Lana Rogachevskaya

Svetlana (Lana) Rogachevskaya is a Ukrainian-born arts and cultural leader with a deep passion for community-building. As an advocate for a connected and compassionate community, she promotes social justice, inclusion, and belonging. For over 20 years, she has consistently generated resources and leveraged partnerships to expand cultural access, education, and engagement, activating new audiences and bringing new initiatives to life. She has produced, hosted, and facilitated numerous gatherings to help individuals, groups, and communities find collective meaning.

Rogachevskaya started her path developing resources for international cultural exchange initiatives, touring, and producing with the American Russian Young Artists Orchestra in New York, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood Festival.

When Rogachevskaya led Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College, her team welcomed over 70,000 patrons annually. She expanded accessibility and belonging through the Target FamilyFun series, multilingual and multicultural offerings, and the SchoolTime program that reached children in every Brooklyn zip code.  Investing in infrastructure, she streamlined operations, stewarded the organization’s first million-dollar naming opportunity, and secured more than one million dollars in venue capital improvements.

Rogachevskaya spent 11 years as Executive Director of the Center for Performing Arts at Governors State University, a minority-serving institution in the south suburbs of Chicago. She facilitated the transformation of an academic unit into a prominent cultural destination. Rogachevskaya worked collaboratively across campus and community to expand programs and inclusiveness. She restructured and rebuilt the advisory council while doubling the Center’s staff, growing its budget, and upgrading its facilities and technologies.  Expanding the Center’s cultural footprint, she produced and hosted numerous regional, state, and world premieres. They included Sweet Home Chicago Blues (2021-2022) – which aired on Chicago’s PBS affiliate WTTW – and the world premiere staging of Red Summer 2023, a musical about the Chicago race riots of 1919. To sustain this growth, Rogachevskaya generated millions in contributed and earned revenues, stewarding and launching fundraising campaigns. During the Center’s 25th anniversary season (2020-2021), she launched the Creating Compassionate Communities series and an endowed fund to address sensitive topics including race, class, gender, and sexual orientation to offer a safe place for all to connect, heal, and seek equity-focused solutions.

Rogachevskaya holds a BA in Multimedia Communications from Baruch College and an MFA in Performing Arts Management from Brooklyn College. She continues to share her knowledge and service as a grant panelist, board member, teacher, writer, and presenter, through such institutions as the Brooklyn Arts Council, the Illinois Arts Council, the Chicago Southland Conventions and Visitors Bureau, and the Chicago Southland International Film Festival.

Rogachevskaya is the recipient of The Howard Luckey Excellence in Jazz Leadership Award presented at Prairie State College’s 24th Annual Jazz Festival for her contribution to sustaining and supporting Chicago Jazz in a spirit of humility and community.