Marjuan Canady (she/her)
NYU Alumni Changemaker of the Year
(TSOA ’10)
Tony® Nominated Broadway Producer, Writer, Arts Consultant, and Educator
Producer, writer, arts consultant, and educator; elevating Black artists and performers through groundbreaking children's media and visionary arts education initiatives.
In 2008, recently graduated from the theater program at Fordham, Marjuan Canady was living a life that aspiring actors know too well—waiting tables, auditioning non-stop, and hoping for a break. “The hardest thing was just waiting for something to happen,” she says. Canady felt the dream she'd nurtured at the famous Duke Ellington High School in DC—of becoming a force to uplift Black artists and performers—receding. It was a dark time marked by the occasional Colgate commercial and the constant hustle to make rent.
But at Tisch, Canady embarked on a life-changing project—a one-woman show rooted in Black Feminist Performance titled, Girls! Girls? Girls. “Instead of looking for outside validation,” she says, “I invested in my own work.” The success of Girls reconnected Canady to her activist roots and gave her the confidence to expand. In 2012, she started the influential Callaloo Kids, a children's media brand based in African Diaspora folklore encompassing theater, books, animation, and puppetry. In 2015, as her connection to children blossomed globally, she founded the Canady Foundation for the Arts, providing historic arts-education opportunities for at-risk youth-of-color in the DMV.
Canady's work has since been honored by dozens of national and international institutions—and she's still expanding her narrative. Her CFA Repertory Theatre is a force for diversity and representation in theater. She has hosted hundreds of young people at her own shows, including her National Tour production of The Wiz. Her latest Broadway musical, Hell's Kitchen, received 13 Tony nominations. Oh, and in 2024 she gave the keynote address at her own beloved Duke Ellington High School. “What I've learned along the way,” she says, “is that doing beats waiting every time.”