Christina D. Eskridge, MPH
Elevate Theatre Company LLC. Founder and Executive Director
She is a performing artist, teaching artist, director, playwright and public health professional, holding a Master’s Degree in Public Health from UC Berkeley. For the past decade, Christina has worked to fuse her two passions of health and theater through performance, her teaching artistry, and her extensive work in health care at Kaiser Permanente. Christina is also on the Board of Directors for the National Organization for Arts in Health (NOAH). From performances specifically for children with autism, to facilitating workshops using drama-based techniques in the corporate environment, Christina believes live theater is a healing tool, ripe with opportunity. This belief drove her to establish Elevate in 2020, during the historic COVID-19 pandemic, producing live, virtual theater about important health issues, for audiences across the country.
Learn more about Christina as a performing artist at www.christinadeskridge.com
Elevate Advisory Board
Ryan Sutherland is a servant leader, soldier, and coach. Ryan currently serves as Area Portfolio Lead in the Roseville service area for Kaiser Foundation Hospital (KFH) where he focuses on strategic alignment and project management through the implementation of daily management systems. He received his Master of Health Administration (MHA) from The George Washington University and earned his Lean Six Sigma Black Belt from Purdue University.
Ryan recently transitioned from the California Army National Guard to the Inactive Ready Reserve (IRR) after 12 years of service. Primarily serving with Combat Units, Ryan earned the rank of Captain while deployed to Sinai, Egypt with the 299th Cavalry Regiment from Hilo, Hawaii. While in service, Ryan’s most influential years came while working as an Executive Office in the Warrior Transition Battalion (WTB), helping service Men and Women with critical injuries and severe PTSD transition from Active Duty to civilian life.
Outside of work, Ryan is on his second season as Varsity Head Coach for the Roseville High School Lacrosse Team. He is the first and only head coach to serve in the role and has been influential in growing the program from 19 players to 52 in just one season. Ryan is an avid skier, surfer, and lover of all sports. He is currently training with Team END ALZ, the official athletic fundraising program of the Alzheimer's Association MA/NH Chapter, to race in the coming 127th Boston Marathon.
Patrick T. Smith is the Director of Bioethics Programs for the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine at Duke University School of Medicine. He is an Associate Research Professor of Theological Ethics and Bioethics at Duke University Divinity School and Associate Professor in Population Health Sciences (Secondary Appointment), Duke University Medical School. He also is a Senior Fellow with the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke.
He has served as a member of the board of directors, the executive committee, and Treasurer for the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities. In his training as a philosopher, Patrick is especially committed to exploring the close and often forgotten links between bioethics, public health, community engagement, and social justice. He often considers and applies in his work how Jazz music concepts might inform our approach to ethics and our common life together.
He has served on the board of directors of organizations working for more equitable social arrangements such as YW Boston, which aims to empower women and eliminate racism. He also contributed thought leadership by serving on the board of a community development corporation that supports local communities through building affordable housing and its direct connection to health.
A natural explorer at heart, Kristyn Pritchett, has dedicated her career to designing new and creative person-centric healthcare solutions that keep people healthy, happy and living their best life.
Kristyn is the Executive Director of the Clinical Innovation Consultancy at Kaiser Permanente (KP) in the NCal Market. It is comprised of a cutting-edge design team and deployment experts who drive equitable & inclusive clinical care delivery innovation for KP NCal’s 4.5+ million+ lives.
Her primary focus is to inspire leaders to become systems thinkers, reimagining how KP NCal designs sustainable patient centric solutions that optimize quality & experience.
Kristyn received a master’s degree in Public Health from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has over a decade of experience in clinical, business process redesign and human-centered design with large health systems and now has a dedicated passion to bring equity-centered design to the forefront of her and teams design work. She is the mother of two amazing children, a wife to an equally incredible husband, who keep her grounded and remind her that each moment presents a new opportunity.
Paul Brewster McGinley is a New York City based theatre artist, educator, and administrator driven to create aesthetic and educational experiences for youth and families. He is Director of Teaching & Learning for Roundabout Theatre Company (roundabouttheatre.org/education) and Managing Director of Trusty Sidekick Theater Company (trustysidekick.org). He has also taught at City College of New York and as a teaching artist for Disney Theatrical Group. Paul has numerous producing, directing and stage management credits at regional and off-Broadway theatres. BFA, NYU Tisch. MA, NYU Steinhardt.
Christina Mainero holds an MPH in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases from the Yale School of Public Health and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. During her career, she has worked with Illumination Foundation, a non-profit working to break the cycle of homelessness; Deloitte Consulting; the Yale Emerging Infections Program; CAMA, a boutique health design firm; Kaiser Permanente; and Blue Shield of California.
At Blue Shield, Christina focuses on reimagining how pharmacy care is delivered. Prior to joining Blue Shield, she co-led the Care Transformation program for Kaiser Permanente in Northern California and was on the faculty of KP’s Advanced Human-Centered Design Program. Christina is a mentor for Yale’s TSAI CITY (Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale) where she has coached 3 female-led teams in the healthcare and social enterprise space. Christina has been invited to speak at the Hive at the Claremont Colleges, Texas Tech, Parsons School of Design, and Yale on how human-centered design can make healthcare delivery more inclusive and impactful. She also serves on the Yale School of Public Health Alumni Board.
Christina is a big proponent of the arts and has most recently studied satire writing with Second City. Her published works include her 2019 wedding invitation, Thursday’s to-do list for her husband, and “Socioeconomic Status and Foodborne Pathogens in Connecticut, USA, 2000–2011” published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, 21(9):1617-24.
Courtney Hartman, PsyD is a licensed clinical psychologist based in the SF Bay area with a background in all things theatre. She has been practicing in CA since 2017 working with children, families and adults using an AntiRacist lens in her clinical practice. She has performed and collaborated in various visual art installations and bay area theatre projects for over a decade; including a directing debut in the 2019 VDay season with VDay East Bay the Vagina Monologues emphasizing racial diversity and acknowledgment of the limitations of a script that aims to represent the experiences of all women. She continues to work towards integrating her psychological and theatre practices to engage audiences in complex and vital topics and is very excited to be joining forces with Elevate and their mission driven theatre!
Elevate is a certified Minority, Woman Owned Business Enterprise with the New York City Department of Small Business Services