Raksak Kongseng Desaulniers (’18)
Raksak traveled 3,000 miles from Seattle to pursue a master’s degree in Arts Administration at Boston University and earned the degree in May 2018. Back in Thailand, she earned her B.A. in Dramatic Arts from Chulalongkorn University.
Raksak took on managerial roles in several international events, including Film Expo Asia 2010, the annual French-Thai cultural festival ‘La Fête 2011,’ the Rotary International Convention 2012, and the Research Forum & Festival of Thai/ASEAN Contemporary Theatre ‘Our Roots Right Now.’ She later became a performing arts project manager at the Customs Department of Thailand. She also founded a nonprofit theatre company called ‘XXX,’ and employed the theatre arts to promote human rights and instigate social change across the region. As a result of her arts activism, she was invited to participate in the ‘Regional Dialogue on LGBTI Rights and Health in Asia and the Pacific’ by the United Nations Development Program in 2015.
She is currently working as a operations and special projects manager at Theater Communications Group (TCG) in New York and is the founder of Thai Theatre Foundation (TTF). Her pervious role includes office administrator at the Theater Offensive, assisting them in combating homophobia in the Boston area, particularly LGBT+ youth of color.
“Boston University’s Arts Administration program perfectly suits my needs. The program not only enriches my understandings of the art world, but also expands my horizon in the realms of financial management and legal practice related to the arts. These skills are of great importance to arts administrators who, most of the time, are trained solely in the arts. The program also offers a flexible schedule to accommodate working professionals. The fascinating result is that students can immediately bring in knowledge to their work and, at the same time, bring back the most up-to-date challenges to discuss in class.”