The Emerging Arts Leaders Symposium at American University strives to feature the top arts leaders from the region to present in lectures and panel discussions. The panelists discuss issues that are affecting arts organizations that are within their area of expertise. 

*The keynote address with Adrian Ellis is open to the public. RSVP is recommended.

2012 EALS Plenary Speaker: Chad Bauman 

Chad M. Bauman has just joined the Smithsonian Institution as the Director of Marketing and Membership for the Smithsonian Associates.

Prior to the Smithsonian, Chad was the Director of Communications for Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, where he supervised the marketing, media relations, publications, sales and front of house departments. He was recruited to join the company in the fall of 2007 in order to develop strategies to guide the company through a 2.5 year transition period while a new $135 million, three theater complex was being built. While at Arena Stage, he rebranded the 60 year old resident theater as a national center, reversed a seven year subscription decline, almost doubled the subscription base and increased subscription revenue by 105%.  In addition, he increased total earned revenue by 154%, increased the number of new patrons by 90% and reduced patron attrition by 7%. During his tenure, Arena Stage set new all-time records for highest grossing play, highest grossing musical, highest grossing week and highest grossing day in four separate fiscal years.

Previously, he was the Director of Marketing and Communications at Americans for the Arts, the nation’s leading non-profit organization for advancing the arts in America. At Americans for the Arts, he was responsible for all earned revenue goals, branding, strategic communications, and promoting the organization's more than 480 different programs.

As a speaker and consultant, he has worked with a wide variety of clients including City Theatre Company, Carnegie Hall, the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, the Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, ArtsMidwest, the Arts & Business Council and the National Arts Marketing Project.

He currently teaches in the MFA Producing Program at CalArts, the graduate Arts Administration Program at Drexel University, and the graduate Arts Management Program at American University.

In 2011 and 2012, Washington Life Magazine named Chad one of the most influential leaders under 40 in our nation’s capital. He currently writes a bi-monthly column for DC Theatre Scene, and founded the Arts Marketing Blog.

He graduated as an Ahmanson Scholar with an MFA in Producing from CalArts, and as a Presidential Scholar in the Honors College with a Bachelor of Science in Education from Missouri State University.

Keep in touch with Chad: www.arts-marketing.blogspot.com (blog) / @chadbauman (Twitter)

Sherburne Laughlin is the Director of the Arts Management Program and Professorial Lecturer at American University. Ms. Laughlin holds an MBA from Yale University, an Executive Leadership Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Harvard University and is a cum laude graduate in economics from Davidson College.  Her nonprofit management career spans over 20 years of executive director and program director experience. As a professor for 13 years at American University, she has developed top-ranked courses in Strategic Planning, Fundraising, and Boards and Governance.  Her prior consulting work focuses on issues of governance, organizational development and strategic planning and serves all types of nonprofits, arts and non-arts, large and small, national and local.  Laughlin also managed and provided training and consulting services for a large NEA/Maryland State Arts Council Advancement Grant in the late 1990s and worked with hundreds of small to mid-size arts organizations in Maryland to improve their capacity. She has served on many arts grants panels, including the Montgomery County and Fairfax County Arts Council, the DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities and the national VSA arts panel.  Having previously served on numerous boards, Laughlin is currently a member of the Advisory Board of Round House Theater and sits on the Board of Trustees of Davidson College.  Laughlin is the Academic Director of Art Cart, an innovative initiative to archive the work of aging visual artists. She is a member of ArtTable and served as the Chair of the Association of Arts Administrators Conference in 2010. Professor Laughlin is currently on that association’s committee to review Graduate Standards in Arts Management. She is a long-distance swimmer, avid reader, and mother of two active sons.

Ximena Varela is an Associate Professor of Arts Management at American University. A native of Uruguay, she specializes in Audience Development, Community Engagement and Organizational Change. She has developed ground-breaking research and practice in audience research and development, which has impacted marketing practice in organizations in the United States and Latin America. She plays the clarinet badly, but enthusiastically.

