Christiana was born in the bright lights of Manhattan and raised in the bitter cold and snow Syracuse New York, she is a recent transplant to the Steel City. Currently she is in the Theatre and Performance Studies MA program at the University of Pittsburgh. Prior, to moving Christiana has had a variety of different positions with Non-Profit arts organizations. From 2006-2009 she was the co-founder and Co-Producing Artistic Director of To The Wall Productions in Philadelphia. This theatre company produced several seasons of critically acclaimed programming. With To The Wall, Christiana produced and did design work on such shows as Vampire Lesbians of Sodom and Debbie Does Dallas The Musical! (both picks of the Philly Fringe Festival); as well as directing Oedipus Kings: The Drinking Game (which she conceived and co-wrote with Dawn K. Cowle, her co-founder) and The Rivals: A Drag Comedy (which made a local critic's top ten list of best productions of 2008). Additionally, through her work at To The Wall, the company also held a one-act competition of new works based on Grimm's Fairytales, the best of these were given staged readings and a short workshop period. As a freelance director, designer, and stage manager Christiana has worked with Philadelphia Theatre Workshop, Allen's Lane Playhouse, Magic Circle Theatre, The Walnut Street Theatre (where she was also the 06-07 Casting Apprentice), Strawflower Productions and Represented Theatre Company. She continues to work as a freelance director and designer.

Outside of her artistic pursuits, Christiana is equally experienced in the administrative side of the arts. She is the former Bristol Riverside Theatre development associate, and while there completed the AFP's First Course in Fundraising, as well as working on a successful grant from the NEA. She has also worked in the developmental stages on several start-up businesses. She is fully committed to bringing great art and smart administrative sense together to build OpenThread into the place to go for the conversation on emerging art in the tri-state area.

Christiana graduated from Wellesley College with a double major in Theatre Studies and American Studies. She was awarded the First-Year Distinction, The Wellesley College Theatre Award, and Honors in Theatre. She has been asked back to give two special guest lectures at Wellesley since graduation.

Originally from Greene County, Pennsylvania, Scott is the primary media arts instructor at Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School. His Bachelor of Fine Arts in Intermedia was obtained from West Virginia University in 2004 with a minor in music.

Scott's work includes photography, video performance, sound, installation, and design. He has exhibited and/or performed at The Three Rivers Arts Festival, The Tom Museum, Modern Formations, Fe Gallery, SPACE, The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, The H. Williams Teaching Gallery, The Monongalia Arts Center, Zen Clay, The Mesaros Galleries, and as a video performer at The 2008 Three River's Film Festival, The Sprout Fund's Hothouse 2008, The Brillobox, and The Pittsburgh Dance Council's Gods and Goddesses event. Scott was also recently published in the Fe Gallery's 'In The Making' catalogue as part of the Pittsburgh 250 inititive.

In his spare time, Scott works as a freelance designer for his personal business - sandmedia.net, and as the co-director of Open Thread (openthread.org) - a regional artist event and publication oriented organization.

While in College, Scott was a full scholarship student and obtained the positions of MountainLair Student Art Gallery Director / Curator, Managing, Art & Design Editor for WVU's literary and Fine Arts journal, Calliope, and Electronic Media Assistant for the WVU art department. Scott's awards include the Association of Writers & Writing Program's (AWP) award for best design for Calliope, West Virginia University's 'Best Freshman Poet' Award (2001), the Association of Educational Publishers Most Outstanding Student Publication (National), the National Scholastic Press Association All-American award, and numerous Pennsylvania and Columbia Scholastic Press Association awards.

Scott currently teaches LPPACS's core introduction to media arts class, as well as photography, printmaking, graphic/web design, animation, video art, CD/DVD production, and media & marketing. He is the co-director of LPPACS's Ensemble Immersion, a cross-disciplinary performance group, coaches the Odyssey of the Mind team, and is an advisor for RGB records, the student record label, The Siren (www.lppacs.org/siren/), the student web blog / newspaper, and the Art & Design team for pulp., the student literary and fine art journal. Pulp. has received The Keystone All-State award and multiple gold ratings from the Pennsylvania Scholastic Press Association, silver metals from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, The All American Award, and is a finalist for the 2009 Pacemaker Award from The National Scholastic Press Association. He also plans to serve as an advisor for Lincoln Park's student press which is slated to begin production in the fall of 2009

Scott has given guest lectures and critiques at the Columbia Scholastic Press Association's convention in New York City and has taught classes in Web Design at the Community College of Allegheny County.

Originally from Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, Adam graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in Creative Writing in 2006. There, he interned with the CMU Press, editing and designing for the Poetry Series. One of his personal editing projects, Blas Manuel de Luna's Bent to the Earth, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. Since graduating, Adam has served as the Visiting Artist for Creative Writing at Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center in Midland, PA, where he teaches creative writing and literary theory to high school students, and serves as Literary Advisor to the charter school's award-winning student journal, pulp.

At CMU, three of Adam's theatrical works were staged: a one-act play, the book of a musical (co-written with Darren Canady and Clare Drobot), and a neo-futurist play (co-written with Hale Appleman and Sam Trussell). Adam's radio comedy, Testimonial (co-written and produced with Brian Gray), was recognized as one of the five best productions of 2005 by the College Broadcasters Awards. Adam's poems are forthcoming in the 2009 Bat City Review.

A former resident of Morgantown, West Virginia, Ethan is a Lead Software Developer for Ciber, Inc. in downtown Pittsburgh. He graduated from West Virginia University in 2004 with a degree in Computer Science. Ethan has also worked as a developer for the U.S. Department of Energy, and has done freelance work for several independent companies.

As Open Thread's Web Developer, Ethan has created an engaging and informative web presence and email distribution list system. The website also includes an electronic submission system that enables artists to upload their works for consideration and sign up as members to be included in performance based events. The submission database provides anonymized access to the files for Open Thread members as well as a rating and comment system. Ethan will also be responsible for development of the online version of the journal.

Cecilia Westbrook is a fifth-year undergraduate student at Carnegie Mellon, double-majoring in Psychology and Biological Sciences. Cecilia has had extensive managerial experience specific to literary magazines, originally in high school, where she served as Editor-In-Chief of the literary magazine, Heliotrope, and most recently at Carnegie Mellon where she helped to resurrect the defunct art and literary magazine, Dossier, and has served as Managing Editor for that publication for the past three semesters. Her duties on Dossier include managing staff, scheduling meetings and deadlines, coordinating communications among all junior and senior editorial staff as well as between staff and external collaborators (i.e., printers), accounting and finances, printing considerations including providing specifications, and all aspects of advertisement such as soliciting and posting flyers and posters, meeting with professors and students, and organizing events. Cecilia also works as an undergraduate research assistant at Western Psychiatric Institutes and Clinic, where aside from her research she has variously been in charge of subject recruitment, data management, computer troubleshooting and various organizational duties too numerous to list.