Adam D-F. Stevens (MA ’18) Named 2024 Steinhardt Disruptor of the Year

Adam D-F. Stevens (MA ’18, Drama Therapy) has been named 2024’s Disruptor of the Year as part of the inaugural cohort of Spirit of Steinhardt alumni award winners.

Stevens is a Registered Drama Therapist and Board Certified Trainer who works with queer, people of color, and neurodivergent youth in transforming their loss, grief, and trauma into joy and empowerment. 

“I went to a private Catholic school in Long Island, and there was a lot of rigidity there, particularly around sexuality and race,” says Stevens. “I was almost always a model student, but a defining moment in my life was when I was falsely called out by the administration for having an ‘attitude,’ which was code for ‘too gay.’ But rather than let it break me, I let it be my inspiration to embrace my right to stand up and stand out, and now I make it my mission to help young people do the same. Part of the reason I became a clinician is to be for young people what I desperately needed for myself.”

For Stevens, finding their way into the NYU Steinhardt Drama Therapy program was like finally finding their niche.

“I’d always felt like a circle peg in a world of square holes, feeling like I had to maneuver myself to fit in, and then this program just felt right,” says Stevens. “Drama therapy married my loves of theater, the arts, storytelling, creativity, and imagination with my love of helping people and humanity. I love working with adolescents who are at such a wonderful, messy, and spicy point in their lives where they’re exploring their personhood and defining themselves, at the precipice of becoming adults.”

In addition to being a practicing clinician in New York and New Jersey, Stevens is a board member for the National Alliance for Children’s Grief, where much of their work includes bringing a multicultural, social justice, and creative lens to grief and bereavement work. Additionally, they are the President on the Board of Directors for the North American Drama Therapy Association. 

Stevens is also an adjunct faculty member in the Creative Arts Therapy/Applied Theatre Programs at Antioch University in Seattle and at Marymount Manhattan College in NYC. They work on and off Broadway as an actors’ advocate and wellness coach, and they are the artistic director for Steinhardt’s CollideOscope Repertory Theatre Company, a therapeutic theatre company with a mission to advance racial justice and healing through performance and beloved community.

“This spring, CollideOscope celebrates its fifth year as the repertory company continues to bring together drama therapists, field workers/interns, and other clinicians of color along with co-conspirators to heal through performance and artful affinity spaces,” says Stevens. “Our legacy is rich and real, and the model is rooted in principles of disability justice and the civil justice rights movement, which will allow us all to be very present and in community together.”

Stevens—a lifelong disruptor of the status quo—finds their Disruptor of the Year award “so cool and weird and funny and exciting.”

“In this moment as a drama therapist, we embody things for our patients to foster a sense of healing, growth, and the understanding that it’s okay to explore and express yourself in a brave space,” says Stevens. “Whether it’s gender or sexuality or grief or trauma, we give our patients permission to be themselves in every little way that they are, and that’s a very special thing.”

Stevens is currently pursuing their PhD in Educational Theatre at NYU Steinhardt.