David Snider is an award-winning arts manager and artist, with over 20 years of experience as a director, educator, producer, administrator and actor. As Producing Artistic Director and CEO of Young Playwrights’ Theater, he has received the Meyer Foundation’s $100,000 Exponent Award for visionary leadership of a nonprofit, the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, and the Hands On Greater DC Cares’ Essence of Leadership Award, as “a nonprofit executive who has integrated innovative and strategic leadership to make a lasting impact on their organization and the community at large.” Mr. Snider received his MFA from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts and his BA in English Literature/Russian language from Dickinson College, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa. He is a Directing Fellow of the Drama League of New York, the immediate past President of the League of Washington Theatres and a member of the National Arts Strategies’ Chief Executive Program, a collaborative think tank of 100 CEO’s from around the world dedicated to tackling issues of competition, finance and relevance on a global scale.

Jack Rasmussen, a native of Seattle, earned his BA in Art from Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA, before moving to Washington, D.C., and completing an MFA in Painting, MA in Arts Management, and MA and PhD in Anthropology at American University. He worked in the Education Department of the National Gallery of Art before becoming the Assistant Director of the Washington Project for the Arts when it opened in 1975.

He left this position to open the Jack Rasmussen Gallery, one of the first commercial galleries to move to downtown Washington, and then launched Rockville Arts Place, served for ten years as the Executive Director of Maryland Art Place in Baltimore, and three years as Executive Director of the di Rosa Preserve: Art & Nature, a contemporary art museum and natural habitat in Napa, California.

Rasmussen is currently Director and Curator of the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, and President of the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums.

Michael Wilkerson has worked as a university administrator, freelance writer, director of two multidisciplinary artists’ residency programs, founding chair of a national service/advocacy organization, and as founding editor of a national literary magazine. He has taught writing, arts management, literary interpretation, and other subjects for more than two decades at American, Indiana, DePauw, Wisconsin, and at the School of the Art Institute. His recent research offers a new system for public funding of the arts and a proposed reworking of the endowment funds held by most arts organizations.

Gail Humphries Mardirosian is an arts administrator, professor, and director focusing on the arts in the international arena. She is currently a professor at American University in Washington, D.C., teaching in the Department of Performing Arts, the University College and the University Honors Program. At American, Gail has received the University’s Award for Outstanding Service, the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teaching Award, and the Alpha Chi Omega Award for Outstanding Teaching in the Arts. As an arts administrator for over 25 years, she has consulted for multiple nonprofit arts and education organizations in California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Community service includes participation on panels and commissions for numerous local, regional and state funding organizations for the arts. With a particular interest in international forums allowing for meaningful and substantive artistic exchange and interaction, Gail has taught and directed in multiple countries including Greece, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden and the Czech Republic, where she was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. This spring she is touring a production to the St. Petersburg State Theatre Arts Academy in Russia.

Directing credits include over 130 productions that range from serious drama, musicals, children’s theatre, and the classics to new works. A recent directing project began in the Czech Republic in 2009 and continues in Washington, D.C. at the University of New Hampshire and the Florida Holocaust Museum - VOICES OF TEREZIN, the arts as a strategy for survival.  Gail has chronicled the project in a chapter within an upcoming book to be published by Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group) spring 2012, entitled THE POWER OF WITNESSING: Reflections, Reverberations and Traces of the Holocaust. Other current projects include work on a new musical adaptation of a children’s novel (INVINCIBLE) and writing a docudrama about the life of a survivor of the Holocaust (AND SMILE WITH EYES STILL SMARTING).

Gail is also the team leader for an arts integration research project entitled Imagination Quest (IQ), a collaborative effort between Imagination Stage and American University professors. The project has received funding for over a decade from foundations, corporations, school districts and national education agencies to investigate the potency of arts integration in the process of education. Her publications about the impact of the use of the arts across the curriculum for enhanced teacher effectiveness and increased student achievement have appeared in many journals including The Chronicle of Higher Education, The International Journal of Teaching and Learning, Current Issues in Education and Teaching Artist Journal. Gail is currently co-authoring a book entitled Teaching to Reach through Arts Integration: Training the Classroom Teacher for Innovative and Creative Instruction.                                                 

Anne L’Ecuyer is a writer and a consultant who stays closely connected to an international network of city leaders, cultural professionals, and working artists. She is an expert in creative industries and cultural tourism in the United States, as well as the contributions of the arts toward educational, social, and environmental goals.

