"All of the speakers were clearly experts in their field and had a wealth of information to share."
—Cherie Fryman, Media
City Ballet
- Parc 55 Hotel, San Francisco, CA, November 3 – 6, 2010
- REGISTRATION
Speakers
Featured Speakers and Honorees
Giselle "Gigi" Antoni, 2010 National Leadership honoree, works to bring creative, artistic and cultural learning experiences to schools and communities throughout the City of Dallas. Her vision of systemic and equal educational opportunities for the Dallas Independent School District has helped to spark community partnerships that are changing the face of education in Dallas. Antoni has worked for more than twenty years in the arts education field as a performing artist, educator, community developer and arts administrator. Since 1995 she has served as president/CEO for Big Thought, a non-profit organization dedicated to inspiring, empowering and uniting children and communities through education, arts and culture partnerships. Antoni was a key driver in the implementation of Dallas ArtsPartners, a national model for public school arts integration developed with the Dallas Independent School District, the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs and more than 50 community cultural agencies. The success of Dallas ArtsPartners illuminated the possibilities for children in Dallas ISD, one of the largest and most socio-economically disadvantaged districts in the country. Antoni convened with grant makers, civic organizations, City of Dallas partners, corporate and individual donors to create the Dallas Arts Learning Initiative. Through this initiative children and families benefit from an extensive web of artistic and cultural providers to receive quality creative learning opportunities during school, outside of school time and in communities and neighborhoods. Antoni lectures nationally about the success of organizing and convening communities, designing and building programs, and developing systemic arts integration initiatives. She has served on numerous local, state and national committees, boards and juries, for such agencies as The Kennedy Center Imagination Celebration, the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities Coming Up Taller Awards, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Eric Bachrach, a 2010 National Service honoree and a New York City native and violinist by training, founded the Community Music School of Springfield in Springfield, MA twenty-six years ago to bring the arts to students of all ages who might not otherwise have the opportunity to learn music in all its forms. Since its founding, the School has served some 20,000 area students, raised an overall total of $4.5 million and distributed more than $1.2 million to help students study at the school noted for its prestigious faculty since its founding twenty-six years ago. In 2008, Bachrach introduced the Prelude Preschool of the Arts where children ages three, four and five study not only violin and guitar but also creative movement and art. The school recently raised $3 million in its “Fanfare for the Future” campaign that helped create a new performance venue in its State Street building. The school started life in the basement of what is now German Gerena Community School with twenty-two faculty members and ninety students and today has sixty-five faculty and a student body of more than six hundred weekly students. Bachrach served four terms as a National Guild trustee and was a key member of the Membership Committee, most recently as its chair. He also served as board secretary between 2004 and 2006. Eric will retire from the Community Music School in December 2010.
Stephen Shapiro , 2010 National Service honoree, is the executive director of San Francisco’s Community Music Center (CMC), a non-profit organization that has made musical study accessible to Bay Area residents since 1921. Since Shapiro took the helm in 1978, the school has physically expanded with an additional branch, collaborative programs with eighteen public schools, and programs in numerous satellite locations including a shelter for homeless families. CMC has also added folk, blues, Latin, Middle Eastern, Flamenco, popular, and rock instruction to what was a primarily western classical music school and a music therapy program for students with physical, emotional, or developmental disabilities. Shapiro has ensured that CMC is a center for education and performance that reflects the rich diversity of the San Francisco Bay Area and has provided area residents with access to world-renowned performers through collaborations with organizations such as San Francisco Performances. In 2003, he received the Gerbode Fellowship for outstanding non-profit leadership. Shapiro has worked as a consultant with five nascent Guild schools in the western United States through the Wallace Foundation funded, Guild-sponsored "Adopt a School" program. He is currently on the Education Committee of the San Francisco Symphony, a member of the Board of Directors of the Zellerbach Family Foundation, served on the Board of Directors for the National Guild for Community Arts Education from 1981 to 1990 and was Vice President of the Guild from 1983 to 1986. Shapiro has played piano professionally for many years and is also an amateur flautist. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a B.A. from Oberlin College. Steve will retire September 2011 after thirty-four years at CMC.
Bruce Sievers holds a senior fellow position with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, is consulting director of the Skirball Foundation, serves as treasurer of the national Fulbright Association, and is a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, which he helped establish in 2006. From 2002 to 2009, Sievers served as visiting scholar at the Haas Center, where he worked on his book, Civil Society, Philanthropy and the Fate of the Commons, and advised the philanthropy fellows on the field. While at the Haas Center, he founded a speaker series in philanthropy that resulted in a book, Stanford Conversations in Philanthropy, published by the Center for Social Innovation. A former Fulbright Scholar at the Freie Universität in Berlin, Seivers served as the founding chief executive officer of the California Council for the Humanities from 1974 to 1983 and as executive director of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund from 1983 to 2002. He served on the board of directors of the Council on Foundations and as chair of Northern California Grantmakers. He received three degrees from Stanford (B.A. international relations, ‘63; M.A. political science, ’66; Ph.D. political science, ’73) and now teaches Stanford’s undergraduate course Theories of Civil Society, Philanthropy and the Nonprofit Sector.
Bernie Trilling is a 21st century learning expert, advisor, author, and the former global director of the Oracle Education Foundation, where he directed the development of education strategies, partnerships, and services for the Foundation and its ThinkQuest programs. He has served as board member of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and co-chaired the committee that developed the highly regarded “rainbow” learning framework. Bernie has worked on a number of pioneering educational products and services and is an active member of a variety of organizations dedicated to bringing 21st century learning methods to students and teachers across the globe. Prior to joining the Oracle Education Foundation, he was director of the Technology In Education group at WestEd, a U.S. national educational laboratory, where he led a team of educational technologists in integrating technology into both the instructional and administrative realms of education. He also has served in a variety of roles in both education and industry, including executive producer for instruction at Hewlett-Packard Company, where he helped lead a state-of-the-art global interactive distance learning network. As an instructional designer and educator, Bernie has held a number of professional educational roles in settings ranging from preschool to corporate training. Bernie co-authored the widely acclaimed book, 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times, published by Wiley. He has also written dozens of articles for educational journals and magazines and is a featured speaker at numerous educational conferences.Bernie is a lifelong, self-propelled learner. He has devoted much of his career to furthering the kinds of learning experiences he has found most engaging, collaborative, relevant, and powerful, working to make these experiences available to learners of all ages.
