About Carmen

Some people take the straight path. Carmen took the adventurous route, and along the way she learned firsthand that life is a game to be played, not a battle to be fought.

She is a multi-hyphenate artist and facilitator who brings her skills as a creative and a coach, along with wisdom from a wildly diverse work history and human experience, to everything she does, creating experiences that are truly unique and powerful.

Her first passion was dance, training from childhood through college. Her first professional experience was dancing with Debbie Allen in Fort Worth while she was still in high school. At Oklahoma City University, she studied dance alongside business and arts management, and every year she performed in a Broadway-style revue show: 150 dancers, leads flown in from Broadway, and a full philharmonic orchestra. Carmen danced in one cast and worked crew in the other. That's where she learned how much goes into creating anything worth seeing.  She gained a big-picture perspective and fell in love with leading the people who make it happen.

After graduating, Carmen moved to LA to start her career in entertainment. She began her professional acting training at the Beverly Hills Playhouse and tended bar to pay the bills. Behind the bar, she learned that people will tell you anything when they feel safe with you, and that there's a world of difference between serving someone and curating an experience for them.

After several years, Carmen left LA for Columbus, Ohio, for a life change and "no comment." In Columbus, she performed with Madlab Theatre before moving back to Texas and playing one of her greatest roles to date:  car salesperson. For three years, she fully method-acted the part, gaining invaluable experience in business, sales, and human behavior. Even working 50 to 60 hours a week, she continued to act at The Hip Pocket Theater and Theatre Off the Square, where she also sat on the board of directors. There was always energy to continue honoring her creative passions.  She left the car business to sell merchant services door to door, where she learned to hear "no" a hundred times before lunch, still walk into the next room smiling.  

Between Columbus and Texas, Carmen made a pit stop in Chicago. It was at The Second City that Carmen fell head over heels gaga… for improv.

Since then, Carmen has coached professional child actors, executive produced and starred in an Emmy-nominated web series, produced LIT Girl and A Girl on the Verge of Growing Up, and associate produced the award-winning documentary 1946.

Her personal development and spiritual journey inspired her to become a certified Kundalini yoga and meditation teacher through KRI. She trained in leadership, coaching, and public speaking with John Maxwell and earned her DISC certification.

She was awarded a full scholarship to iO West and performed on an improv team at The Second City. She can be seen in a handful of commercials and a few indie films. She wrote the comedy feature script Henrietta & The Southern Bells. Dream Role, the one-woman show she wrote, produced, and performed, was a featured act at the 2025 Cucalorus Film Festival. She still plays on an improv team at The Pack.

Somewhere along the way, it all clicked. The dancer's discipline. The producer's big-picture vision. The bartender's read on a room. The salesperson's resilience. The improviser's "yes, and." The yogi's mastery of breath and mind. Together, they're the foundation for the ultimate playground: life.

That's The Art of Play. Decades of creative and personal development, real-world hustle, and mindset training, rolled into one experience that helps teams loosen up, connect, and do the best work of their lives.

Multi-hyphenate. Unapologetic. Here to play.