EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP

Alongside the Deeply Rooted Board of Directors, the executive team oversees the long-term sustainability and vitality of one of Chicago’s most treasured dance institutions.

Led by Board Chair Daniel O. Ash, Executive Director Makeda Crayton, and Artistic Director Nicole Clarke-Springer, the executive team ensures the continued success of Deeply Rooted's artistic and institutional goals.

DANIEL O. ASH
Board Chair

Daniel O. Ash (he/him/his) is president of the Field Foundation of Illinois, where he is responsible for collaborating with the Board and staff to help Field achieve its mission—centering racial equity to achieve community empowerment through Art, Justice, Media & Storytelling, and Leadership Investment. Annually, the Foundation, along with its strategic funding partners, distributes more than $4.5 million in grants to organizations working to address systemic issues in Chicago's divested communities.

Prior to being appointed president at Field, Daniel served as associate vice president of Community Impact for The Chicago Community Trust, where he was responsible for creating the Building Collective Power strategy to help advance equitable neighborhoods within under-invested communities through grant-making to community organizing, storytelling, and resident-driven initiatives.

Previously, Daniel served as the Trust’s chief marketing officer with responsibility for directing brand strategy and communications, and for spearheading the development of On the Table, an ongoing civic engagement and dialogue platform designed to center and amplify resident voices and create greater civic connectedness across the Chicago region.

Before joining the Trust, Daniel spent 10 years as vice president of Chicago Public Media, production home of WBEZ/91.5FM (Chicago’s primary NPR station), This American Life, Sound Opinions, Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me and Vocalo.org. In this role, he was responsible for the organization’s two largest revenue categories—corporate sponsorship and individual giving—and led double-digit growth during his tenure. Additionally, he oversaw marketing and strategic partnership. He was a key voice in shaping Chicago Public Media’s overall strategic focus.

Daniel’s professional career has been focused on developing and using marketing and communication tools to advance social causes. He has worked exclusively in the nonprofit sector on issues including poverty, adolescent health, and HIV/AIDS care and prevention. The early stage of Daniel’s professional career included leadership roles at Shriver Center on Poverty Law, Chicago Department of Public Health, Center for Family Policy and Practice, and the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health.

Daniel earned his M.P.P. from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, and a B.A. in Economics from Oberlin College. He also completed a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship at Princeton University.

MAKEDA CRAYTON
Executive Director 

Makeda Crayton, a Chicago native, began her dance training at Studio One Dance Theatre and refined her technique at Bryant Ballet, The Juilliard School, Interlochen School of the Arts, and I.D.E.A.S.-Germany. Although dance has always been her first love, she chose to nurture her creative and analytical skills and earned a BS in biology from Clark Atlanta University. 

Functioning in dual capacities in front of and behind the curtain has been a hallmark of Crayton’s career. While performing as a guest artist for Cape Dance Company in Cape Town, South Africa, she also served as repetiteur for world-renowned choreographer Christopher Huggins, and she returned to the tour of Disney’s Aida in Taiwan as dancer and assistant director. She also has enjoyed teaching across the U.S. and overseas; her first official engagement with Deeply Rooted was teaching ballet for the Summer Dance Intensive in 2011 and 2012. 

On stage, Crayton has performed with the Bryant Ballet Company, Joel Hall Dancers, the Willingham Project, and Dallas Black Dance Theater. Her Broadway credits include Disney's Aida – the China tour, Summer Solstice, Dances from the Heart with the cast of Disney’s The Lion King, and Mozart L’Opera Rock in Paris, France, where she also was associate choreographer. She has assisted Christopher Huggins with setting ballets on The Ailey School, Ailey II, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Philadanco!, Dallas Black Dance Theater, and the Dallas Theater Center's production of The Wiz, among others. 

In 2013, Crayton accepted the role of soloist with Cirque du Soleil’s Zumanity, where she remained until the show’s closing in November 2020. Shortly thereafter, Deeply Rooted Artistic Director Nicole Clarke-Springer and Co-Founder Kevin Iega Jeff approached her about a new opportunity that would combine her creative and analytical skills once again. In January 2021, she began working as Deeply Rooted’s operations director.  On January 1, 2023, she became executive director and looks forward to fulfilling Deeply Rooted’s mission and vision.

NICOLE CLARKE-SPRINGER
Artistic Director

Nicole Clarke-Springer began formal training under the guidance of Claudette Soltis (Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and Joliet Ballet Society) and the Indianapolis Ballet Theatre under Dace Diodonis. She received her B.S. in arts administration-dance from Butler University in Indianapolis, where she was honored as Butler Ballet’s Outstanding Performer.

Shortly after graduating from Butler, Clarke-Springer found her dance home within the Deeply Rooted Dance Theater family—first as an apprentice and later as company member. As a member of DRDT, she had the opportunity to perform with Roberta Flack in Kevin Iega Jeff’s Flack, as well as Jennifer Holiday in the world-renowned Penumbra Theatre’s Black Nativity. She briefly left the company in 2007 to serve as adjunct professor in Western Kentucky University’s Dance Department. While there, she was asked to join the Clifton Brown Dance Company, performing on its tour to Istanbul, Turkey. The same year, Clarke-Springer returned to the Deeply family as program director of its Summer Dance Intensive. During this time, she began deepening her choreographic voice, creating and later setting works including Nine, Dounia, and Femme for the main and second companies. She also served as assistant choreographer to Kevin Iega Jeff for Congo Square Theatre’s Nativity for two years.

In 2013, Clarke-Springer joined Kevin Iega Jeff and Gary Abbott as the newest member of the Deeply Rooted Artistic Team and was named Deeply Rooted Dance Theater’s Emerging Choreographer for the program “Generations.” Among the critical responses to her work Hadiya were these thoughts from Lynn Colburn Shapiro, See Chicago Dance:  “a poignant memorial tribute…filled with…ritualistic gestures [that] carry a ceremonial theme…a living eulogy not only for the slain Hadiya Pendleton, but for all children who have lost their lives to violence.”

In August 2015, she traveled with Deeply Rooted to participate in JOMBA! Dance Festival hosted by Flatfoot Dance Company, where she set her ballet Until Lambs Become Lions on the host company.

In 2016, Clarke-Springer choreographed the opening number for the nationally syndicated Steve Harvey Show- Halloween Celebration. She teaches and choreographs throughout the country and has been on faculty as an adjunct professor at Chicago State University and Western Kentucky University and is currently on staff at Northwestern University.

Crediting Deeply Rooted’s mission, Clarke-Springer works to create an environment where artists participate in a process that is not only spiritually affirming but requires open and honest dialogue that leads to self-reflection, constructive feedback, and accountability to the work required. She was appointed Artistic Director of Deeply Rooted Dance Theater in September 2019.