Marc Bamuthi Joseph

Marc Bamuthi Joseph is a TED Global Fellow, an Emerson Collective Dial Fellow, an inaugural recipient of the Guggenheim Social Practice initiative, and an honoree of the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship. He is also the winner of the 2011 Herb Alpert Award in Theatre, and an inaugural recipient of the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. In spring 2022, he was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. An internationally renowned cultural strategist, Bamuthi is the co-creator of the paradigm-shifting allyship training HEALING FORWARD™. He has lectured in 25 different countries and his TED talk “You Have The Rite” has been viewed more than five million times. Bamuthi has recently completed commissions for Yale University, the Albany Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, and Washington National Opera. His new opera, Watch Night, with music by Tamar-kali and direction by Bill T. Jones, premiered at PAC NYC in 2023, and his collaboration with NYC Ballet Associate Artistic Director Wendy Whelan, Carnival of the Animals, premiered at Seattle’s Meany Center in 2024. His most recent orchestral work, Good News Mass with music by Carlos Simon, was premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in April 2025. His latest collaboration with composer Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR), Forgiveness, recorded with the Albany Symphony, is out now on Bright Shiny Things records. Select works by Bamuthi are available for purchase and rental on SozoMart.com. An emergent onscreen talent, he is among the featured performers in HBO’s screen adaptation of Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. He served as the vice president of social impact at the Kennedy Center from 2019 to 2025. A proud alumnus of Morehouse College, Bamuthi received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the California College of Arts in spring 2022 and was the recipient of a second honorary doctorate from Middlebury College in spring 2023.