Pamela Blizzard

• Pamela serves on the Board of  Burning Coal Theatre Company, on the Finance Committee, and has led the Development Committee in the past. Pamela has served on many boards locally and nationally in medical licensure, including the NC Medical Board.  Professionally, Pamela Blizzard led the founding of Research Triangle High School in 2011 and was Managing Director through 20I9. In 2004, Pamela founded and developed the Contemporary Science Center, a science education non-profit based on the sciences of Research Triangle Park. In  1999, Pamela led the founding of Raleigh Charter High School. She is also a locally produced amateur playwright (Women’s Theatre Festival, Burning Coal’s Oakwood Series) and takes painting classes for pleasure (or torture, depending).

Jerome Davis, Artistic Director

• Jerry founded Burning Coal Theatre in 1995 with his wife, Simmie Kastner.  They moved to Raleigh in 1996 and did their first production here in 1997.  Since then, Jerry and Simmie have grown the company from a $30,000 annual budget to a budget of approximately $600,000, moved the company into the historic Murphey School auditorium, which was renovated in 2008 after a fundraising campaign that raised more than $1.5 million, and managed to get through its first 25 years entirely debt free.  Burning Coal has also performed in New York City, London, England, at the Piccolo Spoletto Festival, in Cleveland, Ohio and at the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, DC.

Brandi Gerew

Grace Gregson

• Grace Gregson is a Raleigh native and lifelong theater lover.  She is a double Tar Heel, with an undergraduate degree and Juris Doctorate from UNC Chapel Hill.  She is an Associate Attorney at Smith Anderson in the Commercial Litigation practice group.  Grace has participated in theater productions from a young age both on-stage and backstage: on-stage credits include Peter Pan (Wendy Darling, u/s Peter Pan), Grease (Marty, u/s Rizzo), Steel Magnolias (Clairee Belcher), and Twelve Angry Women (Juror #10).

Chris Glover

Martha Huelsbeck, Treasurer

• Martha is a retired, accomplished finance professional, with broad experience leading accounting, financial planning and analysis, regulatory compliance, contracts administration, and program control. Martha has industry experience in nonprofit, higher education and government contracting. She worked at Chazin & Co in her final years before retiring, providing outsourced accounting, finance and advisory services to non-profit organizations nationwide. In her early years as an accounting leader, she was the Finance and Operations Director for the University of Iowa Division of Performing Arts.

Simmie Kastner

• Simmie has worked professionally at Fidelity Investments in RTP for the past 17 years, and is currently a Vice President in product development.

Peter Marin

Jim Martin

Paul Leone, Secretary

• Paul has been employed by IBM Corporation as a Software Architect for over 40 years and has been a volunteer for Burning Coal since their first season’s production of Pentecost in 1998.  He joined the Board of Directors in July 2020, chairs the Administration & Technology Committee, and serves as Board Secretary since Jan 2022. Paul’s other hobbies and interests include photography, yoga, travel, enjoying craft beer, being a foodie, playing with his dog, going to concerts, experiencing live theatre locally and on Broadway.

Adam O’Brien, President

• Adam’s love of the arts and theater started in his youth, attending events at the Greenbrier Valley Theater, the State Professional Theater of West Virginia, and Carnegie Hall in Lewisburg, WV. He continued this pursuit with some schooling at Virginia Tech before delving into the restaurant world. For 17 years, Adam was an Operations Manager with various restaurant franchisees across several states. During this tenure, he was tasked with turning around underperforming locations and building a culture of training and development. Needing a change of pace, Adam took on the world of real estate at Monarch Realty with a purposeful focus on all things Downtown Raleigh. As an annual multi-million dollar producer, he has found that building relationships and being an active part of the community makes for a life well lived.

