Posted July 29, 2025
(July 29, 2025 – Garrison, New York)
Hudson Valley Shakespeare (Davis McCallum, Artistic Director; Kendra Ekelund, Managing Director) announced today that Laura Steinberger has been appointed as the new Director of Finance, following a nationwide search led by Tom O’Connor Consulting Group.
Laura Steinberger brings deep experience in nonprofit leadership, strategic financial management, and business operations, with a career spanning the arts, education, technology, and finance sectors. Most recently, Steinberger served as Managing Director at ArtsRock, where she oversaw financial systems, budgeting, and organizational strategy to transform community impact and long-term stability. Prior to that, Laura held the role of Chief Operating Officer at the Children’s Environmental Literacy Foundation, where she led strategic financial planning, managed its successful merger with another nonprofit, and guided the organization through the pandemic by rapidly implementing virtual programs that expanded national reach and improved financial sustainability.
Earlier, Steinberger built a successful career in investment research at Neuberger Berman, focusing on long-term investing in media, telecom and technology. She began her professional journey in the tech sector in Paris, managing cross-cultural teams and global operations during periods of rapid growth. Steinberger earned an MBA in Finance and a BA in Art History and French from Columbia University. She brings to Hudson Valley Shakespeare a deep belief in the power of the arts to connect and inspire, along with a passion for building resilient, mission-driven organizations.
“At this transformational moment with the new HVS campus rising from the Hudson Valley landscape, I’m excited to join the team to help steward the organization’s financial resources in support of bold storytelling, vibrant community-building, and a lasting connection to this singular setting,” said Steinberger.
“We are thrilled to welcome Laura to our team at this pivotal time in Hudson Valley Shakespeare’s history,” says Managing Director Kendra Ekelund. “Laura’s breadth and wealth of experience from nonprofit financial strategy to Wall Street, paired with her deep commitment to fostering mission-driven organizations make her the perfect fit for our growing team. As we embark on the exciting next chapter of our story, including the development of our permanent home here at HVS, Laura’s expertise will be essential in ensuring that our vision for artistic excellence, community engagement, and both environmental and financial sustainability continues to flourish. We look forward to all that we will accomplish together.”
HVS is currently celebrating its 2025 Season, which includes William Shakespeare’s uproarious comedy The Comedy of Errors, directed by longtime company member Ryan Quinn (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd); “One of the sweetest and smartest romantic farces ever written,” (Terry Teachout, WSJ), Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker, directed by Davis McCallum (Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play) and featuring Kurt Rhoads and Nance Williamson; and Octet, a chamber choir musical by Tony Award nominee Dave Malloy (Natasha, Pierre, and The Great Comet of 1812) and directed by Amanda Dehnert (Love’s Labor’s Lost), produced by special arrangement with Plate Spinner Productions.
ABOUT HUDSON VALLEY SHAKESPEARE
Located eighty minutes north of Manhattan, Hudson Valley Shakespeare (HVS) is a professional non-profit theater company that presents a rotating repertory season of lucid and highly inventive productions of both Shakespeare and more contemporary plays in an open-air theater overlooking the Hudson River. Founded in 1987 and formerly known as the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, HVS’s critically acclaimed body of work is forged from the most essential of elements – actors, audience, language, and landscape. The company’s spectacular 98-acre campus serves as a vibrant hub for the local community, a cultural and educational anchor for the region, and a national model for environmental sustainability in the performing arts. After 38 years of performing in a seasonal tent, in the summer of 2026 HVS will welcome audiences to its first-ever permanent home – the Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center, designed by the celebrated architecture firm Studio Gang. Protected from the elements but open to the landscape, the Scripps Theater Center will be the first purpose-built LEED Platinum theater in the United States.
Rooted in the landscape of the Hudson Valley, with the plays of William Shakespeare as their touchstone, Hudson Valley Shakespeare engages the widest possible audience in a theatrical celebration of our shared humanity.
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