Originally from Rio de Janeiro, McCarter Center’s Director of Special Programming Paula Abreu has built a formidable reputation in New York as a live event curator and culture cultivator. Since 2012, Abreu has produced dozens of artists’ US premieres (including Emicida, Dino D’Santiago, and Gaby Amarantos) as part of a career responsible for the staging of over 1500+ performances, cumulatively attended by nearly a million audience members. She brings a decade of experience with multiple major not-for-profit NYC institutions, including the Red Hot Organization, Lincoln Center, and the SummerStage and Charlie Parker Jazz Festivals. Abreu’s work joyfully embraces creative diversity and offers a nuanced reimagining of the role of arts presenter. In 2019, she spearheaded SummerStage’s gender parity pledge, making the festival one of the first in the Americas to consistently present a 50-50 balance of male and female performers. A respected and frequently sought-after moderator for panels and engagements, Abreu has acted as an artistic juror, speaker, or mentor at conferences around the world, including South by Southwest (USA), Asia Pacific Music Meeting (Korea), Moshito Music Conference (South Africa), Atlantic Music Expo (Cape Verde), Mundial Montréal (Canada), Sonidos Latinos (Spain), Bogotá Music Market (Colombia), and MusiConnect (France). She is a 2022 Panelist for the NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theater; a 2021 American Express Converge Social Justice Leadership Academy Fellow; a SIM São Paulo Consulting Committee Member since 2019; and a 2018 WOMEX Samurai. Abreu holds a BS in Production Engineering from PUC-Rio and an MA in Performing Arts Administration from NYU. Among her most proud achievements are producing a concert with the late Brazilian samba legend Elza Soares following a thirty year US performance hiatus, presenting a debut collaboration between Afrobeat icon Seun Kuti and jazz-funk pioneer Roy Ayers, and the birth of her daughter Julia, who joined the Abreu family in 2020.