Red Curtain Addict Founder and CEO Kari Lincks Coomans has been named one of San Francisco Magazine’s 2026 Dynamic Women, recognizing women whose leadership, creativity, and work are making an impact across the Bay Area. For Coomans, the recognition carries particular meaning. San Francisco is not only where she built her career, but the city that helped shape her ambitions for what Red Curtain Addict could become.

“San Francisco has always been a place that encouraged me to think bigger and build what I felt was missing,” says Coomans. “This city gave me so many of the opportunities that shaped who I am today, so to be recognized by San Francisco Magazine alongside such an incredible group of women feels incredibly special.”

From Musician to Founder

Long before founding Red Curtain Addict, Coomans’ relationship with the arts began as a performer. A classically trained oboist and jazz vocalist, she grew up in Tulsa before studying in Arkansas (as well as Tulsa!) and eventually making her way to San Francisco, where her professional life became increasingly intertwined with the city’s cultural community.

Her career has spanned both the performing arts and the marketing and technology worlds, from working with organizations including the San Francisco Symphony to building marketing programs and strategies for Fortune 500 brands. Those experiences gave her a unique perspective on both sides of the equation: an understanding of what makes the arts extraordinary, paired with the marketing expertise to understand how organizations build audiences, tell stories, and create meaningful connections with consumers.

But throughout those chapters, Coomans continued to see the same challenge: extraordinary arts experiences were happening all around her, yet discovering what to see, understanding why it mattered, and feeling invited into the experience could still be difficult for audiences outside traditional arts circles. That observation ultimately became the foundation for Red Curtain Addict. Founded in 2018 and built alongside her husband and cofounder, Parker Coomans, Red Curtain Addict began as a passion project and has evolved into an arts discovery and media platform designed to help people discover, learn about and experience the performing arts.

Today, RCA connects audiences with cultural organizations through personalized technology, editorial storytelling, video, television, live experiences and partnerships spanning the Bay Area arts community. “My career has taken a lot of turns, but the common thread has always been creating connection,” Coomans says. “As a musician, I understood the power of what happens onstage. As a marketer, I learned how important it is to understand the audience on the other side. Red Curtain Addict brought those worlds together.”

Building a New Kind of Arts Community

At the center of Coomans’ vision is a belief that sustaining the arts requires more than promoting individual performances. It requires building relationships between audiences and the people, stories, and institutions behind them. That philosophy has increasingly taken RCA beyond traditional arts coverage. Coomans hosts artist interviews and red-carpet conversations, creates behind-the-scenes experiences, brings arts stories to television audiences through RCA’s weekly appearances on KRON4’s Live in the Bay, and works directly with cultural organizations to introduce their work to new communities.

“Intimate arts experiences create a different kind of connection,” says Coomans. “Bringing audiences closer to the artists and people behind the work builds a deeper sense of community. Ultimately, that’s what we’re working toward: helping build the audiences that will sustain these organizations for generations to come.” It is part of a larger ambition Coomans describes as “globalizing local arts”: creating an ecosystem where someone can discover the cultural life of their own city as easily as they might discover a restaurant, hotel, or destination, while giving local arts organizations new ways to reach audiences far beyond their traditional circles.

For Coomans, however, the larger purpose goes beyond the growth of Red Curtain Addict itself, or even simply getting more people through the doors of a concert hall. “Our greatest impact isn’t measured only by what we achieve, but by what we awaken in others,” she says. That impact can take many forms. The arts can introduce us to a perspective we may never have considered, transport us into an entirely new world, inspire us to see new possibilities within our own lives, or spark a conversation that may never have happened otherwise. They have the ability to bring together people from different backgrounds and experiences around something shared.

And that power extends beyond the audience. For the artists, musicians, dancers, actors, creators and organizations who bring these experiences to life, the arts offer a place to express ideas, tell stories, challenge conventions and create something that can resonate far beyond a single performance. “There is something incredibly powerful about what happens when an artist shares their work, and someone on the other side connects with it,” Coomans says. “You never really know what that experience might awaken in someone, or where that inspiration might lead. Creating more opportunities for those moments to happen is what makes this work so meaningful to me.”

A Full-Circle San Francisco Moment

The Dynamic Women recognition also represents something of a full-circle moment for Coomans and Red Curtain Addict. In both 2025 and 2026, San Francisco Magazine named Red Curtain Addict the Best Arts Resource in the Bay Area. This year, the magazine turned its attention to the woman behind the platform, recognizing Coomans among its 2026 Dynamic Women.

For a founder whose career has been so closely connected to San Francisco’s cultural landscape, the recognition is deeply personal. “I came to San Francisco wanting to build a life in the arts, but I couldn’t have predicted what that life would eventually look like,” Coomans says. “Some of the greatest opportunities in my career have come from being willing to put in the work, adapt, and create the opportunity when the path wasn’t already there.” Her own journey has continued alongside the company she built. Coomans remains an active musician, including performing at Carnegie Hall in 2023, while leading RCA into its next chapter and continuing to advocate for a thriving cultural future in the Bay Area.

She is also particularly grateful to Autumn O’Keefe for the recognition and for her continued championing of the people and organizations shaping San Francisco. “Autumn has such an incredible way of bringing people together and shining a light on the individuals who are working to make this city special,” says Coomans. “I’m incredibly grateful to her, not only for this recognition, but for everything she does to celebrate San Francisco and the people who care so deeply about its future. To be recognized by someone I respect so much makes this honor even more meaningful.”

And as Red Curtain Addict continues to grow, Coomans remains focused on the idea that started it all: creating a future for the arts in which more people see themselves as part of the story. “I want future generations to feel that these institutions belong to them, too,” says Coomans. “I want them to discover the arts, experience them and make them their own.”

For Coomans, being named one of San Francisco Magazine’s Dynamic Women is both a celebration of how far that journey has come and a reminder of why she began it. “San Francisco gave me a place to dream bigger,” she says. “Getting to give something back to the city and the arts community that shaped me is something I’m deeply grateful for.”