Sean Michael Kaplan

Sean has worked in many capacities over a 15-year career in the arts; from performing, writing and directing for the stage, acting in television and film, to administration and development, in addition to co-founding an international theatre and award-winning school in Italy.

At Redmoon, he works in several capacities for development focusing on corporate sponsorships, individual giving, new board member cultivation and management of Redmoon's 35-member strong board of directors. He has led successful PR campaigns for the company's large-scale public art events around Chicago landing the company on the front page of the Sun Times, features on television, radio, nationally distributed journals and magazines.
Some recent highlights include, overseeing annual gala-benefits with sponsorship increases over five times previous years with an overall increase in attendance that doubled to over 1000 guests in 2012. In his first 24 months, he oversaw the successful recruitment of 20 new board members from Chicago's business and culture communities. High-level advocacy opportunities took him to the White House for a Halloween performance in 2009 on the front lawn for 2,500 trick-or-treating school children and afterward for 250 US combat veterans in the East Wing. Increasing the company's national profile, he set and led strategic meetings in the West Wing, at the NEA, DOE, PCAH, and up on Capitol Hill. In Chicago, he created relationships with Mayor Daley's office that led to the Mayor launching Redmoon's Festival JOE during the event's press conference in 2010.

Born and raised in Chicago, he studied on a series of scholarships at the University of Kansas, University of Exeter Drama School (UK), and L'Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, France. He co-founded Kiklos Teatro, an Italian arts organization in Padua, where he worked as an artist and administrator in the theatre company, taught at its award-winning international theater school and led the development of a touring educational outreach program that created original productions and events for young audiences across Italy. He went on to work in a development capacity for an Italian production company, Holon Productions, where he co-raised all investment capital for the development and creation of a cartoon animation as an English language teaching tool for the Italian market of English as a Second Language (ESL).