Our Team
Jake Stepansky
Director & Co-Founder
Jake (he/him) is a gathering designer, theatre-maker, educator, arts administrator, reader, writer, thinker, dancer, partner, brother, and dog-lover based in Brooklyn, NY.
As the Program Manager for Adult Programs at Central Synagogue, Jake curates and realizes educational and artistic events of all kinds. Jake has worked previously with the award-winning American Repertory Theater (ART) as the HGSE Education and Engagement Associate, as a production assistant on the NYC-bound ART productions of Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812 and Nice Fish, and as a director at OBERON.
Jake honed his skills as a producer, fundraiser, and arts administrator at Portland, ME-based Art At Work (alongside founder Marty Pottenger) and Austin, TX-based dance company Forklift Danceworks, as well as with Advance NYC, PEAK Performances at Montclair State University, Harvard’s annual ARTS FIRST festival, London’s Gate Theatre, and Austin’s paper chairs and Salvage Vanguard Theater. Jake has written extensively for APAP’s Inside Arts magazine (RIP), where his body of work includes interviews with Kristin Chenoweth, Arthur Mitchell, Bassem Youssef, and more.
Jake received his Ed.M. as a member of the 2020-2021 Arts in Education Cohort at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Jake spends his free time reading queer YA fiction, slacklining, accidentally burning dinner, and buying Nintendo Switch games that he’ll probably never play. You can find him on Instagram @jakestepansky and on Twitter @steakjapansky.
Photo by Chris Harrop
Eli Schleicher
Director & Co-Founder
Eli (he/him) is a theater artist, creative convener, and arts & nonprofit administrator with a passion for new work that defies categorization. Originally from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, he’s now based in Brooklyn where he cooks adventurously and strives to live an environmentally conscious life. Highlights as a theatrical director include his immersive club production of The Laramie Project at the American Repertory Theater’s OBERON, Don’t Laugh. It’s Funny. with The Strides Collective, and d.ark/ness at The Tank (performed, you guessed it, in almost total darkness). Outside of JETco., he’s currently developing new pieces about belief in the courtroom by way of Georg Büchner's Woyzeck and the provenance of rituals as glimpsed through the lens of medieval Christianity and modern Judaism.
He served as Creative Director for folk-electronic band Mye July on the release of their first LP – For The Lost Time – which debuted in June 2021. He was a Resident Artist & Producer with 3DaysPrior where he leads their developmental series 3DProcess: Works on Draft. He has been lucky enough to collaborate on new work at/with The Public Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, The Araca Group, Kevin McCollum’s Alchemation, Davenport Theatrical Enterprises, Target Margin Theater, the New York Musical Festival, The Fire This Time Festival, National Black Theatre, Piehole, and New Saloon.
Currently, Eli works as a strategic and tactical partner to nonprofits as a Project Associate at Advance NYC. Additionally, he helps cultivate dialogue across political divides as a facilitator with Resetting the Table. He loves hearing from new people – feel free to find out more about him or to get in touch at elischleicher.com.
Photo by Larry Guo
Artistic Advisory Council
This group of art-makers, creative thinkers, and extraordinary gatherers advises JETco. on our programming and artistic activities. We love them and we think you will too. Click on their photos to learn more about them and to find them elsewhere on the internet.