Taneshia Nash Laird has been appointed as an associate professor at the Berklee College of Music’s Africana Studies Department in Boston. She will be teaching a new course entitled Entrepreneurship in Black Creative Expression. The course will also be available to Boston Conservatory students. The class examines the intersection of entrepreneurship with music, theater, and dance within Afrodiasporic cultures. The course roadmap is designed to provide students with practical insights and hands-on experience in launching and managing for-profit businesses and nonprofit initiatives within the Black performing arts industry. Students will learn to transform artistic visions into sustainable, impactful enterprises.
Nash Laird is the inaugural president and CEO of the Greater Roxbury Arts & Cultural Center (GRACC). The organization presents and develops innovative performing arts, cinema, visual art and humanities that honor the cultural roots and diverse talent emergent from the African diaspora while promoting social justice and economic development in the Nubian Square neighborhood of Boston. She is presiding over the program’s $35 million building project to create a 34,000-square-foot facility that will be New England’s first state-of-the-art visual and performing arts center led by Black founders.
Before taking this position, Nash Laird was president and CEO of Newark Symphony Hall in New Jersey, where she raised $15 million to revitalize and rebuild the historic building, showcasing her financial acumen and dedication to the arts.
Previous roles also include serving as executive director at the Arts Council of Princeton, leading its Paul Robeson Center for the Arts; regional director of the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce; and director of economic development for Trenton, New Jersey.
She is co-author of “Still I Rise: A Graphic History of African Americans” and co-produced films including “Battle Sounds,” a Hip-hop DJ documentary, and “Black Terror.” She is a member of the Recording Academy and served on the advisory board for the Grammy Museum’s “Hip-Hop America: The Mixtape Exhibit,” which celebrated the 50th anniversary of the genre and culture. Last year, Nash Laird was recognized by Wonder Women Tech as one of the “136 Black Innovators in STEM + Arts You Must Know and Support!”