Greg Paul

• Greg began his career as a welder and journeyman carpenter before founding Greg Paul Builders in 1985, where he continues to contribute as a consultant. An active community member, he has served on multiple nonprofit boards, chaired significant projects, and led pro-bono renovations for schools and historic sites. He previously served as Board Chair for Burning Coal Theatre from 2004-2007, and oversaw the renovation of the Murphey School Auditorium in 2007. His work has earned numerous awards, including the 2006 Small Business Supporter of the Arts from the United Arts Council and several Sir Walter Raleigh Appearance Commission Awards for historic restorations. A passionate actor, musician, and avid traveler, Greg has performed in over 50 theater productions, played guitar in old-time string bands, and explored cities across North America and Europe.

David Potori

• David Potorti moved to North Carolina in 1999 to pursue a Masters in Folklore at UNC-Chapel Hill. A Cary resident, he attended his first Burning Coal production in 2004 at the Kennedy Theatre and has long admired the company’s prudent growth into a mainstay of the Triangle arts scene. David was a journalist in New York and Los Angeles, where he also wrote and produced broadcast network and cable television marketing and promotion. After losing his brother on 9/11, he co-founded September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, a nonprofit seeking alternatives to war, which was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 and 2004. David spent 13 years at the North Carolina Arts Council. As its Arts Tourism Manager, he did on-camera interviews with artists working in a variety of disciplines across the state, and populated the agency’s website with streaming videos. As its Literature and Theater Director, he supported North Carolina theater organizations and individual writers as they pursued grant funding, facilitating fellowship awards as well as the NC Poet Laureate program. Since retiring, David has written Audio Description for plays and television shows, and co-edited (with former NC Poet Laureate Joseph Bathanti) the anthology, Crossing the Rift: North Carolina Poets on 9/11 (Press 53, Winston-Salem). Working as a disc jockey from his college radio days through time spent at WUNC-FM, he has a genre-crossing love of music and has also passed through the NC State Extension Master Gardener program. As time permits, he writes the blog, “DOOM Buffet,” where he explores a lifetime of memorabilia he “Didn’t Organize, Only Moved.”

Gwynn Swinson

• A prominent North Carolina leader with a career spanning 45 years, Gwynn Swinson has served in a number of high-profile public service, legal and administrative roles such as Cabinet Secretary overseeing the North Carolina Department of Administration; Special Deputy Attorney General for the North Carolina Department of Justice; Assistant Branch Director for the Commercial Litigation Branch, Civil Division, at the US Department of Justice and Associate Dean of Admissions and Student Affairs at the Duke University School of Law. Additionally, Gwynn taught Trial Advocacy as an adjunct associate law professor at UNC-Chapel Hill School of Law and Torts as an adjunct professor at NCCU Law School. She was a visiting professor at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, taught Legal English at the Kyoto Comparative Law Center and lectured at the Ministry of Health in Taipei, Taiwan. Gwynn holds a J.D. from Antioch School of Law, now UDC School of Law and an LLM from Duke University. North Carolina A&T State University honored Gwynn by awarding her an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities. She has served on numerous boards, commissions and committees including the Board of Trustees for the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the Bennett College Re-engineering Committee as well as the Boards of Leadership Triangle, the NC Institute of Minority Economic Development and the NC Center for Public Policy Research.

Cecilia Zuvic

• Cecilia Zuvic is a real estate broker with Monarch Realty in Downtown Raleigh. Most recently she led sales of the Fairweather in Downtown Raleigh, the first urban condominium developed in Downtown Raleigh since before the great recession. She is also the VP of Sales and Alliances at a Cyber Security Company.  Originally from Santa Cruz, (Southern Patagonia) Argentina, she has been involved in International Trade and IT consulting for 15+ years. Her main tasks have always been to put people together and to find people that would be the right fit to work with each other. She attended school in Argentina, and majored in International Trade at Universidad de Belgrano – Buenos Aires, after living in Australia at age 17 studying Multiculturalism. Locally, she serves on the board for Visual Art Exchange (VAE) downtown and is part of the leadership group for the new Chavis Park master plan.