Previously, Anne served as Associate Vice President for Field Services at Americans for the Arts. In this role, she produced seven national conferences and an annual program of leadership events for an audience of cultural professionals and their allies in government, business, and education. She consulted directly with hundreds of local arts leaders to provide strategy and support for their efforts and routinely met with delegations of foreign cultural leaders on visits sponsored by the U.S. State Department. She served as editor of the Americans for the Arts Monograph Series, and is the author of Public Funding for the Arts at the Local Level.

Anne owns and operates the Washington Writer’s Retreat, a private writing and research residency in the nation’s capital. She is an essayist currently at work on a book-length collection that profiles cultural leaders in ten American cities. Anne also consults independently with businesses, nonprofits, and public institutions. Her clients have included Culture Action Europe, the Canadian Conference on the Arts, and the California Arts Council. She holds a bachelors degree from Northern Arizona University, studied public policy at the University of Maryland at College Park, and now teaches at American University in the Arts Management program.

2012 EALS Panelists

Dana Allen-Greil is an account director and digital strategist at Ogilvy Public Relations, where she manages innovative digital communications projects for public health clients such as the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s The Heart Truth® Campaign and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Before joining Ogilvy PR, Dana worked for 8 years at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. As New Media Project Manager, and later as Chief of Digital Outreach and Engagement, Dana developed a number of award-winning projects that reinvigorated the organization, making the museum more transparent and relevant to its online and on-site audiences.  Prior to her work at the Smithsonian, she spent 3 years in online communications and publishing at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit health policy organization. Dana holds a bachelor’s degree in English from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and a master’s degree in Museum Studies from The George Washington University. She served on the Board of Directors for the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums from 2008-2011. Dana is a member of the adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University and The George Washington University, where she teaches graduate courses on technology and the arts.

Jennifer Buzzell is the Vice President for Marketing and Communications at Strathmore, a multi-disciplinary arts center in North Bethesda, MD. Accomplishments at Strathmore include leading the efforts to be the first arts organization in the D.C. area to allow patrons to select their exact seats online; starting an innovative grass-roots and guerilla marketing program; spearheading the efforts with the Strathmore staff to have Strathmore branded as a leader in customer service; and moving from a subscription-based sales model to a single ticket/membership based sales model. Ms. Buzzell has a Masters in Arts Management from American University, and a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance and Music Education from Boston University. She is a graduate of Leadership Montgomery, and serves on the Board of Directors of The Bach Sinfonia. She lives in Wheaton, MD with her husband Jeremy and children Zoe and Myles.

Karalee Dawn has wide-ranging professional experience in theatre production and management throughout the United States (Broadway, Off-Broadway, Regional, Non-Profit and Commercial). She has served as the General Manager of the Signature Theatre Company (NYC), Managing Director of The Jose Quintero Theatre and Cherry Lane Theatre (NYC), and in various capacities at American Stage Festival, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Odd Act Theatre Group, Boneau/Bryan-Brown, the William Morris Agency, among others. As a publicist she has worked with Tony® Award Productions, League of American Theatres and Producers, Roundabout Theatre Company, Manhattan Theatre Company, Drama Dept. and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids as well as the Broadway productions of Aida, Cabaret (with Brooke Shields), Proof (with Anne Heche and Neil Patrick Harris) and various Off-Broadway and regional shows.  In addition, Ms. Dawn served as the North American Press Representative for five companies of the smash hit musical MAMMA MIA! (Broadway, Las Vegas, Toronto and two national tours).

