New Trustees Press Release
ON SITE OPERA ANNOUNCES TWO NEW BOARD MEMBERS TO EXPAND LEADERSHIP, REPRESENTATION AND LEGACY
NEW YORK, January 26, 2022 – On Site Opera, New York’s pioneer opera company rooted in site-specific storytelling and the immersive experience, announced today the appointment of 2 new trustees to the company’s Board of Directors: Christine Duque and Eric Li Cheung.
“On Site Opera is at a critical moment in its growth, and building up the board with intentionality and foresight is paramount to our long-term success,” explains Jane A. Gross, the organization’s board President. “We are turning ten years old this year and also cresting a new budgetary milestone, two achievements that mark the organization’s impressive growth and the possibilities for the future,” she adds. “Eric and Christine are ideal additions to On Site’s board of directors: they both trained as classical musicians in college (Eric as a pianist and Christine as an opera singer), but they have since transitioned to impressive corporate careers. This combination of understanding an artist’s perspective and current business perspectives make them ideal trustees to help steward On Site Opera into its next decade along with the current board members.”
New trustee Christine Duque is a Senior Manager of Customer & Marketing Strategy at Deloitte Consulting and an accomplished operatic soprano who recently made her debut at Carnegie Hall. She leads the Distribution & Marketing portfolio for the Financial Services Insurance and Wealth Management sector at Deloitte Consulting. She is a market leader in global distribution and marketing transformation with deep expertise in marketing technology and analytics and is sought after as a speaker, lecturer, and panelist on these topics. Christine merges her experiences to find the right balance in the art and science of marketing: blending creative expression and strategic branding and leveraging the power of marketing technology, data, and analytics to elevate the human experience in every brand interaction, while driving business growth. Having served on OSO’s Business Innovation Council since 2020, Christine will now transition to the organization’s Board of Directors.
Also joining OSO’s Board of Directors is Eric Li Cheung, a Senior Equity Analyst and Senior Vice President at Bessemer Trust. He performs in-depth financial analysis on equities and provides investment recommendations and portfolio insights for the Small & Mid Cap Team, with an emphasis on quality growth businesses with sustainable competitive advantage. He brings his passion for music to the board as a former concert pianist that remains dedicated to supporting the arts. Eric earned an M.B.A. from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and a B.A., with honors, in economics and music from Stanford University. He attended The Juilliard School for his pre-college studies in piano performance.
“Equity, diversity, and inclusion are integral to On Site’s operations, and these values are central to how we develop a healthy and forward-moving board of directors, especially in a city as diverse as New York,” considers Piper Gunnarson, the organization’s Executive Director. “Our trustees collectively represent wonderfully diverse perspectives from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, professional focuses, gender identities, generations, life experiences, religious beliefs, and economic backgrounds, but they are all connected and anchored by a shared passion for and commitment to the role that the performing arts, and opera in particular, play within our society. Everyone at the board table is eager to see opera succeed and, because of their varied perspectives, they are each able to contribute to that discussion in ways that carry different resonance. It’s like an orchestra – when the different instruments come together, they create something beautiful.”
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ABOUT ON SITE OPERA
Founded in 2012, New York City-based On Site Opera is the country’s leading presenter of site-specific operas in non- traditional venues. Rooted in collaboration and storytelling, On Site Opera celebrates the connection between artist and audience through highly curated experiences led by exciting opera artists and bold and innovative creative teams. Each On Site Opera production invites New Yorkers to explore their city in new and unique ways, while cultivating a new generation of opera audiences. To date, OSO has produced 19 operas in as many unique locations to critical acclaim, including the Bronx Zoo, Harlem’s historic Cotton Club, Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, the Atlanta Botanical Garden, the
American Museum of Natural History, Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Committed to exploring new technology to make opera more accessible, OSO was the first opera company to employ Google Glass supertitles, and the company has currently developed its own mobile app for multi-language translations and digital program information.
Following extended COVID-related theater closures in 2020, On Site Opera was recognized as a leading organization in reimagining opera, bringing productions to audiences around the world through the telephone, by mail, and online in inventive and creative productions.
