Jen Leno (she/they) is a Lighting Designer and Generative Artist out of Brooklyn, NY. She is currently finishing her MFA in Theatrical Design (Lighting Design) at Brooklyn College and is very much looking forward to graduation in Spring, 2023. They hold a BFA in Fine Arts with a concentration in Painting from the Honors College at Southern Connecticut State University (New Haven, CT), 2014. 

​Jen has worked professionally in technical theater since 2014 and in New York City since 2016 as a Lighting Designer, Assistant Technical Director (Hunter College), Head Electrician, ETC Programmer, Board Op, Stagehand, and Stage Manager. Their love for theater blossomed out of a 14-year, childhood dance career and small, but impactful performance history. As a multidisciplinary artist, Jen maintains that theater is the ideal landscape to exercise both her creative and problem-solving brains. 

​Diversified collaboration is central to Jen's values as a theater maker. Working with people of underrepresented identities including the BIPOC, AAPI, and especially the LGBTQIA+ communities, is essential to their process and ambitions to continue the work of decentralizing the historically white, cis-male dominated perspective in the technical theater industry. She believes higher educational institutions can provide students from all backgrounds with hands-on skills that can empower them to establish financial and job security in our tumultuous and unpredictable artistic economy. She is pursuing a career in both education and design. 

​In her free time, you can find Jen wandering the Woodlands of Prospect Park, playing/writing music, petting all of the dogs on the sidewalk, and on the rare occasion- sleeping in.