Ken Fischer is the President of the University Musical Society (UMS), a 130-year-old independent multi-disciplinary performing arts presenter with a long and deep affiliation with the University of Michigan (U-M). Each season UMS presents up to 70 performances in U-M and community venues, sponsors an extensive education program, commissions and presents new work, and hosts many artists' residencies. Under Ken's leadership UMS has expanded and diversified its programming and audiences; deepened its engagement with U-M and southeast Michigan communities; created effective partnerships with corporations, arts organizations, educational institutions, and community organizations; and received significant support from leading national foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Ken has contributed to the presenting field as speaker, workshop leader, writer, consultant, panelist, and U.S. State Department cultural ambassador to Brazil, China, Lithuania, and Mexico. He chairs the Board of National Arts Strategies and the National Advisory Board of the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) and is a board member of Interlochen Center for the Arts, Sphinx Organization, Arts Midwest, and Cultural Alliance of Southeast Michigan. He has served on the boards of and remains active with Arts Presenters, International Society for Performing Arts (ISPA), Classical Action/Performing Arts Against AIDS, and Chamber Music America. He is also active with Major University Presenters Network.

Ken received ISPA's Patrick Hayes Award for his career achievements and was named one of the five most influential presenters in the U.S. by musicalamerica.com. Before UMS Ken was a higher education association executive, management consultant, and independent concert presenter in Washington, DC. Ken has degrees from The College of Wooster and University of Michigan. His wife is flutist Penelope Peterson Fischer and their son Matt directs marketing and partnerships for iTunes and lives with his wife Renee in the San Francisco Bay area.

Terence Blanchard

Terence Blanchard is a jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, arranger, and film score composer. Since he emerged on the scene in 1980 with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra and then shortly thereafter with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Blanchard has been a leading artist in jazz. He was an integral figure in the 1980s jazz resurgence having recorded several award-winning albums and having performed with the jazz elite. He is known as a straight-ahead artist in the hard bop tradition but has recently utilized an African-fusion style of playing that makes him unique from other trumpeters on the performance circuit.

As a film composer, Blanchard has reached his widest audience. His trumpet can be heard on nearly fifty film scores; more than forty bear his unmistakable compositional style. After performing on soundtracks for Spike Lee movies, including Do the Right Thing and Mo' Better Blues, Lee wanted Blanchard to compose the scores for his films beginning with "Jungle Fever" (1991). Blanchard has written the score for every Spike Lee film since including, Malcolm X, Clockers, Summer of Sam, 25th Hour, Inside Man. In 2006, he composed the score for Spike Lee's 4-hour Hurricane Katrina documentary for HBO entitled When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.

Since 2000, Blanchard has served as Artistic Director at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz at the University of Southern California. The conservatory offers an intensive, tuition-free, two-year master's program to a limited number of students. Blanchard works with the students in the areas of artistic development, arranging, composition, and career counseling. He also participates in master classes and community outreach activities associated with the program. In April 2007, the Institute announced its "Commitment to New Orleans" initiative which includes the relocation of the program to the campus of Loyola University New Orleans from Los Angeles.

Blanchard attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) and Rutgers University.

Antonia Contro

Antonia Contro is the executive director of Marwen, a non-profit arts organization that provides out-of-school visual art, college planning, and career development programs to Chicago's under-served youth in grades 6-12. Marwen was founded in 1987 to provide teens who lack financial means with access to high quality arts instruction- free of charge- in a safe, supportive, and artistically rigorous environment. Courses are taught by professional artists in a state-of-the-art centrally located studio facility. Today, Marwen offers over 100 programs annually to over 2,000 young people from 224 schools and 54 of the city's 57 zip codes.

Contro is also an artist who exhibits locally and nationally and her work is in noted private and public collections. Recent one person exhibitions include Field Guide, a site specific exhibition at Chicago's Notebaert Nature Museum; Closed and Open, at the Newberry Library; and Descry, at The Museum of Contemporary Photography. She was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship in 2002; and an Illinois Arts Council Visual Arts Fellowship in 2007. Her book, Closed/Open: Antonia Contro, was published by The Newberry Library in 2007.