Alli Houseworth is the president and founder of Method 121, a marketing agency that focuses on audience engagement and social media for the theatre. Prior to venturing out on her own, Alli was the Communications and Audience Development Director at theatreWashington where she executed the rebranding of the 27 year-old company (formerly known as The Helen Hayes Awards), was the Director of Marketing and Communications at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, and founded the New York-based TKTS Patron Service Representatives Program—a customer-service program whose mission it is to provide a positive theatre-going experience for those in line to buy tickets. Named one of the “Top 100 Theatre Tweeters You Must Follow” by BroadwayWorld.com in 2010 & 2011, Alli has spoken on the topic of social media for Theatre Communications Group, the International Special Events Society, ArtsReach, March of Dimes, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre, Social Media Week Washington D.C., and served as a live-tweeter at From Scarcity to Abundance: Capturing the Moment for the New Work Sector at Arena Stage. Alli has guest lectured at Barnard University, the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and American University, and is on the faculty of the MFA Theatre Management and Producing program at Columbia University where she teaches Audience Engagement: In Line and Online.

Mary Brown has spent over 22 years of her life serving as a tireless advocate for countless youth. Her life’s purpose is to unveil human potential and to nurture that potential until it flourishes into meaningful action. Ms. Brown is currently the Executive Director of Life Pieces to Masterpieces, Inc (LPTM), an internationally-acclaimed, arts-based youth development organization serving boys and young men living in low-income and public housing East of the Anacostia River. In addition to serving as the co-founder and Executive Director of LPTM, Ms. Brown has served as a youth development consultant and trainer for NeighborWorks America, a national community development organization, for over 11 years. She has received the Mayor’s Spirit of Neighborhood Action Award; the Augusta Savage Arts Leadership Award; the Monica Davis Show Award for Community Service; the 2007 Washington, D.C. Economic Partnership Innovators Award; and was inducted into the Leadership Greater Washington class of 2009. Ms. Brown has been featured on the front page of the Thanksgiving 2007 edition of the Washington Post honoring local heroes and was named a 2010 Washingtonian of the Year by Washingtonian Magazine.  She serves on the Board of Directors of Fair Chance DC, Leadership Greater Washington and the Center for Nonprofit Advancement.

Louise Kennelly is the Executive Director of the DC Arts and Humanities Education Collaborative, an organization dedicated to ensuring access to arts and humanities education for all D.C. public school students. Before coming to the DC Collaborative, she was a Director at the National High School Center located at the American Institutes for Research. Before joining AIR, Ms. Kennelly led external relations initiatives at New American Schools (NAS). Ms. Kennelly is a published poet and painter showing at the Anne C. Fisher Gallery. She is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award, a North Carolina State Arts Council Individual Artist Award and is an artist in the schools through the Maryland State Arts Council's Arts in Education (AiE) program. She graduated from Yale University and holds a Master's from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and an M.F.A from the University of North Carolina.

Brooke Kidd is a dance artist, choreographer, movement instructor and dance researcher who explores movement systems, their patterns and styles, symbolic gesture and functional roles of dance in world cultures. Her approach to dance is grounded in anthropology and the study of world cultures. Brooke also advocates for public policy initiatives that benefit cultural education opportunities.

Kidd attended American University in Washington, D.C. to earn an M.A. in Dance with the thesis “Revitalizing Community through Dance” (1998) after a B.A. in International Relations and B.A. interdisciplinary degree in Dance, Anthropology and African Studies (1991).  

She is Founder and Director of World Arts Focus, Inc., a non-profit arts organization established in 1992. Out of World Arts Focus has grown the studio facility Joe’s Movement Emporium, which Kidd and fellow artist Ajax Joe Drayton opened in 1995 in downtown Mt. Rainier, MD. At Joe’s, Kidd is responsible for program development, a performance series, artist services, fundraising and general operations.  She directs an annual community production, Sweeping the Avenue, and has staged numerous site-specific productions that blend civic engagement and local artists.  In 2009, the organization completed a $3.2 million capital campaign to renovate a warehouse into a community performing arts center.

