Careers in the Arts

Sarah Khan '03, Travel Journalist and Editor

Sarah Khan is an award-winning travel journalist who recently completed a tenure as Editor in Chief of Condé Nast Traveller Middle East. She’s currently a contributing editor at Condé Nast Traveler and Robb Report, and has reported from seven continents for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Afar, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, and numerous other publications. Her work appears in The Best American Travel Writing 2021 and New York Times 36 Hours: 150 Cities from Abu Dhabi to Zurich. She's lived in six countries on three continents and possesses 2.5 passports.

Shannon Riley '08, CEO + Founder | Building 180
Executive Director + Co-Founder | Paint the Void

Shannon Riley is an award-winning, creative leader and cultural entrepreneur, who's spent her career producing innovative experiences bringing artwork to life to push the boundaries of what is possible in the art world. She is the Founder and CEO of Building 180, a women-run art agency whose mission is to inspire change through art and to help artists maintain sustainable careers.

Most recently, Shannon co-founded and became Executive Director of a new Bay-Area non-profit arts initiative, Paint the Void, that has commissioned over 230 murals on boarded storefronts in the wake of COVID-19. Since starting Paint the Void in April of 2020, Paint the Void has provided economic opportunity for over 250 local artists whom they commissioned for the murals. Paint the Void has received over $500k in grants from the Office of Economic and Workforce Development in San Francisco to make these opportunities possible which include over 15 community and participatory murals and over 230 donated murals to Food Banks and Small Businesses in need. Since starting Paint the Void, Shannon has been awarded a SXSW Community Service Award, a "Live with Optimism" award by Veritas Investments, a Bloomberg Philanthropies Award and was named a top 25 Creative Revolutionary leading the way for positive change by Codaworx.
 
Shannon focuses on amplifying the voices of emerging artists and cultivating a community that fosters collaboration and trust. She previously worked in Business Development and Sales for Fortune 500 Companies and a handful of small tech start-ups. In 2012 Shannon embarked on a new adventure to start Building 180 and follow her passion as an entrepreneur, artist and designer. She is a new mother, a lover of nature and is forever curious.

Jen Patten '09, Director of Administration and Special Projects
College of Performing Arts

Jennifer Patten holds a B.A. in English and Music from Boston College, an M.M. in Musicology from Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music, and an M.A. in Arts Administration from Teachers College, Columbia University.  Prior to moving to New York in 2014, she served in the pilot Rhode Island Teacher for America corps and was hired as the founding humanities teacher at the Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts in Providence.  Ms. Patten led arts integration initiatives with fellow academic instructors and artists-in-residence, crafting the trajectory of the school’s curriculum.  After several years in the classroom, she was promoted to Curriculum Director, formalizing the school’s approach to arts-integrated education.  From 2015-2022, Ms. Patten served as Head of the historic Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, Inc., spearheading strategic initiatives, elevating and expanding programming, maintaining the highest standards of artistic excellence, and providing visionary and innovative leadership.  In March 2022, Ms. Patten joined The College of the Performing Arts at The New School in her current role as Director of Administration and Special Projects and as a member of leadership on the Deans Council.

Shelagh Abate '97, Musician + Educator

Shelagh Abate has long been one of New York’s most sought-after musicians. Known for her simultaneously warm and assertive sound, versatility and musical intuition, she has earned a place in the lexicon of NYC’s busiest performers.Shelagh has opened more than one dozen Broadway productions from Mary Poppins to Frozen, to Music Man. She has performed regularly with The MET Opera Orchestra, Mostly Mozart, American Ballet Theater, The American Symphony Orchestra, is third horn with the Greenwich Symphony Orchestra and has been principal horn of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra under the artistic direction of Jaime Laredo since 1999. Through the years she has worked with some of the great musicians of our time: Seiji Ozawa, Simon Rattle, Andre Previn, Gunther Schuller, Robert Spano, John Williams, Marin Alsop, and Jaime Laredo. Shelagh has established fluency in the commercial realm as well as the classical, having performed as part of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, the Tony Awards Studio Orchestra on live television, numerous commercials, film score soundtracks, video games and has recorded with renowned artists such as Hugh Jackman, Sting, The Who, Tony Bennett, Rufus Wainwright, Lady Gaga, Barry Manilow, Joni Mitchell, and Phish’s Trey Anastasio. Chamber music has been at the very core of Shelagh’s success as a musician. She is a winner of the Coleman Competition (2000), and a founding member of the award-winning Triton Brass. Shelagh is Associate Professor of Horn at The Berklee College of Music, and has been on faculty with the Boston University Tanglewood Institute since 2008. She is a Stephens Custom Horns artist, regularly performing on one of the very first horns handcrafted by Stephen Shires.

David Faleris '04, Composer + Audio Creative

An active and versatile musician, David Faleris wears many hats as a composer, trombonist, educator, and administrator. After completing his undergraduate work at Boston College (B.A. Music), David returned to his home state of Maryland to study with James Olin at The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University (M.M. Trombone Performance). He returned to Boston and served as Program Administrator for the Boston University Tanglewood Institute while teaching at Boston College and freelancing as a composer and trombonist. After eight years, David set out to pursue his long-time passion of composing for visual media by way of Berklee College of Music (M.M. & Post-Graduate Fellowship, Scoring for Film, Television, and Video Games) in Valencia, Spain. After eight years abroad — two in Spain followed by six in Scotland — he returned to New England with his wife Lisa, now residing in Newburyport, Massachusetts.