In 2017, Elizabeth Blumenthal, Cultural Attaché at the US Embassy Sarajevo, reached out to Ryan Nelson and asked him to create a cultural exchange program using the American art form of musical theatre to bring together artists in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The program, called BiH Broadway, was originally conceived by Lejla Pašović (Cultural Assistant, U.S. Embassy Saraevjo). Ryan partnered with Marriott Theatre Artistic Director, Aaron Thielen, and created a series of immersive musical theatre workshops and productions whose success prompted the State Department to support expansion of the program in Bosnia and then to Poland. As we were in the final planning stages of our June 2020 Polish workshop, the global pandemic began and paused all in-person programming. With the support of the US Embassy Warsaw we pivoted to an online project , again focused on cultural collaboration. We came up with the idea of bringing artists from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland, Serbia, Germany and the United States together on one project…an online production of Spring Awakening. The idea of Broadway Across Borders was born. Cross-cultural collaboration between artists from multiple countries is at the core of what Broadway Across Borders does. Spring Awakening premiered in October 2020 and exciting in-person projects returned to Poland and Bosnia in 2021.  BiH Broadway lives on as Broadway Across Borders – BiH  under the amazing leadership of Bosnian artists Nikolina Vujić and Sanjin Arnautović.