Adina Applebaum

Program Officer

Adina Applebaum is a Program Officer for the Whiting Awards and manages the Foundation's social media. Previously, she was the Development Manager at the Center for Fiction and a Program Associate at the Foundation. She is a graduate of Barnard College.

Constantia Constantinou

Executive Director

Constantia Constantinou is the Executive Director of the Whiting Foundation. She develops and implements the strategy and vision for the Foundation as a grant funding organization in support of Literature, the Humanities, and Cultural Heritage Preservation. She oversees and maintains multiple high-quality grant programs and administers all aspects of the Foundation's organizational management. Constantinou’s expertise spans various academic leadership roles in higher education. With a career marked by innovation and strategic vision, she has spearheaded digital, multimedia, and technology initiatives in various institutions, driving impactful strategies to enhance learning, engagement, fundraising, and community partnerships. Her dedication to literature, the humanities, and cultural preservation culminated in the establishment of many institutional partnerships nationally and internationally. Constantia is a talented classical musician, holding advanced degrees in music and Library Science from Queens College. She is a distinguished professor at the State University of New York; a Fulbright Scholar and a Distinguished Alumna from the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at Queens College.

Peter Godwin

Resident Director 

Peter Godwin is the Resident Director of the Whiting Nonfiction Grant for Works-in-Progress. He was born and raised in Zimbabwe. He worked as a human rights lawyer, and as a foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times (London) and the BBC. He has authored seven non-fiction books including Mukiwa, which won the George Orwell Prize and the Esquire, Apple, Waterstones award, and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun, which won the Borders Original Voices Award. His book, The Fear, was selected by The New Yorker, The Economist and Publishers’ Weekly as a best book of the year. A Guggenheim fellow, Godwin has taught writing at Wesleyan and Columbia, and served as President of PEN American Center. His latest book is Exit Wounds: A Story of Love, Loss and Occasional Wars.

Adam Kirsch

Resident Director 

Adam Kirsch is the Resident Director of the Whiting Awards for Emerging Writers. He is a poet and literary critic and is a senior editor at The Atlantic. He is the author of four volumes of poetry and three collections of essays, as well as books on Jewish literature and other subjects. A longtime contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, he has been an editor at The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic and other publications, and has taught at Columbia University's Center for American Studies.

Ava Lehrer

Program Officer

Ava Lehrer is a Program Officer at the Whiting Foundation, where she supports its suite of grant programs in literature, the humanities, and cultural preservation. A passionate program strategist, she has guided educational initiatives at the Academy of American Poets and previously led the School Engagement division at 92NY, collaborating with prominent writers, artists, and cultural institutions to expand access to the literary and performing arts for thousands of NYC public school students and their teachers. Earlier in her career, she worked closely with poet John Ashbery, managing archival projects and supporting international literary exchange. A graduate of NYC public schools, she holds an M.Ed. in General and Special Education from Touro University and a B.A. in Comparative Literature and Creative Writing, with a minor in Music, from Bard College. She is dedicated to fostering a love of literature and advancing equitable access to arts education.

Martin Tsang

Senior Program Officer

Prior to joining Whiting, Martin served as a Senior Program Officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities, where he led and advanced a wide range of initiatives supporting work across the humanities. He holds a PhD in cultural anthropology and has researched, taught, and published widely on Asian diasporas in the Caribbean as well as Afro Atlantic religious materiality and textuality. Martin also has a professional background in higher education, libraries, and archival practice. From 2015 to 2022 he was the Cuban Heritage Collection Librarian at the University of Miami, overseeing print and digital resources for the largest collection of materials on Cuba and its people located outside the island. During that time he also served as the inaugural Curator of Latin American Collections and taught and advised students in the Departments of Anthropology and Religious Studies. In his spare time he is an active bead artist who exhibits, curates, researches, writes, and teaches about beads and their craft.

Ruby Wang

Program Associate 

Ruby Wang supports the Foundation's programs and operations, with an emphasis on the Whiting Award, Literary Magazine Prize, and Creative Nonfiction Grant. Previously, she was the Associate Managing Editor at A Public Space. Ruby received her MA in English and American literature at New York University. Her work can be found in 128 LIT and Annulet: A Journal of Poetics. She lives in Brooklyn and is originally from Reno, NV.