Ava Lehrer

Ava Lehrer is a poet, educator, translator, and program director with fifteen years of experience in arts education, cultural arts programming, team building and program evaluation. 

From 2011 to 2023, Ava served in a range of ascending roles at the 92Y in New York, broadening the institution’s reach and deepening its impact in the areas of youth development and arts education for K–12 schools across New York City and the United States. Among the programs that she created and produced at 92NY were Teen Arts Week—NYC’s first-ever citywide celebration of the arts for teens and by teens and featuring free arts programs at thirty-three participating cultural organizations—and Teen Producers, a paid internship program for students at New York City public high schools to gain college and career-readiness skills, explore professions in the arts, and establish a network in the city’s arts and culture field. Ava received a 2022 Our Town Thanks You (OTTY) Award for her work at 92NY and was recognized as NY1’s New Yorker of the Week in 2019 for developing 92NY’s Teen Producers program. 

Before joining 92NY in 2011, she was a researcher and project manager for the poet John Ashbery. In 2016, she received a French Voices Award for her translation of David Dumortier’s novel Travesti.