Artist | Speaker | Storyteller

Artist, speaker, and storyteller Paula Ralph Birkett’s work is equal parts music, theater, and empowerment festival. Beginning her professional career in musical theater in the New York Tri-State area, Paula has toured as a featured vocalist with choral ensembles throughout Europe. She is the featured vocalist for progressive jazz group TB| Emancipation, and has played venues big and small including The Apollo Theater, The United Nations, and the WNYC Greene Space. As a playwright, Paula won the Howard Gilman Foundation Bronx Council on the Arts | Bronx Cultural Visions Fund award for her stage play Black American Working Woman, which had its Manhattan workshop at the Episcopal Actors’ Guild Theater in summer 2024.  Recently, she received a 2026 Support for Artists grant from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) to support her creative work. Employing the arts as an envelope of illustration for her concept Perception to Decisions: How we see ourselves is how we will be ourselves, Paula has presented at several conferences including TEDx Deer Park. Join Paula as she continues to produce stories of trials and triumph, helping audiences imagine their path of possibilities.