Speakers
Chrissy Anderson-Zavala is a Xicana writer from Salinas, California. She studied and taught poetry in June Jordan’s Poetry for the People at UC Berkeley, where she graduated with a dual degree in English literature and peace and conflict Studies. In Salinas, she tutored young people with a focus on youth activism and community violence prevention. She worked with WritersCorps and Performing Arts Workshop as a teaching artist and teacher coach for several years. She received her master of arts degree in education with a concentration in policy, organization, and leadership studies from Stanford University. She was a recipient of the San Francisco Arts Commission 2009 Cultural Equity Individual Artist grant. She currently is the co-deputy director of Streetside Stories, a youth arts education non-profit in San Francisco, and advocacy co-chair of the Arts Providers Alliance of San Francisco.
Kwayera Archer-Cunningham is founder and CEO of Ifetayo Cultural Arts. An experienced arts educator and administrator, Kwayera has developed innovative programs and teaching techniques that combine the arts and core principles of African culture as a means to heal youth and build communities. Her dedication to community development has been recognized with the: Union Square award for Longstanding Contribution to Youth (2001); Black Rose award for Black Woman Entrepreneurs (2002); and the World Mission Foundation’s African American Youths in Search of Education and Hope Award (2004).
Dan Berkowitz is the manager of Youth Orchestra, LA (YOLA), the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s El Sistema-inspired initiative to provide access to exceptional orchestral education in order to promote youth development. Prior to joining the LA Phil, he was a member of the inaugural class of Abreu Fellows at the New England Conservatory. Berkowitz received bachelor’s degrees in both music and economics from Northwestern University, where he studied trombone with Michael Mulcahy. He has performed and taught across Europe, Asia, and the United States, including a residency in China with the Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra. In addition, Berkowitz worked as an entrepreneur from 2007-2009, developing the infrastructure for Morningstar’s Pan-European and Asian fund research endeavor in London.
Joyce Bonomini leads a dynamic staff at The Marcia P. Hoffman Performing Arts Institute at Ruth Eckerd Hall, a divisional school aligned with a Performing Arts Center, which now serves 130,000 people annually with 350,000 contact hours, The institute offers diverse, multi-disciplinary programs in instruction, live performance and community engagement. These programs provide service far beyond the walls of the Hoffman Institute into schools, community centers, hospitals, and other arts centers throughout Pinellas County, the State of Florida and the east coast of the United States of America. Through professional leadership, adherence to standards of excellence, responsiveness to their constituents and uncompromising dedication to principals of inclusion, The Hoffman Institute provides a dynamic resource to all segments of the community for life-long experience, exploration, discovery and mastery of the performing arts. Bonomini contributes to multiple committees of arts and education organizations serving Pinellas County, Florida. For more than a decade, she has also offered insight on arts education, arts infusion and building community through the arts, by way of training sessions and speaking engagements.
Leni Boorstin is director of community affairs at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, where she is responsible for Neighborhood Concerts and other community programs. Boorstin served as co-chair of the Grand Avenue Festival and works with a coalition of stakeholders on Youth Orchestra LA (YOLA), an El Sistema-inspired initiative developed in 2007 in anticipation of the arrival of Gustavo Dudamel as the Philharmonic’s music director. Her previous experience inarts management was at KPFK-FM and San Francisco's Exploratorium Museum. As a graduate studentshe was a Public Affairs and the Arts Fellow with the CORO Foundation. Boorstin was trained as an executive coach and currently mentors the next generation of arts management professionals. She has served three Mayors as a City of Los Angeles’ human relations commissioner. In 2004, she also served as a member of the Mayor’s Arts Task Force. She is currently a member of the Arts for LA board and the national advisory team for El Sistema-USA.
Ronnie Brooks oversees leadership development and stakeholder engagement programs for the Amherst Wilder Foundation’s Wilder Center for Communities. She also directs the James P. Shannon Leadership Institute, a program that provides a yearlong renewal experience for foundation and nonprofit organization leaders. Brooks has extensive experience in both the public and private sectors in Minnesota. She served as special assistant to the Governor of Minnesota and as director of majority research for the Minnesota State Senate, and has managed development projects for the mayors of both Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Brooks was also vice president of the Keystone Center, a Colorado-based public policy organization; executive director of the Saint Paul Downtown Council; and manager of community development and policy planning for the Dayton-Hudson (now Target) Corporation. Brooks has played a leadership role in several Minnesota civic and professional organizations. She was president of both the Citizens League and the Mediation Center and a board member of the Voyager Outward Bound School, the David Preus Leadership Council, the Civic Leadership Foundation, and MAP for Nonprofits. She was a McKnight Fellow and an International Business Fellow. Additionally, she is a recipient of the Lloyd Short Award for Distinguished Public Service and of the YWCA Outstanding Leadership Award. She currently serves on the boards of Graywolf Press and the David Preus Leadership Council and is a member of the Mayor's Task Force on the Ford Motor Company plant. Brooks did her undergraduate work at the University of Michigan and received her master of arts degree in political science from Michigan State University. She has been on the faculty of the Legislative Staff Management Institute of the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and the University of St. Thomas Center for Nonprofit Leadership where she focused on leadership and management in the nonprofit sector.
