Jeannette Bayardelle

Singer and actress Jeannete Bayardelle was nominated for a Tony award for Best Performance by an Actress in 2022 for her role as Mrs. Neilsen in the Conor McPherson-Bob Dylan musical Girl from North Country. Bayardelle, who is a playwright, composer, and lyricist, has many credits to her name both on and Off Broadway. Yet she had planned to be a laboratory scientist after earning a Bachelor of Science degree at Hunter College in 2002.

Bayardelle graduated from the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts, and pursued her talent and passion for singing in the church choir and elsewhere. However, her parents and siblings had careers in the medical field, and she was inclined to pursue her MS as a back-up plan. After graduation she worked at a diagnostic lab and at the Unilever laboratory, but a successful career in the performing arts was only an audition away. She made her Broadway debut in the original production of The Color Purple in 2005, and has been acting and singing on Broadway since.

She returned to Hunter in 2022 as the commencement speaker for the graduation ceremony at the Barclays Center. “It is an incredible privilege to have been asked to deliver the commencement address at Hunter College for the class of 2022,” Bayardelle said. “The education I obtained at Hunter is primarily responsible for the success I’ve had as an artist.”

Bayardelle has been seen on Broadway in Hair and The Color Purple, while her Off-Broadway credits include Rock of Ages, Girl From the North Country, and Shida the Musical, which she also wrote. She can be heard in Disney’s Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning, and she wrote and starred in the web series I Take Thee Zoe.