Janina Neustupnyhas been the Head of Outreach, managing communications and press for Norient since 2022. She is a cultural worker with a passion for connecting artists and pushing projects while remaining behind the scenes. For almost a decade, she was press manager of. For almost a decade, she was press manager of Swiss Music Prizes of the Federal Office of Culture, has been involved in Cycloton – Tour de Suisse en Musique in 2019 and 2024 and some years ago was part of the cinema collective at cultural center Reitschule in her hometown, Bern, in Switzerland. In November 2025, she joined also the team of Musikvielfalt.ch, an initiative advocating for diversity and fair pay in cultural promotion. 

In 2015, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in musicology degree at the University of Bern. During her studies, she was involved as a tutor and help assistant in several lectures and projects of the Musicology Institute, notably the publication of the Verdi-Handbuch’s second edition (Metzler 2013) and basic research on the Music Theatre Activities at the Hôtel de Musique from 1766 to 1905 in Bern.

At the same time, she gained practical experience at the multidisciplinary venue Bühnen Bern, where she was assistant to the former opera director Xavier Zuber, served a dramaturgy internship for the staging of Richard Wagners Lohengrin (2015, director: Stephan Märki) and worked as music librarian and subtitle stage manager from 2014 to 2018.

As a cultural journalist, she has written articles for Berner Kulturagenda and educated herself further in the field of corporate communications and event management.

Since 2017, she has worked as communications and press manager for the Swiss Music Prizes of the Federal Office of Culture (Bundesamt für Kultur BAK). In this position, she has collaborated with outstanding and innovative musicians and culture professionals from Switzerland, such as: Irène Schweizer, Pierre Audétat, Ganesh Geymeier, Thomas Kessler, KT Gorique, Les Reines Prochaines, Sebb Bash, Erika Stucky, Aïsha Devi, Big Zis, Emilie Zoé, Antoine Chessex, Lionel Friedli, Louis Jucker, Manuel Troller, Tom Gabriel Fischer, Yilian Cañizares, Yello, Daniel Fontana (Bad Bonn), the Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp, Simone Keller and Béatrice Graf.

Her friendship with the initiator, composer and drummer Béatrice Graf and her interest in sustainable and participative culture production led to the collaboration for the festival Cycloton (2019 and 2024), a music tour under the sign of soft mobility through Switzerland, including a muscle-powered sound system for the performances and SLOW (2020), a mobile festival with concerts, roundtable discussions and participatory workshops on ecological change.

From 2016 to 2020, she was a collective member and curator of film cycles about Gender-based violence (GewaltFrei!), age discrimination (Hey Alter!) and animal rights (Pfoten hoch! Für die Rechte der Tiere) at the Kino in der Reitschule Bern.

Janina has joined the Norient team as communications and press manager in August 2022.

Photo by Dimitri Howald