Jeffrey Chapline is the executive director of creative aging programs at the Institute on Aging in San Francisco and artistic director for the Center for Elders and Youth in the Arts (CEYA) program. CEYA is an innovative cross-generational program which Chapline designed and implemented at the Institute on Aging in 1996. Working from a rich pool of professionals including writers, musicians, and actors, Chapline manages an average of 20 community projects per year involving multiple artistic disciplines and languages. CEYA’s exhibitions and are enjoyed by over 4,000 people annually. The program has been cited by the United Nations, the National Council on Aging and the California Arts Council for its pioneering approach. The program is also one of three projects participating in a groundbreaking study by George Washington University that evaluates the effects of community-based cultural programs on the health of participating seniors. In 2010 CEYA maintains its standing on the National Endowment for the Arts Best Practices in Creative Aging Programs list for providing community accessibility to professional arts programming. Chapline is a 2007 recipient of a Center for Social Innovation Fellowship at the Stanford Graduate School of Business’ Executive Program for Nonprofit Leaders (EPNL) in the arts and a 2009 attendee of the EPNL Next Step Program. Chapline earned an M.F.A in design from UCLA in 1984, and a B.F.A. in design from the University of Kansas in 1980. His glasswork, painting and sculptures have been exhibited in galleries throughout the United States. As a result of his work at the Institute on Aging, in 1995 he was one of 8 recognized leaders to speak at the White House Conference on Aging’s mini conference on arts and humanities, and in 2001 presented at the International Association of Gerontology in Vancouver, B.C. Chapline continues to lecture on community arts programming and the CEYA model nationwide.
Tom DeCaigny is executive director of Performing Arts Workshop in San Francisco, CA. He first joined the Workshop in 1999 as the program manager for the Paul Robeson and Diego Rivera Academy, an alternative arts middle school and treatment program for repeat juvenile offenders. Under his leadership, the Workshop has grown from serving 3,500 youth per year to more than 7,500. Tom has over fifteen years of nonprofit leadership experience in the fields of youth development, education and arts administration.
In 1978, Stuart Kandell founded Stagebridge (Oakland, CA), the nation’s oldest senior theatre company. Thirty years later, Kandell continues to direct this award winning company. His work has been featured on CNN, World Monitor TV, PBS and in many national publications and magazines. Kandell is a featured speaker at many national and international conferences. He has also served as a site reviewer for the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2000, Kandell was nominated by the American Society on Aging and received the first Generations United Award for Intergenerational Innovation. Currently, Kandell is founding director of the Center for Creative Aging West, bringing together professionals in the field of creative aging in the Bay Area. In May 2005, he was selected as one of 35 leaders for the White House Conference on Aging’s mini-conference, Creativity and Aging in America sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. Most recently he helped to plan and run the first National Conference on Creativity and Aging in New Jersey. He is a member of the board of the National Center for Creative Aging which is based in Washington, DC.
Karen Deschere has served as president/ CEO of the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, a non-profit community music school based in Milwaukee with branch locations in Fox Point and Brookfield, for six years. The Conservatory serves more than 8,000 students through tuition-based lessons and classes, community programs and music therapy. A life-long arts administrator, Karen most recently worked for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra where she was executive director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the CSO’s training orchestra. Prior to her time in Chicago, Karen ran education programs in 16 U.S. cities for the Grammy Awards Foundation. A native of New York State, she was also executive director of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. Karen holds a bachelor of music education with performance honors degree from Syracuse University where she majored in voice.
Amy Dennison is the director of the Preparatory Department for the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) at the University of Cincinnati. Ms. Dennison is also a consultant and writer for the Sound Discoveries Educational Program of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Ms. Dennison is a frequent workshop presenter for local, regional and national conferences, with an emphasis in the integration of music and language arts and building recycled instruments. She is the co-author of One Voice - Music and Stories in the Classroom (Libraries Unlimited, 1995). Ms. Dennison is also a professional oboist who performs with the Cincinnati Community Orchestra and the ConBrio Winds. Amy received her bachelor’s of music education from Eastern Michigan University and her master of music from Michigan State University and a master of music education from CCM. In 2002 Ms. Dennison was named “Administrator of the Year” by the Ohio Orchestra and String Association. Ms. Dennison is on the Board of Trustees for the Cincinnati Children’s Choir and the Cincinnati Community Orchestra.
Maria Genné, M.Ed., is the artistic and executive director of Kairos Dance, an intergenerational dance company; creator and director of The Dancing Heart-Vital Elders Moving in Community, an artist-led pioneering, national award-winning, evidence-based dance, theater, music, and story arts program that is transforming the lives of frail elders. Genné is also founder of Young Dance, a young people's dance company. She has choreographed and performed more than 60 choreographic works throughout the U.S. including work for The New Jersey Performing Arts Center, ’04 and ’05 Joint Conferences of the American Society on Aging and the National Council on the Aging; National American Society of Aging conferences in San Francisco and Philadelphia; Alzheimer's Conference in St. Paul; The Arrowhead Dementia Conference in Duluth; National Conference for the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging, and many others. Kairos Dance has received The Archstone Award for Excellence in Program Innovation from the American Public Health Association (the only arts organization to receive a public health award) and Mind-Alert Award from The American Society on Aging.
For the past seven years, Peter Jablow has served as the president and CEO of the Levine School of Music in Washington, D.C., one of this country’s leading community music schools. Peter oversees the operation of the school’s four campuses in metropolitan Washington, and its 150 faculty serving some 3,500 students. Levine, under Peter’s leadership, has almost doubled its size, provides more than 500 children with subsidized or free music education, and relocated two of its four campuses. Before coming to Levine, Peter launched the Media division for Bearing Point (then KPMG Consulting), the international consulting group. Prior to that, Peter served as the executive vice-president and chief operating officer of NPR, National Public Radio. Peter came to NPR from his own successful consulting practice. His media development expertise and entertainments management skills stemmed from his years as president of TicketMaster’s largest franchise in the mid-Atlantic region and as the CEO of Ticketron. Peter began his career in Boston in the early seventies where he was the executive director of the Massachusetts Cultural Alliance, a trade association for the non-profit arts and entertainment industry. He was recruited to Washington D.C. in 1978 to launch a similar enterprise modeled upon his work in Boston, and this led to his being named the first executive director of the Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington. Peter has also played a significant role in Washington’s theatrical community as a founding Director of the Helen Hayes Awards, and has served as the Board Chairman of both the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and the Round House Theatre Company. He oversaw Round House’s $12 million expansion effort, which led to its new homes in Bethesda and Silver Spring. Peter has a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
In 1978, Stuart Kandell founded Stagebridge (Oakland, CA), the nation’s oldest senior theatre company. Thirty years later, Kandell continues to direct this award winning company. His work has been featured on CNN, World Monitor TV, PBS and in many national publications and magazines. Kandell is a featured speaker at many national and international conferences. He has also served as a site reviewer for the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2000, Kandell was nominated by the American Society on Aging and received the first Generations United Award for Intergenerational Innovation. Currently, Kandell is founding director of the Center for Creative Aging West, bringing together professionals in the field of creative aging in the Bay Area. In May 2005, he was selected as one of 35 leaders for the White House Conference on Aging’s mini-conference, Creativity and Aging in America sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. Most recently he helped to plan and run the first National Conference on Creativity and Aging in New Jersey. He is a member of the board of the National Center for Creative Aging which is based in Washington, D.C.
