Marcia Sells. Photo courtesy of The Met by Eileen Barasso
We will never stop supporting Black women getting their things! This past year has been rough, but from the pain, institutions are slowly starting to promote tangible change. The Metropolitan Opera has made Marcia Sells the company’s first-ever Chief Diversity Officer. Among her responsibilities in the new position, Sells will be tasked with implementing a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) plan which will be at the core of the company’s hiring, artistic planning, and audience engagement activities. She will also be helping to identify the company’s systematic and structural inequities while working with the marketing and development departments on broadening the company’s base audience.
Her Black art roots run deep. She got her start as a dancer at Dance Theater of Harlem, then went on to earn her law degree from Columbia University. She has worked for countless corporations from the NBA to Reuters. Right before accepting this position, she was the Dean of Students at Harvard Law School since 2015.
“At a time when social justice rightly demands that we address the inequities of our art form, I’m pleased that we have chosen the ideal candidate in Marcia for implementing long overdue and necessary change,” said Peter Gelb, the Met’s General Manager.
Congrats Marcia! We cannot wait to see what you do with this company!
