BIO

Jen Leno (she/they) is a Lighting Designer, Photographer, and Generative Artist working out of Brooklyn, NY. She obtained her MFA in Lighting Design from Brooklyn College (2023) and holds a BFA in Painting from the Honors College at Southern Connecticut State University (New Haven, CT), (2014). 

 

​Jen has worked professionally in technical theater since 2014 and in New York City since 2016 as a Lighting Designer, Assistant Technical Director (Hunter College), Head Electrician, ETC Programmer, Board Op, Stagehand, and Stage Manager. Their love for theater blossomed out of a 14-year, childhood dance career and small, but impactful theatrical performance history. As a multidisciplinary artist, Jen maintains that Lighting Design is the ideal career to utilize both her creative and problem-solving brains. 

 

Diversified collaboration is central to Jen's values as a theater maker. Working with people of underrepresented identities including the BIPOC, AAPI, and especially the LGBTQIA+ communities, is essential to their process and ambitions to continue the work of decentralizing the historically white, cis-male dominated perspective in the technical theater industry. She believes higher educational institutions can provide students from all backgrounds with hands-on skills that can empower them to establish financial and job security in our tumultuous and unpredictable artistic economy. For this reason they are pursuing a career in both Lighting Design and Higher Education. 

 

In her free time, you can find Jen wandering the Woodlands of Prospect Park, playing/writing music, swimming in the ocean, petting all of the dogs on the sidewalk, and on the rare occasion- sleeping in.