Rob Kapilow, conductor, composer, and commentator, has made his life's work the transmission of joy and meaning that classical music can bring. Renowned for his What Makes It Great series, he is also the author of the award-winning book, All You Have to Do is Listen. Kapilow, along with co-presenter Darrell Robes Kipp (Blackfeet), is a subject of the recent PBS documentary, Summer Sun Winter Moon.
Darrell Robes Kipp, Harvard-educated poet, ground-breaking educator and leader in the Native American language preservation movement, is featured in the PBS documentary, Summer Sun Winter Moon. In 1987, Kipp was a co-founder of the nonprofit Piegan Institute to study and archive the then-dying Blackfeet language. The institute produced seminars and scores of research papers, leading to the co-founding of the Nizipuhwahsin Center in 1995, a Blackfeet language immersion school that has become a worldwide model for indigenous peoples. In 2004, Robb Kapilow asked Kipp to write the libretto for a composition commemorating the Lewis and Clark bicentennial from the Native American point of view, and a historic collaboration began.
Julia Wilkinson Manley is the school director at Ballet Nouveau Colorado. She began her training with Cristina Munro (London Festival Ballet, Eliot Feld) in Corpus Christi, Texas. Julia attended the Boston Ballet Centre for Dance Education, where she studied with Tatiana Legat, Elena Solovieva and Laura Young. She trained with the Houston Ballet Academy and at the University of Oklahoma, where she received a B.F.A. in ballet pedagogy and danced soloist roles in Balanchine’s Serenade, Miguel Terekhov’s Four Moons, Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker, as Sugar Plum Fairy, as well as numerous solo roles choreographed for her by Mary Margaret Holt (Houston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet). She toured with Ballet Ireland under the direction of Gunther Falusy, and performed with David Taylor Dance Theatre and Ballet Nouveau Colorado. An award-winning choreographer, Julia premiered her first work at age 15. Her work has been performed by numerous companies, including Corpus Christi Ballet, David Taylor Dance Theatre, and Ballet Nouveau Colorado.
Jan Masaoka is a leading writer and thinker on nonprofit organizations with particular emphasis on boards of directors, business planning, and the role of nonprofits in society. She is currently the director and editor-in-chief of the online nonprofit magazine, Blue Avocado (www.blueavocado.org). She recently left her position of fourteen years as executive director of CompassPoint Nonprofit Services (www.compasspoint.org), a consulting and training firm for nonprofits based in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. In that position she was named Nonprofit Executive of the Year by NonProfit Times in 2003. Jan has written the Board Café newsletter for nonprofit boards (now a column in Blue Avocado), which was compiled into The Best of the Board Café (Fieldstone Press, Second Edition 2009). She wrote All Hands on Board: The Board of Directors in All-Volunteer Organizations (BoardSource), and her research work includes studies on women executive directors of color, executive director tenure, all-volunteer organizations, and nonprofit space & occupancy needs. With Jeanne Bell and Steve Zimmerman she co-authored Nonprofit Sustainability: Making Strategic Decisions for Financial Viability, which will be published by Jossey-Bass in November 2010. She is a frequent keynote speaker and contributor to nonprofit journals. Jan’s community activities include serving as the Chair of the Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center (www.apiwellness.org), and as Founding Board President of the San Francisco Foundation Community Initiative Funds (www.communityin.org). She is a board member of New America Media (www.newamericamedia.org) and an Advisory Board member for the Stanford Social Innovation Review (www.ssireview.org). Jan was a member of the Governance and Fiduciary Working Group of the Panel on the Nonprofit Sector convened to advise the US Senate Finance Committee. She served two terms on the Telecommunications Commission of the City and County of San Francisco, and was a member of the 2008 California Grantmaker Associations Diversity in Philanthropy Advisory Committee. Jan has been named eight times as one of the "Fifty Most Influential People" in the nonprofit sector nationwide, and in 2005 she was named “California Community Leader of the Year” by Leadership California.
