WILFREDO HERNANDEZ

Pronouns: He//Him, They//Them

Founder + CEO

Email: whernandez@communitasac.com || Linkedin

Wilfredo is a proud queer, Latinx interdisciplinary artist, cultural producer and consultant. He is the founder and CEO of Communitas Arts & Culture, LLC (CAC), a national consulting and producing lab, and is Founder & Executive Producing Director of the Drag Arts Oral History Project (DAOHP), a multimedia social impact project documenting the experiences, artistry and needs of drag and queer performance artists in Philadelphia and beyond. Over the years, he has worked and consulted for several notable institutions like Disney Theatrical Productions (Broadway), Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts/Lincoln Center Education, NYU, The Field, the Brooklyn Community Pride Center, the Independence Public Media Foundation, We Are The Seeds, Beyond the Bell Tours, and the Philadelphia Latino Arts & Film Festival.

He has produced and directed over 40 full-length theatrical productions (including producing/directing one of the first national pilot productions of “Disney’s Peter Pan Jr.” for Disney Theatrical Productions), launched innovative public cultural programs (including Lincoln Center’s “Boro-Linc” initiative across NYC’s outer-borough communities, and the “LGBTQ+ New Americans Oral History Project” for queer asylees and immigrants in New York City) and brings over 20 years of cultural leadership experience to his work. He received his M.A. in Producing & Directing Theatre from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and is a proud graduate of Race Forward’s Racial Equity in the Arts Innovation Lab, PISAB’s Undoing Racism for Community Organizers, and the Philadelphia Mayor’s Office on LGBT Affairs’ LGBTQ Leadership Pipeline Program. Through the years he has helped hundreds of artists and organizations grow and secure significant funding (over $2M to date) and has received generous recognition for his own creative work, including: an Honorary Citation from the New York City Council for his direction of the LGBTQ New Americans Oral History Project with the Brooklyn Community Pride Center (2016-2019); a 2020 Everyday Genius Award from the Da Vinci Art Alliance (Philadelphia); and was profiled by The Philadelphia Business Journal’s “Business of Pride 2023” special Pride Month issue honoring LGBTQ+ business leaders in the region.

From 2021-2023, he served as the Interim Executive Director and Trust President at CultureWorks Greater Philadelphia, where he drove organizational development, staff/board/policy overhaul, and planning for implementation of a new co-executive director leadership structure. He directly oversaw capacity building strategy in support of a community of 100+ fiscally sponsored arts/culture projects in Philadelphia with over $7M+ in annual financial holdings and management activities and secured over $100k in grant funding to help support CultureWorks’ sustainability and leadership transition needs long-term.

He was appointed to a three-year term as a member of the Board of Directors of The Philadelphia Cultural Fund in 2023, where he serves on the strategic planning and programs committees. He holds a Certificate in Effective Philanthropy from Stanford University. Over the past year he was one of seven Americans selected as an inaugural fellow of the “Building LGBTQ+ Communities in Germany & the US” by the American-German Institute at Johns Hopkins University, as well as one of 40 national leadership fellows accepted to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health Leadership Institute for Racial Healing. He is currently one of the inaugural Cultural Producers in Residence with the Philadelphia Latino Arts & Film Festival (PHLAFF) and an Unmapping Fellow at Drexel University’s Writers Room for the 2024/2025 academic year focusing on storytelling for social change and national expansion of the Drag Arts Oral History project.

Areas of Expertise: Visioning, Strategy & Planning, Organizational Analysis & Development, Executive Leadership, Grant Writing, Community Engagement; Curriculum Development & Research.

Areas of Interest: Philanthropic History & Change Work, Queerness & Drag Arts, Latine/x Studies & Diaspora, Non-fiction Narrative Arts & Change, Oral History, Food & Drink Culture, Performance Studies, Public History, Myth/Religion/Spirituality, Politics & Identity in Performance.