TOM KANE | Director
American Conservatory Theater, M.F.A., Acting
Northwestern University, B.S., Performance Studies

Tom is an educator and theatre professional with extensive educational leadership experience. For over 20 years he has worked with teenage actors at the Storm King School in New York, the American Conservatory Theater, the Hamlin School in San Francisco, Camp Laurel in Maine, and the Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts. Tom has been directing Putney Pre-College programs in the United Kingdom and Italy since 2000, and co-directed the theater program at Excel at Williams College. Tom is currently the head of the Theater Department at the Middlesex School, where he lives with his wife, Samantha, and daughter, Zoe. Tom has worked on summer Pre-College programs with Putney for 19 years.

ERIKA PRAHL | Assistant Director
Kenyon College, B.A., Spanish and Italian

Erika was a member of the Kenyon College Chamber Singers and lettered in both field hockey and lacrosse. Erika has worked as the director of diversity at the Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts, where she is currently assistant director of admissions and director of financial aid. She coaches lacrosse, sings karaoke whenever she gets the chance, and consumes sushi frequently and voraciously. Erika has traveled extensively in Italy and Spain and is fluent in Italian. This is Erika’s twelfth summer with Putney’s international Pre-College programs.

SARA SISUN | Art in Tuscany
San Francisco Art Institute, M.F.A., Painting
Stanford University, B.A., Art Practice and Creative Writing

Growing up in Denver, Sara was exposed to a vibrant art scene at the local Art Student’s League. Her passion for painting and art history influenced her studies at Stanford, and she spent a summer at the Slade School of Art in London. She returned to Stanford inspired by British painter Jenny Saville, and created a solo show of large-scale paintings depicting distorted self-portraits taken on the copier. After graduating, Sara received a fellowship to the San Francisco Art Institute where she received an M.F.A. Her master’s thesis depicted her free-spirited friends re-enacting the Euripides play The Bacchae. In 2013, under a grant from the Stacey Foundation, Sara traveled to Italy as an artist in residence with the Jerusalem Studio School. Her work has since been influenced by a desire to paint primarily from life and create an authentic atmosphere and mood. Sara is the recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Grant and the New York Art Exchange Scholarship. She has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute and is currently a workshop instructor at the Bay Area Classical Atelier and an adjunct professor of foundations at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design.

ROB MILLER | History of Cuisine: Italian Food & Culture
University Southern California, M.F.A., Film
University of California, Los Angeles, B.A., Art History

Rob is a screenwriter and Los Angeles native, although travel keeps him away from Hollywood for months at a time. As an undergraduate Art History major, he was assistant arts editor for the Daily Bruin and worked kitchen prep in his dorm cafeteria (an illuminating, yet ultimately harrowing experience). While pursuing his master’s in Film, he worked as a phlebotomist, middle school English teacher, and realtor. He currently has a feature-length script in development (The Unprofessionals), and is shopping a T.V. pilot (Parachute) and another feature-length script (Recoil). If he hadn’t pursued a writing career, his second choice would have been to be a chef. He is a charter member of Slow Food and once had to move because his library of cookbooks had outgrown his apartment. Rob has taught numerous seminars at Putney’s international Pre-College programs, and at Pre-College Amherst, where he also served as director. This marks his 19th summer with Putney.

ALEX CARTER | History of Fashion
Tufts University, Ph.D., English (candidate)
New York University, B.A., Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Alex’s first experience with Putney was as a student, first on the Community Service Brazil program and then on Pre-College China. She began leading for Putney in 2011 as a program assistant on the Pre-College Amherst program, and returned the following summer as a program assistant and History of Fashion instructor on the Pre-College Oxford and Tuscany program. She has since worked in New York City as a tour coordinator at Academic Arrangements Abroad, a tour operator specializing in alumni and museum group travel. With this company she has worked in a logistics capacity on programs traveling on the Adriatic Sea, as well as to Cuba, Holland, and Belgium. She is highly proficient in Italian. Alex is currently back in her hometown of Boston doing her Ph.D. in English, focusing on medieval and renaissance literature.