John McCann, President, Partners in Performance, is an educator, facilitator and consultant. His specific expertise is in leadership education, visioning and strategy development for organizations. Prior to the creation of Partners in Performance, John was the founder and director of the Institute for Cultural Policy and Practice at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, VA. The Institute developed the Community Arts Leadership Academy (now in its eighth year) for Artserve Michigan; designed and facilitated the leadership development component of the Orchestra Management Fellowship Program of the League of American Orchestras; and developed leadership seminars for Dance/USA, Dance/NYC, Theatre Communications Group, and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. The Institute also designed and managed the Orchestra Forum, a ten-year leadership and change initiative funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to promote institutional cultural changes in 14 of the nation's most diverse and artistically vital orchestras. Additionally, John has served as a faculty member or speaker for the American Planning Association, Prairie Arts Leadership Institute, New York Alliance of Arts Organizations, and the Empire State Partnership for Arts Education. He is co-author of the Board Excellence Handbook, published by the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations; Jomandi: People Gathered Together in Celebration (FEDAPT, 1995), and Beyond Survival, Devising Strategies in an Uncertain World and Leadership as Creativity, both published by the National Endowment for the Arts. As co-founder of EmcArts, LLC with Richard Evans, McCann served as a member of the consulting team for a broad array of clients including the Aspen Music Festival and School, Arts International, and the 18th Street Arts Complex. He facilitated planning retreats and strategy development sessions for the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the Choral Arts Society of Washington, DC, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Washington Ballet, Dance Place, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), Maryland Citizens for the Arts, and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. On behalf of the National Endowment for the Arts, McCann facilitated the focus groups designed to inform the creation of the Challenge America program. McCann launched Partners in Performance in 2008. As President of the company, John serves as lead consultant on a variety of interesting and intriguing projects including the National Dance Heritage Leadership Forum for the Dance Heritage Coalition; the Governance Effectiveness Initiative for Chamber Music America; the National Trustee Forum for Opera America; and as facilitator for the visioning and strategy development for the Miami Residency of The Cleveland Orchestra. His pro-bono work includes serving as a facilitator for the Louisiana Recovery and Rebuilding Conference (2005), Clinton Global Initiative (2006), National Performing Arts Convention (2008), and the Association of Arts Administration Educators (2009).
Jeff Melanson is the executive director and co-CEO of Canada's National Ballet School/L’École nationale de ballet du Canada. He was formerly the dean of the Royal Conservatory of Music’s Community School in Toronto. In his role as dean, Jeff expanded the academic content of the program to include the World Music Centre, DJ technique classes, rock/pop programming, jazz programming and teacher training. He launched a community program to bring music-making to the lives of hundreds of children, youth and seniors from under-serviced areas. Jeff is a recipient of the Peter F. Drucker Fellowship for excellence in nonprofit management.
Jessica Mele is deputy director at Performing Arts Workshop in San Francisco, where she combines her love of the performing arts with her interests in education and community building. At the Workshop, she recently oversaw the creation and implementation of the Workshop’s Advocacy Action Plan. In the community, she currently serves as advocacy co-chair for the Arts Provider’s Alliance of San Francisco and as a member of the steering committee of Teaching Artists Organized. Prior to joining the Workshop, Jessica worked with the Alameda Alliance for Arts Learning, the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, and Glitter and Razz Productions, based in Oakland, CA. From 2002-2005, Jessica managed the academic research projects of Marshall Ganz at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She also developed her own negotiation and community building skills as an organizer for the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (AFSCME, AFL-CIO). Jessica holds a B.A. in anthropology and French studies from Smith College and an Ed.M. in education policy and management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Nancy Ng is director of community development at Luna Kids Dance. Prior to her managerial and directorial roles with LKD, she was the Administrative Director for Asian American Dance Performances (AADP) where she presented other artists, and choreographed and performed her own work. As a dance educator for the past 25 years, Ms. Ng has worked in numerous public children’s centers, schools and social service agencies as a dance specialist and classroom teacher. Ng has co-facilitated the Luna Summer Institutes since inception. She has been recognized for her dance education work at Luna by the National Dance Education Organization (receiving the first award for dance mentorship in 2003 with Patricia Reedy), and locally with an Isadora Duncan Dance award. As a leader in the field of dance education, Ms. Ng currently serves as Past President for the California Dance Education Association, and has presented at NDEO conferences and most recently at the VSA Arts 2008 conference.
Gretchen Nielsen is director of educational initiatives at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, where she designs, implements, and supervises all of its education programs. These programs reach more than 100,000 schoolchildren, teachers, families, young musicians, and concert-goers annually. Over the past three years, Ms. Nielsen launched YOLA (Youth Orchestra LA), Gustavo Dudamel’s signature program based on El Sistema. Nielsen previously served as associate director of education at the Philharmonic from 2000 to 2006. In her former position, she designed and implemented the School Partners Program and established the Philharmonic’s teaching artist faculty, as well as the professional development training for musicians. Prior to joining the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2000, she was education director at the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and also a former management fellow of the Opera America Fellowship Program. She has also served as a consultant for EmcArts, a Manhattan-based arts consulting firm whose primary mission is to strengthen the capacities and effectiveness of nonprofit arts and cultural organizations.
Michael C. Patterson, founder of mindRAMP & Associates, LLC, is an educator who specializes in the areas of gerontology, cognition, brain health and creativity. Patterson has produced and presented brain health forums and workshops across the country as director of the award-winning Staying Sharp program, a joint project of NRTA: AARP’s Educator Community and the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives. During an early career as a professional actor and director, Patterson led the Creative Outreach Program for the Elderly, a theatre program for older adults and founded a Grey Panthers chapter in Santa Cruz, CA. Patterson developed a successful career in public television then returned to gerontology, working with AARP and NRTA. Patterson is a board member of the National Center for Creative Aging, chairs the NCCA Research Committee and served on the communications committee for the CDC/Alzheimer’s Association Roadmap for Brain Health. Patterson has a degree in theatre from Antioch College, a masters of liberal studies from Georgetown University and years of self study in neuroscience, cognition and evolutionary psychology.
Brian Pearson has worked in the field of arts education for over twenty years. At the beginning of his career he helped found Catalyst Theater Company which became part of Towson University’s theater curriculum. In New York City, he managed, directed and produced workshops and trainings as part of the NYC Board of Education’s SPARK Peer Players and Arts in Counseling Team. Brian also worked as the Artistic Director for Eclectic Theatre Company whose mission was tied in with early AIDS education in New York. Brian has received several awards for his efforts in arts in education, including one from the Governor of Pennsylvania and the Youth Assembly at the United Nations. Brian has served as the program director for the Community Conservatory in Doylestown, PA since 2002. In 2009 he was invited to become a fellow of the National Arts Strategies Leaders Program. Brian also sits on the board of directors for the Philadelphia Classical Guitar Society and is the current President of the Friends of Camp Choconut, an overnight boy's camp in Friendsville, PA.