Contro holds a BA from Northwestern University and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she was awarded the Faculty Prize for Graduate Study in Studio Arts. She is on the advisory boards of the STREB Dance Company and SNAAP, the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project.

Douglas Dempster

Douglas Dempster is Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The College of Fine Arts is a leading public, comprehensive, professional college of fine arts that includes professional training programs and liberal arts concentrations in Theatre and Dance, Music, and Art and Art History, in addition to being home to a major art collection, the Blanton Museum of Art, and Austin's largest performing arts presenter, the UT Performing Arts Center. The College also provides a broad curriculum for non-majors and community instruction.

He was formerly senior associate dean and interim dean of the College. For many years before arriving in Texas, he was on the faculty of the Eastman School of Music, holding faculty appointments in Humanities, Music Theory, Musicology, and in the Philosophy Department of the University of Rochester, where he served in a variety of appointments including associate director and dean of academic affairs. He has taught broadly in courses ranging from art appreciation for freshmen to the history of dramatic theory and cultural policy studies.

A philosopher by training and inclination, he has published in philosophical aesthetics, the philosophy of music theory, cultural policy studies, and the philosophy of language.

Barbara Hauptman

Currently Barbara Hauptman is a Visiting Assistant Professor at SUNY/Purchase in Arts Management. After 12 years, she retired as Executive Director of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers (SSDC), a national independent labor union, in December 2007. While at SSDC, she was instrumental in restructuring the Broadway contract, pursing major property rights issues, doubling the membership as well as enhancing the programming of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation.

Prior to her appointment at SSDC, Barbara was the Executive Director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater where she helped the organization through financial stabilization, produced a record-breaking season at City Center, and facilitated a successful ad campaign with American Express.

From 1989-1995, Barbara was the Executive Director of the Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Dutchess County, New York. The Bardavon is the oldest operating performing arts facility in the State of New York, and as a presenting house, one of the most accommodating to artists of various disciplines. While there, Ms. Hauptman established a residency with the Acting Company; introduced the community to emerging contemporary artists and orchestrated the theater's 125th Anniversary celebration.

Producing, managing, and writing for television took Barbara away from the live performing arts during the mid-80s. As Vice-President, Manager of Daytime Programming for Saatchi & Saatchi Compton Advertising, she represented Procter & Gamble's interests in daytime television serials. Later she wrote for two award winning series as an associate writer.

Other experience includes Director of Operations for the Theatre Development Fund and TKTS booth in Times Square. There she managed a staff of over 90 and promoted programs that encouraged new audiences to come to the theater. As an Arts Analyst for the New York State Council on the Arts in the late 70s, Barbara saw over 250 plays a year for three years, and helped nurture many theaters that are today among the mainstays of the industry.

She has produced Twyla Tharp on Broadway and general managed at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Williamstown, Massachusetts and Vinnette Carroll’s Urban Arts Corps. She has been an arts consultant in both theatre, dance and for private arts foundations. Her Board of Directors service includes Second Stage Theatre Company, Dance Theatre Workshop, Bard Music Festival, Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation and the Poughkeepsie Red Cross.

Barbara has served on local, regional and statewide arts councils as a panelist; been published by the Foundation for the Extension and Development of the American Professional Theatre and the Yale Journal of Regulation; been an arts contributor to the Dutchess County Magazine and the Taconic Newspapers; facilitated retreats for Board of Directors and Professional Theatre Associations and co-founded the Coalition of Broadway Union and Guilds.

She is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama with an MFA in Theater Administration, and has been an adjunct professor at SUNY New Paltz, and New York University.

She has been a Broadway Tony Award Voter since 1996.

Sammy Hoi

Samuel Hoi has served as president of Los Angeles' Otis College of Art and Design since July 2000. He is an advocate for art and design education and creative professionals for social, economic, and cultural advancement. At Otis, he has shepherded new academic initiatives involving innovative partnerships and community engagement, such as Integrated Learning that places art and design learning in real life social context. Since 2007, Otis has commissioned an annual Report on the Creative Economy of the Los Angeles Region. In previous positions, he created visual arts community programs that received a National Multicultural Institute Award and a Coming Up Taller Award from the President's Committee on Arts and Humanities. Among his current volunteer board duties, he is chair of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD) and vice chair of United States Artists (USA). Past board services included the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD), the Arena Stage, and Arts and Humanities Education Collaborative, Inc., among others. He has been awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the Corcoran, and decorated in 2006 by the French government as an Officer of their Palm Academy.

