Congratulations to all of our award winners! Our Sherry Wagner-Henry Board Fellow will be honored on Thursday, March 21, at our Awards Awards Awards ceremony in Seattle as part of our USITT24 Conference & Stage Expo. Join us for the ceremony, and afterward be one of the first on the Expo floor as our winners drop the rope and open it for attendees!

Sherry Wagner-Henry Board Fellow

The USITT Board of Directors has established the Sherry Wagner-Henry Leadership Development Initiative to advance the next generation of leadership in the arts. The program is named in honor of Sherry Wagner-Henry, a longtime USITT member and former Board member who passed away unexpectedly in 2020. With feedback from former participants, and renamed in her honor to Sherry Wagner-Henry Board Fellowship, the program has refocused to become a flexible, 12-18-month long Fellowship with particular emphasis on finding the future leaders of USITT and investing in their growth.

2024 Board Fellow

Dani Ranisate

Dani Ranisate is a Scenic Artist and Designer, majoring in Set Design at Colorado State University, and getting a minor in American Sign Language. She has been a Department Mentor for the past three years and has just been elected to the Student Advisory Council for CSU’s School of Music, Theatre, and Dance.

Over the past few years, she has worked on Set Design teams Collegiately: Silent Sky, Spring Awakening, and The Rocky Horror Show, and has worked as a Scenic Artist Regionally: Maine State Music Theatre’s 2023 and Illinois Shakespeare Festival’s 2022 Season, Collegiately: CSU’s current season, and previous 2021-23 seasons. 

She is very excited to be setting up a USITT student chapter at CSU this year. When she is not painting, she’s learning how to juggle or trying new knitting patterns.

"I'm so excited to be a Board Fellow this year! I'd like to thank the Board for letting me learn from them, and Heidi Larson for not just teaching me how to see myself as an artist, but how to see the world as a piece of art. "