Drea Bernardi

Drea Bernardi was born in San Diego California in 1978. In 1996 she graduated from Fallbrook High School and moved north to San Francisco to study Theater at San Francisco State University. After 18 months at SFSU she decided to follow her love of events, community (and psychedelic drugs) and became a promotor for the underground rave scene in Northern California. In 2002 she was accepted into the professional training program at Dell Arte International school of Physical Theater (Blue Lake CA, population 1241) where she studied classical forms of theatre like mime, clown and commedia del’ arte. (yes, you read that correctly, clown school). Upon graduation from Dell’ Arte in 2003 she traveled the United States performing children’s theatre with the Lamplight Theatre Company.

In 2004 she moved back to San Francisco and worked as an actress (and waitress and everything in-between) at the California Shakespeare Theatre, the Center Repertory Theatre, Golden Thread Productions and the Cutting Ball Theatre.

In 2007 she moved to New York City (with a whopping $200 to her name) to further pursue a career as a theatre performer and performance artist. From 2007 to 2011 she collaborated with artist Zefrey Throwell for his Midtown Games, Whitney Biennial, and Occularpation Wall Street performances. The film capturing Ocularpation screened at the Museum of Modern Art in 2012 and it was suggested by MoMa that the performance was “The spark in the tinderbox for the occupy Wall Street movement."

In 2011 she received her BS from the CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies, Brooklyn College, in Mediated Performance Art and Mass Media. After graduation she was chosen from a pool of 50,000 candidates on Monster.com (I know! People do actually get jobs on Monster, I was surprised too) to work for celebrity chef Mario Batali as his first ever Media Production Coordinator for Via Alta Productions, his in house production company. While there she developed his YouTube Strategy and created the Webby award winning series “How to Tuesday” highlighting kitchen tips from the chefs in Mario’s restaurants (She has never eaten so well for such an extended period of time).

In 2013 she joined Magnet Media as Director of Creative Development for their Originals department. She has developed web originals for PBS Digital Studios, National Geographic Kids, Scripps Ulive Network, Martha Stewart Living and Food Network. She is currently working in Business Development for Magnet Media because as her boss put it, “ When you're in the room clients open up their checkbooks and write checks.”

Drea now lives in Brooklyn with her darling husband Hal and their perfect son, Bowie.