Janet Neely

Janet Neely has had a dual career working in theater and higher education. Balancing both has enabled her to remain passionate and committed. In Career Development, she has worked with a diverse population of students with various career goals. She has counseled undergraduates, graduate students, alumni, faculty, and staff in all phases of the career development process. As a leader in career development, Ms. Neely's accomplishments include dramatically increasing in-class presentations,  transforming the internship fair to include on-campus and volunteer opportunities, integrating career development into the curriculum, and teaching graduate-level career development courses. Currently Associate Director of Career Education at Emerson College, she has worked at Rutgers University, DeVry University, New England School of Law, Boston University School of Management, The Boston Conservatory, Roxbury Community College, Salem State University, and Suffolk University.  

In theatre, Janet has worked on dozens of theatre productions in many roles. She was a member of a working theatre board and produced several musicals and plays. She started her directing career coaching poets in “full contact poetry," a performance art/poetry reading hybrid. She has directed works ranging from Midsummer Night’s Dream to Little Shop of Horrors. Teaching at several colleges, her courses include Hip-Hop Shakespeare,  Intro to Acting, Voice and Movement, Scene Study, Perspectives on World Dance, and Public Speaking. Her work on emotional intelligence and acting has been published in HowlRound and Backstage.

Ms. Neely studied Suzuki and Viewpoints with PETE in Portland, OR, and received her MFA in Theatre Education and Applied Theatre from Emerson College, where she created an Emotional Intelligence curriculum for actors. She studied directing with Scott Zigler at the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard University, acting at the William Esper Studio in NYC, and Shakespeare’s Globe in London. She holds an MA in Theatre Arts from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, an MEd in Counseling Psychology from the Graduate School of Education, Rutgers University, and a BA in History and Theater from Douglass College, Rutgers University.