Susan Perlstein, MSW, is the founder and director of Special Projects for the National Center for Creative Aging in Washington, DC and the founder of Elders Share the Arts in New York City. She is an educator, social worker, administrator and artist. She has served as a consultant for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York City Board of Education, and regularly presents on a national level for organizations, most recently for Generations United, the American Society on Aging, the National Council on Aging, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Assembly of States Arts Agencies, and the Society for the Arts in Healthcare. Perlstein has contributed significantly to the training and educational offerings of American Society on Aging. She received the Cavanaugh Award for Excellence in “Creativity and Aging” training. She served on the American Society on Aging board of directors. She has written extensively on creativity and late-life learning. Her articles appear in numerous professional journals, including Arts in the Public Interest and Gerontology and in the American Society on Aging’s Aging Today, The Older LEARNer and Dimensions. Perlstein is the author of co-author of several books: Alert and Alive, Generating Community: Intergenerational Programs through the Expressive Arts and Legacy Works: Transforming Memory into Visual Art. In spring 2006, she was guest editor of Generations Journal on “Arts and Aging.”
Kelly Lamb Pollock is the executive director of COCA (Center of Creative Arts) in St. Louis. Prior to this position, she served as COCA’s general manager, overseeing all business operations and programming. She joined COCA in 1997 and served as its director of development for eight formative years as the organizational budget grew from $1.7 million to its current size of $5 million. She successfully managed COCA’s $10 million Access to Excellence capital and endowment campaign. She was also responsible for securing millions of dollars in grants over the years from National Endowment for the Arts, Wallace Foundation, Kresge Foundation, and MetLife Foundation, among others. As COCA’s general manager, Pollock secured one of four national Innovation Lab grant awards from the Doris Duke Foundation and EmcArts to develop COCAbiz, a program designed to integrate arts practice and concepts into talent and leadership development in business. Pollock received a bachelor of arts degree from Washington University and a master’s degree in public policy administration from University of Missouri, St. Louis. She is a graduate of the CORO Women in Leadership Program.
Dr. Howard Potter has served as associate dean for community and continuing education at Eastman Community Music School since 2002. As a veteran teacher and administrator, he has taught and led at the elementary, middle, high school, collegiate and community levels. Before coming to Eastman, Potter served as chair of performing arts at the Manlius Pebble Hill School in Syracuse, NY. He holds degrees from: SUNY Fredonia, the Eastman School of Music (ESM), the Juilliard School, and the Manhattan School of Music. His teachers have included: David Samuels, Alan Dawson, Fred Hinger, Buster Bailey, John Beck, Ted Frazier, and Alfredo Roel. Besides leading the Eastman Community Music School and serving on the ESM senior staff, Potter conducts several jazz ensembles, teaches jazz theory, and is an instructor of jazz mallets at Eastman. Potter has conducted numerous All County jazz ensembles, as well as numerous orchestras, wind ensembles and chamber ensembles at the high school, college and professional levels. While a professional musician in the West Point Band, Potter founded the West Point Youth Orchestra. Dr. Potter is director of three nationally recognized programs: Eastman Pathways, a scholarship program for students from the inner city school district of Rochester, the ECMS summer program, and the Rochester New Horizons program. He has served on the executive board of the Onondaga County Music Educators Association (1998-2002), the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra board of advisors (2003-08) and on the board of advisors for the Society for New Music in Syracuse, NY (1997 – 01). Dr. Potter has more than 25 years' professional performing experience, Howard Potter has played with numerous orchestras, pit orchestras and wind ensembles including He currently is a member of the RPO Marimba Band and plays jazz vibes in various Rochester ensembles. He also is chair of the Eastern Great Lakes Chapter of the National Guild.
Peggy Quackenbush has been president and executive director of the Hochstein School of Music and Dance since 1992 and a member of the school’s faculty since 1979. Under her leadership, the school’s programs in music, dance and music therapy have expanded substantially, and the Hochstein Performance Hall, renovated in 1999, has become Rochester’s premiere mid-sized concert hall. An active soloist, chamber, and orchestral clarinetist, Dr. Quackenbush is a founding member of Antara Winds; she holds the doctor of musical arts degree from the Eastman School of Music, along with degrees from the University of Oregon’s School of Music and the University of Minnesota, Morris. She serves on the boards of the National Guild for Community Arts Education and the National Association of Schools of Music.
Nick Rabkin is a senior research scientist at NORC at the University of Chicago and an affiliate of the University’s Cultural Policy Center. He recently completed a monograph about arts participation and arts education for the National Endowment for the Arts that will be published very soon. His research on teaching artists will be completed in early 2011. He has started planning a new investigation of the reasons for substantial declines in adult attendance at arts events over the past twenty-five years, and hopes to launch that project early next year. Nick was the executive director of the Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College Chicago, where he focused on the roles of the arts in education and community building. He is the co-author of Putting the Arts in the Picture: Reframing Education in the 21st Century. He was the senior program officer for the arts and culture at the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago from 1991 to 2001, where he linked arts grantmaking to the foundation’s work in community development and education in Chicago public schools and diversified the foundation’s grantee portfolio. Before joining MacArthur he was the deputy commissioner of cultural affairs for the City of Chicago and executive director of a non-profit Chicago theater.
Colleen J. Ross is manager of partnership strategies at EmcArts, a social enterprise for learning and innovation in the arts. Colleen works to make EmcArts’ programs and services accessible to partners nationwide and to help extend learning tools to the arts and humanities sectors. Colleen came to New York from Chicago where she was director of marketing for Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ -FM), the third-largest public radio station in the country. During her tenure, she oversaw grassroots marketing and promotional strategies to grow audience for the radio station's original programs and initiatives, including Sound Opinions, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! and This American Life. As part of Chicago Public Radio's outreach, she devised strategic partnerships with regional cultural institutions and worked with a team to design the blueprints for Vocalo.org, an innovative web-to-radio initiative that encourages audience participation through user-generated content. Prior to her career in Chicago, Colleen worked at Madison Repertory Theatre in Madison, WI, as part of the theater’s marketing team. She also held positions at University of Wisconsin Press and Madison magazine. Colleen holds a B.A. in journalism and political science from University of Wisconsin, and an M.A. in arts administration from Columbia University. She wrote her masters thesis on the subject of responsible closure and dissolution of nonprofit cultural organizations.
