Our Board
Pilar Castro-Kiltz, Kahina Haynes, Lovell Holder, James Van Wyck
Pilar Castro-Kiltz
Pilar Castro-Kiltz is the Founder of More Canvas Consulting. Launched in 2014, the firm offers services in strategic planning, operations improvement, and communications management to a portfolio of clients across industries, including healthcare, higher education, social impact, and the arts. Pilar’s approach, which connects strategy with storytelling, draws both from her professional experience and her training at The Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she earned an MBA and MFA, respectively.
Driven to build structures that fortify access to and experiences in the arts, in 2013 Pilar founded Princeton Arts Alumni—a non-profit organization that engages Princeton University students and alums to build a network of mentorship, resources, and presentations that illuminate pathways to careers and participation in the arts. Learn more at www.morecanvas.com and www.pilarck.com.
Kahina Haynes
Kahina Haynes, Executive Director (2016-Present), is a passionate arts activist and the visionary architect behind DIW’s strategic revitalization following the significant loss of its Founder/Artistic Director, Fabian Barnes.
Prior to her appointment to the Executive Director role by the DIW Board of Directors, Ms.Haynes served as DIW’s School Director. Before that, she worked in program and process evaluation for a number of philanthropic and non-profit organizations including the United Nations (Bureau for Development Policy at UNDP), the Annie E. Casey Foundation, SafeKids Worldwide, and the World Bank Group. Ms. Haynes holds a B.A. from Princeton University with a Minor in African American Studies and a concentration in Dance; as well as, a MSC from Oxford University in Evidence-based Social Intervention. She was recently recognized by the Black Voices for Black Justice Fund as a 2022 National Awardee and is also the recipient of the David Bradt Non-profit Leadership award (2021).
Ms. Haynes serves on many volunteer committees and Boards including Princeton Arts Alumni Board of Directors, the School of American Ballet Alumni Committee, the DC Arts Education Alliance, the interview panel for Princeton’s Alumni Schools committee.
Lovell Holder
Lovell Holder has produced the feature films Peak Season, Midday Black Midnight Blue, The End of Us, Working Man, Some Freaks, and Loserville (which he also directed and co-wrote). He recently completed production on the feature film adaptation of Roger Q. Mason’s play Lavender Men, which he directed, co-wrote, and produced. His films have screened at more than 100 film festivals both domestically and internationally, including SXSW, Santa Barbara, Fantasia, BFI, Outfest, Shanghai, SCAD Savannah, and the American Film Festival in Poland.
In theater, he has directed and developed new work by acclaimed writers Roger Q. Mason, Amy Berryman, Daniel Talbott, Jessica Dickey, Helen Shang, Steve Yockey, and Sofya Levitszky-Weitz at such institutions as Broadway’s Circle in the Square and in Los Angeles at Skylight Theater, Celebration Theater, Echo Theater Company, and Rising Phoenix Rep. He has also partnered repeatedly as both a writer and a director with the charitable organization 24 Hour Plays to raise funds within the entertainment community.
His debut novel, The Book of Luke, which follows a gay reality television star who must return to the show that made him famous after a humiliating public divorce, will be published by Grand Central Publishing (an imprint of Hachette) in hardcover and audiobook in Fall 2025.
Originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University with a degree in English and a certificate in Theater, before then completing his MFA at Brown University.
James Van Wyck
James M. Van Wyck is an Assistant Dean for Professional Development in the Graduate School at Princeton University. He co-edited The Reimagined PhD: Navigating 21st Century Humanities Education (2021, Rutgers University Press), and has published articles in venues including the New England Quarterly, the Chronicle of Higher
Education and Inside Higher Ed. He earned his Ph.D. from Fordham University, specializing in 19th Century American Literary History. He serves on a range of boards, advisory councils, and mentorship programs, including: member of the board of directors of the United Way of Greater Mercer County; Alumni Executive Council
Member at William Paterson University; Regional Network Leader and Dean’s Advisory Council board member for the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Buffalo. His current book project is “Leadership and the Imagination.”