Maria Manuela Goyanes (she/her) joined Woolly as Artistic Director in 2018, after serving as Director of Producing and Artistic Planning at The Public Theater, where she oversaw the day-to-day execution of a full slate of plays and musicals at the Public’s five-theater venue at Astor Place and the Delacorte Theater for Shakespeare in the Park. Earlier in her career at The Public, she managed some of the theater’s most celebrated productions, including Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Josephine & I by Cush Jumbo, Straight White Men by Young Jean Lee, Barbecue by Robert O’Hara, and Here Lies Love by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim. While at The Public, Maria also held a position on the adjunct faculty of Juilliard and curated the junior year curriculum of the Playwrights Horizons Theater School at NYU. Since 2015, she has served as a member of the board of the National Alliance for Musical Theatre. From 2006 to 2008, she co-chaired the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab with Jason Grote, and from 2004 to 2012, was the Executive Producer of 13P. Maria is a first-generation Latinx-American, born to parents who emigrated from the Dominican Republic and Spain. She was raised in Jamaica, Queens, and earned her Bachelor of Arts from Brown University.

Mina Morita (she/her) is a celebrated new plays director just awarded the Woolly Mammoth BOLD Resident Director & Creative Producer position as part of the BOLD Theatre Women’s Leadership Circle. She has directed for: Australia’s National Theatre of Parramatta and La Boite Theatres, The Guthrie Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, American Conservatory Theater, Magic Theatre, Center REPertory Company, Campo Santo, Shotgun Players, Playwrights Foundation, Ferocious Lotus, Bay Area Children’s Theatre, and Crowded Fire Theatre Company with such creators as Susan Soon He Stanton, Qui Nguyen, Anna Deavere Smith, Sanaz Toossi, Dipika Guha, Christopher Chen, Dave Harris, Star Finch, Stefani Kuo, J.C. Lee, Lauren Gunderson, Isaac Gomez, Philip Kan Gotanda, Young Jean Lee, Idris Goodwin, Lloyd Suh, Adam Chanzit, Sean San Jose, Min Kahng, and Dustin Chinn.

Mina is a recipient of the inaugural FrontOffice Mid-Career Director’s Award, Theatre Bay Area’s [TBA] Outstanding Direction of a Musical in 2014; nominated by TBA for Outstanding Direction of a Play in 2017, as well as Shellie Awards Best Director in 2018. She was recognized as a Beinecke Fellow with Yale University in 2022.

Previously, she served as the Leader of Artistic Curation & Strategy as part of the Shared Leadership Team in 2023 and Artistic Director from 2015-2022 at Crowded Fire Theater Company. From 2011-2015, she was the Artistic Associate at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and its center for the creation and development of new work, The Ground Floor. She has also served as Board President and Treasurer of Shotgun Players; as a 2014 Lincoln Center Director’s Lab participant; as one of the founding members of Bay Area Children's Theatre; as panelist with the Zellerbach Family Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, Theatre Bay Area, and Hewlett Foundation; as a speaker for the Getty Leadership Summit; lead facilitator for the Lotus Playwriting Retreat with Playwriting Australia; and Guest Artist at Yale’s DGSD, UC Berkeley and Stanford Universities. In 2016, TBA awarded her the 40@40 distinction for her impact on Bay Area Theater. In 2015, Mina was honored to share her story on TEDx, and in 2016, she was chosen as one of the YBCA100, for "asking questions and making provocations that will shape the future of culture."