As an artist, Kidd has toured throughout the Mid-Atlantic region with her work, including the Dance Place, Publick Playhouse, Avalon Theatre in Easton, MD, Rockville Civic Center, Mt. Vernon College, Montgomery College, and other venues. She has choreographed site-specific works for the “Community Bridge” opening celebration in Frederick, MD and the Bladensburg Waterfront Park, for theater companies including Scena Theater, Fraudulent Productions, Washington Shakespeare Company, and the Naked Theatre. For several years, she choreographed and co-directed a large scale musical in a swimming pool at New York’s community center at Asphalt Green featuring 75 swimmers and past Olympian athletes in swimming, diving and synchronized swimming.

Through extensive teaching, performing and consulting, Kidd has participated in a broad-based community initiative of establishing the Gateway Arts District in a 4-city neighborhood of Prince George’s County. A coalition of artists, business leaders and politicians are combining forces to use the arts for community and economic revitalization. From 2001 to 2003, Kidd also served as a council member for the city of Mt. Rainier.

Christopher Naoum is a lawyer and has been a long time advocate for independent musicians focusing on licensing and copyright reform for the past two years. He has focused much of his work on artist development and proposing policy reforms that benefit local creative communities. Chris co-founded Listen Local First in July of 2011and has been working to develop and grow the LLF platform since.
 
Chris has previously worked as Policy Counsel for the Future of Music Coalition, Editor of BroadbandBreakfast.com and Legal Research Fellow for the Benton Foundation.  Chris has a BA in political science and economics from Emory University, an MA in Television Radio and Film from the Newhouse School of Public Communications and a JD from the Syracuse College of Law.

Kate Gibney joined the staff of Americans for the Arts in April 2006. As vice president of development, she oversees all fundraising undertaken on behalf of Americans for the Arts, collaborating closely with the Board of Directors, program staff, and senior leadership to create new opportunities for corporations, foundations, and individuals to support the organization’s goal of advancing the arts and arts education. Kate also coordinates development for the Americans for the Arts Foundation, which provides an array of planned giving vehicles for donors interested in providing legacy support for Americans for the Arts.

Kate brings to her role a wealth of knowledge and experience gained from her past tenures at The National Museum of Women in the Arts; the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery; and The Corcoran Gallery of Art, where she oversaw a corporate and foundation relations team focused on both annual and capital campaign fundraising. A singer in her spare time and an avid patron of the visual arts, Kate earned her bachelor’s degree with honors from Guilford College.

Lissa Rosenthal brings 20 years of experience in arts leadership, advocacy and nonprofit development to her role as Executive Director of the Future of Music Coalition. Prior to joining FMC, she served as Programs Director for the American Council for the Arts, Development Director of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center/The Museum of Modern Art New York and National Program Director for PAX: Real Solutions to Gun Violence. She has also worked extensively in AIDS fundraising and event production. As a social justice advocate, she led and supported numerous fundraising and awareness-generating campaigns. Volunteer activities include work with the national hunger relief agency Share Our Strength and their Taste of the Nation events. This led to her nomination for Share Our Strength’s National Leadership Award, ranking her among their most effective national advocates and volunteers. A promoter of all things green, she has authored several “green” cover features for publications including Pittsburgh Magazine.

B. Stanley is an actor, director, pedagogue, puppeteer, and performance artist. He founded Theatre Du Jour in Washington D.C. in 1982 as an experimental group with an actor-based approach to creating new works.  As an actor he has performed with The Living Theatre, Theatre Du Jour, Protean Forms Collective, The Hungry Fetus, The Puppet Company, Cherry Red Productions, Guillermo Gomez Pena, and in a myriad of unusual solo performances with his puppet, Ubu.  Influenced by Antonin Artaud, Alfred Jarry, Jerzy Grotowski, Ingemar Lindh and like minds, he has directed a broad array of plays and performances, including Peter Handke’s Self Accusation, Antonin Artaud’s There Is No More Firmament and The Spurt of Blood, Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Cuckolded, George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, and Ossie Davis’ Purlie Victorious. As director of Theatre Du Jour he had lead many company-created works including Poor Oedipus (an adaptation of the Oedipus story), Tower of Babel, Last Minute, and Ritual Play. He has worked with several poets, including Silvana Straw and Quique Aviles in creating performances that combine literature, acting and multimedia.