Beth Rubenstein is the co-founder and executive director of Out of Site: Center for Arts Education in San Francisco. Out of Site was founded in 2000 in response to the need for relevant and conceptually based arts education, that is guided by youth development ideas, and that connects underserved youth to the broader community. Out of Site offers after school, weekend and summer programs in visual, literary and performing arts to public high school students. Rubenstein is an architect and has taught at the college and high school level. She has a master of architecture from Yale University, a B. A. in art history from Barnard College, Columbia University, and is a registered architect in the state of Connecticut. Rubenstein was a Klingenstein Summer Fellow at Columbia University’s Teachers College, and was a fellow for two years at the Bay Area Teacher’s Development Collaborative. Before co-founding Out of Site, Rubenstein was a visiting professor in architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design and a visiting lecturer in architecture at Yale College. She also taught at San Francisco University High School. She is a curriculum consultant and has worked with Envision Schools, a San Francisco nonprofit charter school organization, Stanford University School Redesign Network, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Rubenstein’s architectural practice has focused on design/build projects, and she has led community development projects in León, Nicaragua. Most recently, she has presented at the “Private Schools with Public Purpose” conference in San Francisco.
Miguel Salinas is a senior manager in the Corporate Social Responsibility group at Adobe Systems Incorporated. He was lead project manager for the visioning and creation of the Adobe Youth Voices program, the signature global philanthropy initiative of the Adobe Foundation that empowers youth from underserved communities to comment on their world using multimedia and digital tools. Miguel and his team are charged with the strategic planning and day-to-day operations of Adobe Youth Voices, which currently includes over 600 schools and out-of-school sites in 45 countries. Since its inception in 2006, the program has engaged more than 64,000 youth and more than 3,000 educators worldwide. Miguel has more than two decades of experience in philanthropy, strategic communications and media. Prior to Adobe he was communications director for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, a national educational nonprofit focused on supporting Latino students to seek and attain a college degree. He has also managed a grants portfolio and strategic communications for worldwide philanthropy programs at Intel Corporation, including the Intel Computer Clubhouse and Intel Teach to the Future initiatives. Miguel began his career as a journalist, covering crime, government and education for various publications in Texas and California. Miguel has a lifelong passion for advocating for educational opportunities for youth from underserved communities and for supporting the arts. He has served on boards of directors of various nonprofit arts organizations in the Bay Area, including MACLA and Teatro Vision, and is a frequent contributor to the strategic planning for the Arts Council Silicon Valley and the grant review committee for the Applied Materials/Arts Council Silicon Valley 2010 Excellence in the Arts. A native Texan, Miguel is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin where he received a bachelor of journalism degree. Miguel currently resides in San Jose, California.
Nicole Simoneaux is manager at the Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF). She leads the Western Region Consulting Services team by overseeing and delivering NFF’s consulting work for nonprofit organizations and continuing to expand NFF’s presence on the West Coast. Prior to NFF, she was a program officer at the Minnesota State Arts Board, managing the Percent for Art in Public Places program and funding for individual artists. Before working as a grantmaker, Nicole was a performing artist and arts administrator. She was a company member of the Theater of the Emerging American Moment (TEAM), a New York city-based ensemble theater company, for which she now serves as a board member. She earned a B.F.A. from New York University and an M.B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Arts Administration.
H. Mark Smith is program manager for the Massachusetts’ Cultural Council’s YouthReach Initiative, a state-wide effort to bring substantive out-of-school arts programs to young people at risk of not making the successful transition from adolescence to adulthood. YouthReach is recognized nationally as an incubator for highly effective out-of-school programs in the arts.
Paula Smith-Arrigoni has been a lender and consultant for Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) for more than five years. During her tenure, she has assisted a broad array of nonprofit organizations to obtain a loan, analyze their financial health and use better financial management tools. Paula currently manages NFF’s Northern California program and facilitates workshops throughout NFF’s Western Region. Prior to NFF she worked in community development for the City of Los Angeles, as an account executive for Chrysalis, a workforce development nonprofit for recently homeless individuals, and as a presidential management fellow and program analyst at the CDFI Fund at the US Department of the Treasury. She received a B.A. in sociology from the University of California at Los Angeles and holds an M.A. in urban planning with a concentration in community development from the University of Los Angeles, School of Public Policy and Social Research. Paula currently serves as the board treasurer for Women's Community Clinic and as a member of the Finance Committee for Samaritan House.
Rick Sperling is the founder & CEO of Mosaic Theatre Company in Detroit, MI, an organization dedicated to youth empowerment through performing arts. Mosaic is a recipient of the national Coming Up Taller Award and its innovative programs have been featured on NBC’s Today Show, on NPR’s All Things Considered, in The Wall Street Journal and in American Theatre magazine. Mosaic has just released a new publication featuring data from a three-year study by the University of Michigan entitled Excellence on Stage and in Life: the Mosaic Model for Youth Development through the Arts. Recently, Crain’s Detroit Business named Mosaic metro Detroit’s “Best Managed Nonprofit.”
Käthe Swaback (Kay-ta) is a visual artist, clinician, and arts administrator with a B.A. in art studio from the University of California at Davis and an M.A. in expressive therapy from Lesley University. For the past twenty years she has actively developed programs and facilitated groups for teens in the arts. In 1994, Käthe helped to build the Lynn, MA nonprofit, Raw Art Works (www.rawartworks.org) through the development of twenty art therapy programs and countless community projects. In 2002, Käthe moved to Portland, OR where she became the director of a teen afterschool arts program, Grace Academy. In 2006 she founded Art Up, LLC, an art studio dedicated to improving the lives of youth in community. In the summer of 2008, she worked with Raw Art Works to develop the Boston Youth Arts Evaluation Project (www.byaep.com). As BYAEP project leader, she has been collaborating with five nationally-recognized youth arts organizations in a three-year project, researching adolescent development models, listening to teens, and identifying effective ways to build and evaluate the programs in which teens are involved. In 2010 Käthe relocated back to the Boston area, where she has assumed the expanding role of Raw Art Works program director, overseeing 39 programs, and furthering BYAEP. She is also in process of reclaiming her identity as a painter in the midst of raising her two adopted children.
