The staff of DeBaun Auditorium is a unique blend of professionals, artists, and Stevens alumni and students, bringing together history, experience, and new ideas.

The directors are led by Executive Director David Zimmerman, Stevens class of 1990. David has worked in regional, professional, educational and community theater since 1986, when he began his theatrical career at Stevens as a freshman. He has logged hours in every aspect of a theatrical production, from makeup, costumes, props, and set, artistic and lighting design, to stage management and directing, both artistically and musically. An accomplished pianist, David has also used his talents as a piano teacher and served as accompanist for many soloists and churches. All in all, he has worked with over 20 organizations and over 100 productions across Northern and Central New Jersey. Also, with a degree in Engineering Management from Stevens, his education blends uniquely with his theatrical experience to equip him for his role at DeBaun Auditorium.

Carl Russell, Stevens class of 1991, serves as the Auditorium's Technical Director. Carl has extensive knowledge in all areas of theater, with special concentrations in set construction and lighting design. Carl works the closest to the student staff, as he leads them in preparation of DeBaun's events. All students are trained through various methods, including workshops, backstage tours of professional theaters, and hands-on experience. All productions at DeBaun, both produced and hosted, are overseen by Carl's watchful eye, making sure safety always comes first, and creativity is never at a loss.


Karen Maloney is a graduate of William Paterson University with degrees in Writing and Interpersonal Communication. She is no stranger to Stevens having previously been the Director of Pre-College Programs for the Lore-El Center for Women in Engineering and Science before transferring to DeBaun Auditorium. After over six years as the Managing Director of The Center for the Performing Arts, Karen is taking time to raise her daughter full time, but continues to support DeBaun with her strong background in marketing and public relations, and a deep passion for the arts, by remaining responsible for their scheduling, publications, graphic design and websites.


Robert Gonzales, is the Managing Director for the Auditorium. Robert has been a frequent performer on the stage at DeBaun and is now sharing his administrative expertise with the team of directors. Originally from Texas, he went to school at Texas A&M University majoring in Business and eventually ended up working for the University as an administrator. Robert is the main point of contact for the media and the theater at large, is responsible for all contracts, rentals and billing, and works with the Executive Director on corporate and business involvement/sponsorship and creating marketing and development contacts.

Despite deciding on a technical career path at age 14, David Vincenti has always devoted his energy to the making and publishing creative writings, including poetry to class magazines and original speeches for forensics competitions in high school, editorship of the campus literary journal and articles for the newspaper in college, and publications in regional and national arenas since then. His poems have appeared in such journals as The Journal of New Jersey Poets, The Paterson Literary Review and The Christian Science Monitor, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and has contributed articles to Poetic Voices and The Stevens Indicator. David has experimented with creative writing forms enough to know that he’s not likely ever to finish his novel, his sentences are too long to be useful in short stories, his song lyrics set low expectations and regularly fail to meet them, his personal essays sound too much like technical reports, his technical reports sound too much like personal essays, and his non-fiction can’t pass a polygraph. This has given David an appreciation for many different artists who use words as their medium, and that appreciation helps fill the Spoken Word Series with its variety of voices.In the series, David’s goal is to present a mix of artists and styles and to expose patrons and practitioners of the literary arts to as much of its spectrum as possible. Featured artists have presented prose, traditional poetry, performance (slam) poetry, personal essays, short stories, and excerpts from novels-in-progress. Audiences have brought an equally broad range of styles and subjects to the open mic, from professional to emerging writers, teachers to students, editors to publishers to readers. David is an alumnus of Stevens Institute of Technology and lives in New Jersey with his wife and daughters.www.davidvincenti.com