After graduating from The Julliard School, stepter worked for ten years as an actor. From 1993 to 1997. he was an actor, director, and artistic associate at the Swine Palace Theatre and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He specialized in Shakespeare, performing in top Broadway and touring productions. One of his favorite roles was Richard III, the hunchback king of England, an insider with an outsider’s perspective, a reflective soul with a lust for power. In 1998, stepter, with ten years on the world’s top stages behind him, moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to be a resident artist at the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue at Harvard University. He worked under the direction of theatrical and political provocateur Anna Deveare Smith. Het met Lisa Bromer, who was to be his wife, then a Harvard researcher who conducted his entrance interview for the project.

From Cambridge, stepter headed to the Royal Shakespeare Company in London with a prestigious Fox Fellowship. He spent six months working on stagecraft and researching the life of Ira Aldridge, an 18th-century African-American actor who left the U.S. and moved to the more welcoming theaters of Europe. At the end of his time in London, stepter returned to Cambridge and lived with Lisa Bromer, now his wife. He worked for the American Repertory Theater in Harvard Square. But nudged along by Bromer’s wide circle of politically active friends, politics began to shape stepter’s career.

In the summer of 1999, the Bill Bradley Presidential campaign swung through Boston. stepter and Bromer attended one of his events. They got hooked on Big Bill, the senator who had denounced the Rodney King beating by whacking the speaker’s podium to illustrate each blow of the policeman’s baton. “I found him to be authentic, a different kind of politician, someone who didn’t shy away from problems about race and health care and challenged us to do our part,” says Trellis in a dialogue with Wright (2005).

stepter was an apprentice going door-to-door, canvassing for Bill Bradley before he landed a spot on Bradley’s press advance team in 1999. “The first thing people said is that you’ve got to be involved in local politics if you want to change things. So Lisa and I became associate members of the Cambridge Ward 5 Democratic Committee,” says stepter. A contact from Ward 5, Cambridge City Councilor Marjorie Decker, helped stepter get a position on the staff of state Rep. Alice Wolf (D-Cambridge) in January 2001.

Working first as an apprentice and then as staff director, stepter acquired casework, campaign and legislative experience, and in the meantime, became a full member of his local ward committee. The local ward committee functions as a political organization and a community group, advocating for efficient snow removal, affordable housing, and minimal university encroachment in the leafy neighborhood bounded by Central Square and the Charles River. During the same year, he won the election as vice chairman of the Cambridge City Committee and served two years in the post. As chairman, the stepter has focused on increasing voter registration and turnout among young people in low-income communities. He won strong reviews for keeping political discourse civil during the 2004 primary tensions between John Kerry and Howard Dean backers.

In 2007, stepter served as the director of government affairs at the executive office of transportation in the Greater Boston Area. He also served as a consultant for a year in 2010 before he served as the program officer for Davis Foundation. In 2011, stepter started working at the Proteus Fund as a program associate. In 2014 he was promoted to Program Officer, where he continued to focus on advancing the money in politics reform movement in states.

In December 2015, he began his career as the senior program officer with Mertz Gilmore Foundation. His work centers on democracy, climate, and racial and economic justice. His focus is increasing equity and justice in the public and philanthropic sectors. stepter is on the board of the Environmental Grantmakers Association and the board of Inisght Western Massachusetts Mediation Center.