From 1989-1992, Stanley trained under Ingemar Lindh at the Instituto Di Arte Scenia (Institute for Scenic Art) in Pontremoli, Italy where his roles ranged from directing and acting to light design and pedagogy.  He also edited a book of observations and meetings of the participants of the University of Theatre, Fifth Session (Actions, Consequences, Resonances, 1990).  By the end of this period, Stanley was dividing his time between Pontremoli, Washington, and Scandinavia, conducting workshops and creating, acting in and directing plays.

Currently, Stanley is Executive/Artistic Director of The District of Columbia Arts Center, where he encourages the development of cutting edge work by new and emerging theater groups in Washington, DC. He conducts workshops on acting, directing and theater production and participates in conferences and seminars abroad with regularity.

Joan Jeffri is the director and founder of the Research Center for the Arts and Culture, now at the National Center for Creative Aging in Washington D.C., and recent director of the graduate program in Arts Administration at Teachers College, Columbia University for 22 years.  Author of several books about the management of arts organizations, including the recently-released Respect for Art: Visual Arts Administration and Management in China and the United States, The Emerging Arts: Management, Survival and Growth and ArtsMoney: Raising It, Saving It and Earning It, and academic director of the Arts Leadership Institute with the Arts & Business Council, she has a particular interest in the care and survival of artists.  Her latest projects, ART CART: Saving the Legacy, Still Kicking and Above Ground, are concerned with aging visual and performing artists in New York City, Los Angeles and Washington D.C.

She has edited the 12-volume series entitled Information on Artists and Artist-Help: The Artist’s Guide to Work-Related Human and Social Services, as well as the 6-volume Information on Artists II. She has recently completed Making Changes: Facilitating the Transition of Dancers to Post-Performance Careers with cultural economists William Baumol and David Throsby, and Changing the Beat: A Study of the Worklife of Jazz Musicians (NEA Research Report). For ten years she was an Executive Editor of the Journal of Arts Management and Law and has published articles on a wide variety of arts administration issues in it, as well as in Poetics, the International Journal of Cultural Policy, American Demographics, among other journals. She has served on a national task force for health care and insurance issues for artists for the National Endowment for the Arts, has served as President of the Board of the International Arts-Medicine Association and is on the Advisory Board of the Cultural Policy and National Data Archive at Princeton University.  

She has taught and consulted in Brazil, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Portugal, Russia.  A former poet and professional actress, Ms. Jeffri works closely with artists, arts service organizations, arts unions, and arts researchers.

Robert C. Pullen: Emmy™ nominated Producer, Broadway producing and/or general and company management credits include:  The Music Man, Footloose, Chicago, the Musical, Annie Get Your Gun, Titanic, Seussical the Musical, 42nd Street, Blast, and Broadway Salutes Hillary Clinton with Rosie O’Donnell.  

Producing highlights include President Obama’s 2009 Inaugural Swearing-In Ceremony (Aretha Franklin segment); 9/11:  Ten Years Later (simulcast worldwide on Facebook); Producing television credits include the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on PBS for 7 years including Tina Fey, Jon Hamm, Chris Rock, Danny DeVito, Green Day, Molly Shannon, Steve Martin, Bill Cosby, Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, etc.; produced and directed a documentary for Bravo Network's On With the Show; In 2009 Pullen produced Some Enchanted Evening:  A Salute to Senator Ted Kennedy with Bill Cosby, Bernadette Peters, James Taylor, President Obama and more, in May of 2009 Pullen produced A Celebration of Women in the Arts hosted by Lily Tomlin with Patti LaBelle, k.d. lang, LeAnn Rimes, Annie Leibowitz, Vera Wang, Chita Rivera and more and in 2008 Pullen produced The Art of Film Music with John Williams, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg; and in 2011:  President Kennedy Remembered:  JFK 50th Anniversary with Herbie Hancock, Esperanza Spalding, Yo-Yo Ma, Paul Simon, Terrence McNally, Lorne Michaels and hosted by Diane Sawyer and Mike Nichols.

Education:  Studied at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, and the Juilliard School.  Pullen is a member of American University’s Arts Management Advisory Council, a member of the National Society of Arts and Letters Advisory Council and a member of the Board of Directors of the DC Youth Orchestra Program.

