Molly Lynch is an award-winning choreographer and artistic director with more than 45 years of experience creating, producing, and presenting dance. She is currently a Professor of Dance at UC Irvine, where she teaches ballet, senior seminar, and arts management.

Ms. Lynch is the Founder and Artistic Director of the National Choreographers Initiative (NCI), an internationally recognized project dedicated to nurturing the development of new choreography, now in its 22nd year. NCI received a prestigious National Endowment for the Arts grant in 2015. Previously, Ms. Lynch served as Artistic Director of Ballet Pacifica from 1988–2003, where she founded the Pacifica Choreographic Project, the predecessor to NCI, which continued for 13 years.

She has choreographed ballets for companies including Singapore Dance Theatre, Ridgepointe Ballet (Manila, Philippines), Festival Ballet Theatre, Sacramento Ballet, Nashville Ballet, BalletMet (Columbus, Ohio), and Dance Collage (Hermosillo, Mexico). Her research has been presented at the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO) Conference, Corps de Ballet International, and the Women in Dance Leadership Conference.

Ms. Lynch is the recipient of the 2001 Choo San Goh Award for Choreography. In 2007, she received the Outstanding Arts Organization Award from Arts Orange County for her work with the National Choreographers Initiative. In 2008, she was honored with Irvine Barclay Theatre’s prestigious Jade Award for extraordinary leadership and creativity. She received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Arts Visionary from Arts Orange County in 2017 and the Claire Trevor School of the Arts Distinguished Alumni Award in 2023.