Marissa Ontiveros is a queer, Chicanx Creative & Arts Administrator

Marissa Ontiveros is a theater maker, teaching artist, social media manager, and arts administrator committed to dismantling barriers of access and centering care, creativity, and community in all that she does. She currently serves as Social Media Manager for Actionplay, supporting neurodivergent and disabled artists by sharing their work with clarity and respect.

Marissa most recently served as Meridian Program Manager for the Center for Educational Innovation, where she supported large-scale professional learning for educators and helped coordinate partnerships, logistics, and communications across schools and community programs. Her work there strengthened her focus on systems, collaboration, and the ways resources shape what programs are able to reach students and families.

As a teaching artist, Marissa has partnered with Girl Be Heard, Brooklyn Acting Lab, Learning Extended Arts Programs, Brooklyn Art Exchange, Lincoln Center, St. Nick’s Alliance, and CO/LAB Theater Group, which aims to give individuals with developmental disabilities a creative and social outlet through theater arts. She specializes in centering intersectional identity and celebrating creative choice through devised theater, movement, storytelling, and play.

She was also a Performing Arts Legacy Fellow with the Research Center for Arts and Culture at The Actors Fund, where she helped create an online platform to document and represent the careers of older performing arts professionals.

She received her BFA from New York University Tisch School of the Arts, training at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Marissa approaches administration and development as creative practices that shape how people are welcomed, supported, and given what they need to participate.