Jason Schupbach is the Design Director for the National Endowment for the Arts, where he oversees all design and creative placemaking grantmaking and partnerships.  Previous to his current position, Jason served as the Creative Economy and Information Technology Industry Director for Massachusetts. In this job he focused on the nexus of creativity, innovation and technology to grow the innovation industries cluster in the state. He formerly was the director of ArtistLink, a Ford Foundation initiative to stabilize and revitalize communities through the creation of affordable space and innovative environments for creative entrepreneurs. He has also worked for the Mayor of Chicago and New York City’s Cultural Affairs department.

Todd Dellinger earned a Bachelor of Arts in Theater Performance and a Master of Arts in Arts Management from American University. He has extensive experience of multi-faceted and in-depth participation in enriching lives through the management of arts institutions. Before joining the faculty of Rider University’s Westminster College of the Arts, he was the founder and executive director of TexARTS Association for Visual and Performing Arts in Austin Texas. His previous positions include serving as executive director of A Noise Within classical repertory theater company in Los Angeles and executive director of Elisa Monte Dance in New York. For three years he was also executive director of the Martha Graham Dance Company and School in New York.

Committed to both the performing and the visual arts, he has produced exhibits for TexARTS in Austin and served as the liaison between the Martha Graham Company and SUNY Binghamton, which presented the works of Isamu Noguchi that were created for Martha Graham works. Mr. Dellinger is a past member of Actors Equity Association, the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television & Radio Artists.

David Furchgott, President and Founder, International Arts & Artists: Coming from a family of creative artists, scientists and entrepreneurs, David Furchgott was first trained as an arts educator and studio artist, and has focused his career for the past 32 years on international arts activities and exchange.    

Following his first directorship of an organization in 1970 at age 23, Furchgott’s earliest arts career included work as a museum curator, educator, and director of a small art school, followed by a government position charged with developing accessibility to the arts for broader populations in his home state.

Since 1978, he has worked on an international scale in the arts, catapulted by work with the Spoleto Festival USA, then serving for 16 years as the first Executive Director of the International Sculpture Center. At the ISC he began programs to serve artists which eventually attracted 15,000 members in more than 70 countries, and provided exhibitions and programs across North American and from Asia to Europe. He also began and published Sculpture magazine.

In the same entrepreneurial spirit in 1995, Furchgott founded International Arts & Artists. Since its founding, IA&A has grown to be the producer of the largest number of touring fine and decorative arts exhibitions in the USA with an average of 15-20 exhibitions on view nationwide at all times and a similar number in development. Under his leadership, IA&A also began and operates an international exchange program that arranges for US organizations to host between 70-130 artists and arts managers annually.  IA&A’s design studio provides comprehensive design services to IA&A itself and to artists and other arts organizations. Its Hillyer Art Space holds upwards of 30 small, on-site exhibitions annually of emerging and under-exposed mid-Atlantic area artists, along with a variety of arts-related public programming.

Danielle Mouledoux is currently the Marketing Manager of the George Washington University Lisner Auditorium. In this role, she manages all marketing and communications efforts for the venue and shapes its performance series, which includes a significant number of events featuring international artists. She recently served as a grant panelist for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and an adjudicator for the Dance/MetroDC Awards. Prior to joining Lisner staff, Danielle worked in communications and development with a variety of organizations such as Dance/USA, Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras, Society for the Performing Arts (Houston) and Psophonia Dance Company (Houston.) She received her MA in Arts Management from American University and a BA in English from Rice University in Houston. During her time in Houston, Danielle danced with Psophonia and Chrysalis dance companies. She maintains an ever-growing roster of creative personal projects she will frequently begin and occasionally complete.