Joël Tan is director of community engagement at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA. He has more than sixteen years experience in program management and coordination in the field of health education and community arts. This work has provided him with the opportunity to design and implement complex local and national education programs, including arts-based HIV prevention programs for at-risk youth and gay men. In addition to working as a health educator, Tan has a rich background in theater and literary arts, having served as the associate artistic director for San Francisco's Asian American Theater Company and as an active member of the National Filipino Arts Network. With a B.A. in comparative ethnic studies from UC¬ Berkeley and M.F.A.in literature and creative writing from Antioch University, Tan has been widely published in academic and commercial publications. He is a playwright and a writer of essays, short fiction, and poetry on race, sexuality, class, and colonization. His awards and honors include the Spoon River Review Editor's Prize (2004), an Eloise Klein Heal Talent Scholarship (2002), and a UC Berkeley University Scholarship (2000).
Linda Vallejo has over thirty years experience as a professional grantwriter and grantwriting instructor. Vallejo has written proposals for a variety of non-profit organizations, universities and schools, county and city agencies, with interests ranging from the arts, education, environment, health and human services, faith-based, community and economic development to environmental programs and projects. Over the past fifteen years, she has served as an on-line grantwriting instructor in over 2,000 colleges and universities nationwide, in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Vallejo has written and received over $30 million in grant funds from foundation, corporate, government and individual donors for her many clients. She holds a master of fine arts degree and is a practicing, professional artist exhibiting her art nationally and internationally.
Beth A. Vogel works with various arts organizations on organizational development, program design and fundraising. She has served as the Director of the National Guild for Community Arts Education’s Partners in Arts Education Institute since 2005. Vogel has garnered federal, state, corporate and foundation support for the Carolyn Dorfman Dance Company, Trenton Education Dance Institute, Aljira, Inc., The National Guild and the HIV Education and Law Project in Miami Beach, and has written strategic plans for Reggie Wilson/Fist & Heel Performance Group and Freespace Dance Company. She is the contributing editor of the National Guild’s Partners in Excellence Handbook and an editor of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation’s Artists & Communities: America Creates for the Millennium. From 1992-2003 Vogel served as the Program Officer for Arts Education and Artist Services at the New Jersey State Council on the Arts where she also managed the dance and literature program. Drawing on her background in American cultural history and modern dance, her work at the Council focused on the development of significant partnerships that expanded the reach of services. Her nationally acclaimed arts education program combined direct work in classrooms with assistance to education reform at the state and local levels. Vogel has served on many regional, state and local advisory boards, including the Arts Education Steering Committee for the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Poet Laureate Selection Committee. Vogel is an alumna of Barnard College where she earned a B.A. with honors. She is a lecturer at New York University where she teaches Arts Management and Designing Arts Education PrograIn addition, Vogel is an independent editor of literary works.
Donna Walker-Kuhne, acknowledged as the nation’s foremost expert in audience development by the Arts & Business Council, has devoted her professional career to increasing access to the arts and has generated over $13 million in box office sales. She was formerly director of marketing and audience development for The Public Theater and director of marketing for Dance Theatre of Harlem. Presently, she is president of Walker International Communications Group, a boutique marketing, press and audience development consulting agency. She provides consulting services to numerous arts organizations throughout the country and lectures regularly in Australia and Berlin. Her clients include Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, Cherry Lane Theater, Theater for a New Audience, Montclair Art Museum, Caribbean Cultural Center, Dance USA, Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana, The Apollo Theater, New York City Opera, The Ossie Davis Endowment Campaign,and August Wilson’s Radio Golf, Three Mo’ Tenors and THURGOOD. She was an associate producer for George C. Wolfe’s Harlem Song at the Apollo Theater and co-producer for the 2004 AUDELCO Awards. She was recently selected as one of the 2008 25 Most Influential Black Women from The Network Journal. She is an adjunct professor at New York University, Columbia University and Brooklyn College. She is a board member of The Theater at Riverside Church, New Federal Theater, Brooklyn Arts Council and International Theater and Literacy Project. Her first book, Invitation to the Party: Building Bridges to Arts, Culture and Community, was published in2 005. www.walkercommunicationsgroup.com
Brian Wiedenmeier is development director at Performing Arts Workshop in San Francisco, CA. He has several years of experience fundraising for non-profit organizations in a variety of fields, including the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, Graywolf Press, and the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group. Brian is a graduate of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities where he studied English literature.
Dr. Thomas Wolf's career spans over four decades and encompasses the fields of philanthropy, education and the arts. A profesional flutist, he debuted with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of sixteen and went on to company manage his uncle Boris Goldovsky’s opera company on 14 national tours. He founded Bay Chamber Concerts in Rockport, Maine in 1961 and still serves as its artistic director (the organization just opened its new community music school this year). As a consultant, he established the Cambridge office of WolfBrown in 1983 after serving as the founding director of the New England Foundation for the Arts for seven years. His clients have included ten of the fifty largest US foundations, government agencies such as the National Endowment for the Arts, and treasured international cultural institutions like the British Museum, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and The Kennedy Center. Dr. Wolf has consulted directly with the leaders of major cities, including Chicago, Cleveland, Charlotte, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Philadelphia and Dallas on the creation of vibrant cultural communities. His workshops and convocations for trustees, administrators and volunteers have earned him national recognition. Tom holds a doctorate in education from Harvard, and has taught at Harvard and Boston Universities. He is the author of The Search for Shining Eyes: Audiences, Leadership and Change in the Symphony Orchestra Field, Managing a Nonprofit Organization in the 21st Century and Presenting Performances in the 21st Century, among numerous articles and books.