she also founded demaskus Theater Collective, a non-profit, service-oriented collective of artists and administrators who produce theatrical projects that share stories of the marginalized. In Pittsburgh, Shaunda served as vice president of programming and cultivation at the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, where she managed all artistic and educational programs, including the production of the city’s first Black Dance Festival. As the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s director of public relations, she headed both national and local public relations campaigns, including the North American premiere of Florentijn Hofman’s Rubber Duck Project, which generated more than $10 million in direct spending in the city.

Shaunda has a Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where she majored in African and African-American Studies and minored in Theater. She has a master’s from Yale University’s School of Drama with a concentration in theater management. She is a member of Macedonia Church of Pittsburgh and is married to Pittsburgh native Sager McDill. Shaunda recently became a member of the Jada House International, Inc. board of directors.