DAN STURDEVANT | Italian History: From Caesar to Mussolini
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Ed.D., Educational Leadership (candidate)
Duke University, M.A., Liberal Studies
Wheaton College, B.A., English Literature and History

While at Wheaton, Dan ran varsity track, twice traveled to Senegal on mission trips, and interned with SmithBarney. Dan grew up on campus at a New England boarding school and for the last eight years has been teaching European, World, and U.S. History at the AP level, as well as Economics and U.S. and Comparative Government at boarding and day schools in North Carolina. Additionally, Dan has spent several weeks traveling through Tuscany, and has led student trips to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and across the U.S. He has toured WWII battlefields and monuments in Europe, funded through a grant to develop unique curricula. Dan’s thesis at Duke assessed twenty-first-century instructional practices, and his dissertation at UNC concerns effective instruction and resource allocation.

COLLEEN FITZGERALD | Travel Photography
Parsons the New School for Design, M.F.A., Photography and Related Media
Boston College, B.A., Communications

Colleen is a full-time Professor of Photography at Memphis College of Art and professional artist. A native of Massachusetts, she earned a Bachelor of Arts from Boston College, magna cum laude, and Master of Fine Arts from Parsons the New School for Design, summa cum laude. She consistently exhibits artwork both nationally and internationally, from New York City to China, and actively curates exhibitions. Recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition in Memphis, Tennessee and shows at Yavapai College Prescott Art Gallery, the Onward Compé Summit, the Filter Photography Festival, the Contemporary Art Center of Peoria, and the New Orleans Photo Alliance. A former competitive athlete, Colleen is also an avid women’s soccer and lacrosse coach, and loves travelling, cooking, reading, and watching movies. She is a former three-time instructor of the Putney Pre-College courses in ‘Digital Photo’ and ‘Travel Photo: Composition and Narrative’ in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain and Oxford, United Kingdom. She studied abroad in Florence, Italy as a college student and considers Florence to be a second home. She is thrilled to be joining the Pre-College Tuscany Program.

BRIDGET LANIGAN | Travel Photography
San Francisco Art Institute, M.F.A, Photography
State University of New York at New Paltz, B.F.A, Photography

Bridget was selected as a semifinalist in the ongoing Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition in 2015 at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. She was a finalist and exhibited one of her photographs at the same competition in 2013 at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. In 2013 she was included in the exhibition Art Meets Life at the Dorsky Gallery in Long Island City, New York. In 2010 she was included in the 16th Annual Juried Exhibition curated by Joerg Colberg at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Massachusetts. Bridget is a recipient of the 2006–2008 San Francisco Art Institute M.F.A. Fellowship Award, and studied with renowned artists Doug Hall and John Priola. In 2008 she was awarded first place for color photography in the Paul Sack Photography Competition. Additional exhibitions have included The One, an online exhibition curated by Peter Max Lawrence; The Photo Review 2009; Vernissage — SFAI Graduating M.F.A Exhibition at Herbst Pavilion; Spring Show 2008, Still Lights Gallery; The Big Tiny, Red Ink Studios; Girls, Trees, Teeth, Meat and Strangers, Diego Rivera Gallery; Evocation, Gallery 4222; The Token Women Show, Diego Rivera Gallery; America, Walt Whitman Birthplace; Portrait of my Mother…Things Left Unsaid, Center for Contemporary Art. She has lectured about her work at Marist College, SUNY New Paltz, and the Fine Arts Academy at Missouri State University. Her affinity for the fine arts led to work as studio manager and photographer with Spinnato Art Gallery and Photography Studio, and assistant photographer with both Macy’s Photography Studio and the photographic artist Will Faller. Bridget has taught on Putney’s Pre-College enrichment program at Amherst College for four summers. This will be her third summer as an instructor for Pre-College enrichment programs in London and Florence.