Stacy White is the Cultural Programs Division Chief in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) at the U.S. Department of State. Her division develops, coordinates and directs the implementation of cultural exchange programs in the arts and humanities worldwide in support of U.S. foreign policy objectives. Stacy joined U.S. government diplomatic service in 1988 as a foreign service officer for the United States Information Agency (USIA). In 1999, USIA was merged into the State Department. During her twenty-four year diplomatic career she has served in a variety of cultural, press and public affairs positions at U.S. embassies in Canada, Finland, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico and Panama. Her most recent foreign assignment (2007-2011) was in Ottawa, Canada where she directed U.S. government media relations. Past assignments in Washington include a stint at the State Department’s Foreign Service Training Institute training fellow officers in public affairs work and two years in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs supporting U.S. Missions in Mexico and Canada with their public diplomacy activities. Prior to joining the foreign service, Stacy was a professional broadcast journalist, working as a news anchor, reporter and producer in Texas and Oklahoma. She holds a Masters Degree in International Relations (Webster University) earned in Leiden, The Netherlands and a Bachelors Degree in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Texas in Austin. Stacy hails from Austin, Texas and is the proud mother of a 9-year-old boy.

Robert Bettmann is a choreographer, community organizer, writer and administrator. He is the FY13 Advocacy Director for the DC Advocates for the Arts, Managing Editor of the arts magazine Bourgeon, and the author of the book Somatic Ecology. The Washington Post called his recent choreography, Quis Custodiet, “A powerful performance” (August, 2011.) Later this spring, the Arts Club of Washington will host the book launch and award event for the 2nd annual D.C. Student Arts Journalism competition.

Jeffrey Herrmann became Managing Director of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in 2007 after eight seasons as Producing Director of Alaska’s Perseverance Theatre. A native of Schenectady, NY, Jeffrey grew up in West Hartford, CT, and received his BA in English at Vassar College and his MFA in Theater Management at the Yale School of Drama. Prior to his enrollment at Yale, he was Managing Director of the Albany Berkshire Ballet in Pittsfield, MA. During his time at Yale, he worked at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and as Associate Managing Director of the Yale Repertory Theatre.

Jonathan Katz, Ph.D., is the CEO of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), which was created by the 50 state and six jurisdictional arts agencies of the United States as their primary vehicle for arts policy development, advocacy, leadership development, research, information and communication. During FY 2012, state arts agencies will manage in excess of $300 million including the Congressionally mandated 40% of the grant budget of the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Dr. Katz consults globally on cultural policy, leadership development, strategic planning and effective advocacy. A former member of the U.S. Commission on UNESCO, he has advised the International Federation of Arts Councils and Cultural Agencies on its corporate development and facilitated its CEO Seminar for heads of national arts and cultural agencies at World Summits in England, South Africa and Australia. Most recently, he has advised the governments of Korea and Canada, led a session on problem-solving for Grantmakers in the Arts in Chicago, and keynoted the Arts and Education Symposium of the Education Policy Leadership Center (Pennsylvania) on Learning and the Arts: What do we Know & What Should We Do? He is a founder of the Arts Education Partnership, the nation’s coalition of more than 100 organizations for the advancement of learning in the arts, and of the Cultural Advocacy Group, which is the forum through which the national cultural service organizations of the United States develop their united federal agenda. For the U.S. Department of State, he has conducted planning and professional development sessions with cultural agencies in five cities in Mexico. His doctoral dissertation proposed a national agenda for literary activities in the United States based on an analysis of factors affecting literary participation.

Andrea Kreuzer is a Program Associate for Research and Policy at the Arts Education Partnership (AEP), based in Washington, D.C. At AEP she has a substantial role in developing and authoring a new user-friendly database of outcomes-based arts education research and policy implications, called ArtsEdSearch. She’s also working with the U.S. Department of Education’s Professional Development for Arts Educators Program to develop and implement a rubric to assess the quality and effectiveness of grantee Annual Progress Reports. Andrea also co-wrote the AEP Research Bulletin, Music Matters: How music education helps students learn, achieve, and succeed which compiles and digests recent research on the benefits of music education.

Andrea received her Master of Arts degree in museum studies from George Washington University and her Bachelor of Sciences degree in photography and art history from Ithaca College. Before joining AEP, Andrea worked in museum research and evaluation, and in exhibition development and design at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History and the National Geographic Society.

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