Misty Copeland
Principal Dancer, American Ballet Theatre

Raised in San Pedro, California, Misty Copeland began her ballet studies at the age of thirteen. She studied at the San Francisco Ballet School and American Ballet Theatre's Summer Intensive. In 2015, Misty was promoted to principal dancer, making her the first Black Woman to ever be promoted to the position at ABT. Misty made her Broadway debut in the role of “Ivy Smith/Miss Turnstiles” in On the Town. In 2018, she made her movie debut in Disney’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms as the “Ballerina of the Realms”.

Groundbreaking debuts for Misty have been Firebird, “Clara” in ABT’s The Nutcracker, the first black woman to perform the lead role of “Odette/Odile” in ABT’s Swan Lake, as well as “Juliet” in Romeo & Juliet, Giselle, “Kitri” in Don Quixote, Manon, and “Aurora” in The Sleeping Beauty as a guest artist with The Australian Ballet.

In 2012, she was inducted into the Boys & Girls Club National Hall of Fame. She received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hartford in 2014. Misty was named to the Time 100 List and received the 2015 Glamour Magazine Women of the Year Award. In 2018, she was honored with the DVF Award for Inspiration.

Her endorsements include Under Armour, American Express, COACH, Seiko, Dannon Oikos, Diet Dr. Pepper, Estee Lauder and Naked Juice. She launched the Misty Copeland Signature Collection with the UA in 2018.

Misty is the author of two successful New York Times bestselling books: Life in Motion and Ballerina Body, as well as the award-winning children’s book Firebird.

Photo by Henry Leutwyler

For Henry Leutwyler, photography is everything. “This is the only thing I like to do and why I wake up in the morning,” he says.

Born in Switzerland in 1961, Leutwyler is a self-taught photographer with a stubborn streak and unflappable love for the medium. “My grandfather and father were both printers. I decided not to follow their path, instead to travel and photograph, soaking up color and culture from around the world. After being rejected by one of Switzerland’s best photography schools, I opened my own photo studio in Lausanne, photographing cheese, chocolates and watches and went bankrupt in a year-and-a-half.”

In 1985, Leutwyler moved to Paris where he apprenticed with photographer Gilles Tapie and rapidly established himself as an editorial photographer. A decade later, Leutwyler moved to New York City.

Today, Leutwyler’s celebrity portraits can be found in the pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair, the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Esquire Magazine and Time. He has photographed the likes of Michelle Obama, Julia Roberts, Tom Wolfe, Iggy Pop, Rihanna and Martin Scorsese to name a few.

Often spare and unflinchingly tight, Leutwyler’s photographs are a quiet yet striking rebuttal to today’s hyper retouched and uber stylized images. “There’s a whole new vocabulary surrounding photography that I find quite vulgar. For me, it’s not about ‘shooting’ and sensationalism,” he says. “It’s a magic moment that happens in the first few minutes of a sitting. Revealing something from out of my subjects that isn’t obvious — finding the beauty within.”

Leutwyler lives and works in downtown Manhattan, and proud father of two.

Persistence. Pass It On!