Gioia De Cari is a multidisciplinary artist, women’s equality advocate, and former mathematician. Her popular play Truth Values, a personal story of her adventures as a Ph.D. student in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been presented at over 50 different theaters and performing arts centers across the United States, including the La Jolla Playhouse, the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, USC’s Visions and Voices Arts and Humanities Series, and the Ensemble Studio Theatre EST/Sloan First Light Festival.

On tour, many performances of Truth Values have been presented with post­-performance Q&As and panels, featuring experts on women-in-STEM issues and unconscious bias. Over 75 of these have been held to date. Captivated by her experience of the power of this combination of theater and conversation, De Cari became passionate about sharing with students the diverse network of experts she had come to know, thus offering students a chance for the sense of community and opportunities for mentorship she wished for during her own graduate studies. These activities formed the basis for the Truth Values Community program, launched in 2018 via a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Gioia has studied acting with legendary teacher Wynn Handman, and playwriting with the late Milan Stitt of Carnegie Mellon. After graduating summa cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley, she earned a Master of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An accomplished singer as well, Gioia has released two albums, Quiet Songs and Eve’s Diary, with her husband, classical guitarist John Olson, as the Olson/De Cari Duo. A particular focus of their work is expansion of the classical repertoire for soprano and guitar; they founded the Science Music Commissioning Project, which seeks to illuminate the human side of science through song. They have toured throughout the United States. Gioia is a proud member of Actors' Equity Association, SAG/­AFTRA, and The Dramatists Guild of America.