Gersten is the executive producer of the Lincoln Center Theater, which puts on dozens of plays and musicals every year at venues like Vivian Beaumont Theater and the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.

Gersten started in theater in the 1950s, toiling as a stage manager at various venues around the country before joining The New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater in 1960, working as associate producer and Joe Papp's right-hand man. He was unceremoniously fired in 1978, but landed as the executive vice president of Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope Studios, and served as executive producer of Coppola's 1982 drama One from the Heart. After the studio imploded later that year, Gersten was an executive producer at Radio City Music Hall, then became head of the Lincoln Center Theater when it was re-established in 1985, and he's been there ever since. As the Lincoln Center Theater's executive producer, Gersten wields more power than pretty much anyone else in non-profit theater in New York, with string of financial and critical hits, from Waiting for Godot to South Pacific, under his belt. [Image via Getty]