Emerging Arts Leaders Symposium
March 23, 2014
| creatively making our place |

We are thrilled to announce the Keynote Speakers for the
2014 Emerging Arts Leaders Symposium!

 

Russell Willis Taylor
Russell Willis Taylor

Opening our day in a David Frost/Inside the Actors Studio – style interview, Russell Willis Taylor (President and CEO of National Arts Strategies) talks with Francesca Zambello (Artistic Director of Washington National Opera and Glimmerglass Festival).

Francesca Zambello
Francesca Zambello

 

These two powerhouse women of the arts will take the stage to talk about how we as leaders keep the arts vibrant, vital, and alive. We will be collecting your questions as well, so put your thinking caps on. You’ve got an hour with two of the most influential arts leaders in the country. (See their full bios below.)

 

Jamie Bennett
Jamie Bennett

Closing out our day is newly appointed Executive Director of ArtPlace America, Jamie Bennett. Former Chief of Staff and Director of Public Affairs at the National Endowment for the Arts, Jamie was named one of 2013’s most powerful and influential people in the nonprofit arts by Barry’s Blog. Jamie will tell us about the exciting creative placemaking work being supported and pioneered by ArtPlace, and then will open up for discussion and questions with you!

 

Registration for the 2014 Emerging Arts Leaders Symposium is now open.
Get your tickets now! We look forward to seeing you March 23!

And don’t forget to join us for our Spring Benefit Brunchette on February 23!

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Russell Willis Taylor, President and CEO of National Arts Strategies since January 2001, has extensive senior experience in strategic business planning, financial analysis and planning, and all areas of operational management. Educated in England and America, she served as director of development for the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art before returning to England in 1984 at the invitation of the English National Opera (ENO) to establish the Company’s first fund-raising department. During this time, she also lectured extensively at graduate programs of arts and business management throughout Britain. From 1997 to 2001, she rejoined the ENO as executive director.

Russell has held a wide range of managerial and Board posts in the commercial and nonprofit sectors including the advertising agency DMBB; head of corporate relations at Stoll Moss; director of The Arts Foundation; special advisor to the Heritage Board, Singapore; chief executive of Year of Opera and Music Theatre (1997); judge for Creative Britons and lecturer on business issues and arts administration. She received the Garrett Award for an outstanding contribution to the arts in Britain, the only American to be recognized in this way, and has served on the boards of A&B (Arts and Business), Cambridge Arts Theatre, Arts Research Digest and the Society of London Theatre. She currently serves on the advisory boards of The University Musical Society of the University of Michigan, Salzburg Global Seminar, the Center for Nonprofit Excellence in Charlottesville and the Arts Management program at American University, on the British Council’s Arts & Creative Economy Advisory Group and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2013, Russell was honored with the International Citation of Merit by the International Society for the Performing Arts, presented in recognition of her lifetime achievement and her distinguished service to the performing arts.

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Francesca Zambello is the Artistic Director of Washington National Opera. Previously she has served as its Artistic Advisor. She has directed many WNO productions, including Of Mice and Men (debut in 2001), Fidelio (2003), Die Walküre (2003 and 2007), Billy Budd (2004), Porgy and Bess (2005 and 2010), Das Rheingold (2006), Siegfried (2009), Salome (2010), and Show Boat (2013). Since September 2010 she has also been the Artistic and General Director of The Glimmerglass Festival in upstate New York.

An internationally recognized director of opera and theater, Zambello’s work has been seen at the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, the Bolshoi, Royal Opera House, Munich State Opera, Paris Opera, New York City Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and English National Opera. She has staged plays and musicals on Broadway, at the Royal National Theatre, BAM, the Guthrie Theater, Vienna’s Raimund Theater, the Bregenz Festival, Sydney Festival, Disneyland, Berlin’s Theater des Westens, and at the Kennedy Center.

She began her career as the Artistic Director of the Skylight Opera Theatre and as an assistant director to the late Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. She has been a guest lecturer at Harvard, Juilliard, and Yale. An American who grew up in Europe, she speaks French, Italian, German, and Russian. She is a graduate of Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.

She recently developed and directed the world premiere of Christopher Theofanidis’ Heart of a Soldier for San Francisco Opera, where she served as Artistic Advisor from 2006-2011. Her acclaimed production of Show Boat opened at Lyric Opera of Chicago in February 2012 and will open at WNO on May 4, 2013. Other recent directing highlights include a new production of La traviata for Opera on Sydney Harbor in March 2012 and a new production of Aida at the Glimmerglass Festival in July 2012.

She has been awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for her contribution to French culture, and the Russian Federation’s medal for Service to Culture. Her theatrical honors include three Olivier Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, two French Grand Prix des Critiques, Helpmann Award, Green Room Award, Palme d’Or in Germany, and the Golden Mask in Russia.

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Jamie Bennett is the executive director of ArtPlace America, a partnership among 14 foundations, 6 financial institutions, and 8 federal agencies dedicated to strengthening the field of creative placemaking, in which communities and their arts sectors work in partnership to shape their social, physical, and economic futures.  To date, ArtPlace has awarded $42.1 million in grants to 124 organizations in 79 communities of all sizes across the United States.

Until December 2013, Jamie was Chief of Staff and Director of Public Affairs at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he was in charge of overseeing the agency’s external affairs, which included the national rollouts of the “Our Town” grant program and of new partnerships with the US Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development.

Previously, Jamie was Chief of Staff at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs during Mayor Bloomberg’s administration where he oversaw the agency’s partnerships with the NYC Departments for the Aging, of Education, and of Youth and Community Development.  He also represented DCA on two public-private partnerships: the New York State Cultural Data Project and Materials for the Arts.

Jamie has also provided strategic counsel at the Agnes Gund Foundation, served as chief of staff to the President of Columbia University, and worked in fundraising at The Museum of Modern Art, the New York Philharmonic, and Columbia College.

His non-profit affiliations have included the Board of Directors of Art21 and HERE Arts Center; the Foot-in-the-Door Committee of the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation; and Studio in a School’s Associates Committee.  Jamie received his B.A. from Columbia College in New York City.