Helen Garcia-Alton (she/her) is a lighting professional based out of the United States. Originally from Venezuela, Helen moved to the USA very young with her family and discovered her love for the stage when she became the curtain puller in third grade.

Helen attended Montgomery College where she received professional experience working in the on-campus roadhouse as a stagehand/electrician/programmer and received her Associates of the Arts. She then transferred to Towson University where she received a Bachelors of Science in Theatre. The four years after completing her B.S. degree were spent freelancing as a designer, programmer, electrician, stagehand and concert lighting director. She decided to go to graduate school, attending the University of Tennessee, Knoxville where she received her Master of Fine Arts degree in 2021- exactly the worst time to be back in the field post COVID!

After a year of attempted freelancing in the post-COVID world, Helen made the switch to working at CNN as a lighting director on the team in DC and she has greatly enjoyed learning a new design style. Her job with CNN has given her the opportunity to light many important politicians and to travel to support projects such as the Republican National Convention and the event where Kamala Harris announced her running mate for the 2024 presidential campaign.

Because of her diverse background in her fifteen years in the industry, Helen has been fortunate enough to work on many kinds of live and televised productions, everything from national tours (that got cancelled because of COVID) to livestreamed ballets (that happened because of COVID!), to guest lectures about creativity and How-To-Light-Yourself-For-A-Job-Interview-Through-Zoom. She even made light-up hats for her MFA thesis that were presented in a designed walk-through experience, the first in-person art event on campus post-COVID (she is very proud of it, because it's very weird and she doesn't get to talk about it a lot. Photos here).

Recent favorites include How the Light Gets In which earned her a Helen Hayes nomination in 2024, American Psycho a insane semi-immersive production, and Katalepsis an immersive production that transported the audience to a future where few humans remain.

She is always looking for a new opportunity to collaborate and meet new people in the field. She dreams of working on more immersive work and digging into more creativity.