Colleen Jennings-Roggensack

Colleen Jennings-Roggensack has been presenting the performing arts for the past 31 years.

She is currently Executive Director for Arizona State University Gammage and Assistant Vice President for Cultural Affairs with artistic, fiscal and administrative responsibility for ASU Gammage and Kerr Cultural Center with additional responsibility for Sun Devil Stadium and Wells Fargo Arena for non-athletic events including concerts as well as commencement and convocation exercises. Her entire organizational mission is summed up in two words: "Connecting Communities." Through this process, Colleen has enabled artists, patrons and entire communities to discover new avenues of intercultural communication through the arts.

Colleen was nominated by President Clinton and served on the National Council on the Arts from August 1994 until November 1997. She served as an Ambassador for the Arts for the National Council on the Arts until 2004. Colleen has served as the President of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters. She has served as a consultant to various private philanthropic organizations and served on numerous other Boards locally and nationally as well as being an invited speaker at national conferences. She currently serves on the Board of Governors for The Broadway League, Creative Capital Board of Directors and the Tempe Convention & Visitors Bureau and Childsplay Boards.

Colleen has held positions at Dartmouth College, Colorado State University and was Director of Performing Arts and Professional Development at the Western States Arts Federation. Due to her professional achievements and community involvement she has been presented with many prestigious awards. She was recognized for her contributions to the arts when she received the Girl Scouts World of the Arts Award, October 2008; Mill Avenue District Esteemed Excellence Award, April 2008; and the Fan Taylor Award presented by the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, January 2007 to name a few.

Formerly a dancer and choreographer, she is married to Dr. Kurt Roggensack, volcanologist at Arizona State University, and has an 18-year old daughter, Kelsey.

Steven Lavine

Steven D. Lavine has been president of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) since 1988. CalArts' most recent addition is the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT), a center for innovative visual, performing and media arts, located in the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall complex in downtown Los Angeles. Dr. Lavine is a leader in the cultural life of Los Angeles as well as nationally.

Dr. Lavine currently serves on the board of directors of Endowments Inc., KCRW-FM National Public Radio, the Cotsen Family Foundation, and Villa Aurora Foundation for European-American Relations, as Co-Chair of the Arts Coalition for Academic Progress for the Los Angeles Unified School District and on the Advisory Committees for the Asia Society California Center and the Cultural Policy Network Project of the Center for Arts and Culture, and as a member of the Public Programs Committee of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He has served on the board of directors of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, The Operating Company of the Music Center of Los Angeles, KCET-Public Broadcasting, Arts International, Inc., and the American Council for the Arts, and as a member of the Visiting Committee of The J. Paul Getty Museum. Dr. Lavine has also been co-director of The Arts and Government Program for The American Assembly at Columbia University and co-chair of the Mayor's Working Group of the Los Angeles Theatre Center. He participated on the Architectural Selection Juries for the new Los Angeles Cathedral and the Los Angeles Children's Museum. In 1991, he co-edited with Ivan Karp, Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display; in 1992, the Smithsonian Institution Press released their second co-edited volume, Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture.

Fred Lazarus

Fred Lazarus IV has served as President of the Maryland Institute College of Art since 1978. Prior to becoming President, he was Staff Assistant to the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1975 to 1978. From 1971 to 1974, Mr. Lazarus was President of the Washington Council for Equal Business Opportunity, and from 1969 to 1971, he was a staff associate for the National Council for Equal Business Opportunity. Mr. Lazarus served two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Panama.

He received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1966 and his B.A. in Economics from Claremont McKenna College in 1964. Mr. Lazarus is a board member of the following organizations: Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design, Midtown Development Corporation, Americans for the Arts, Maryland Independent College and University Association, Central Baltimore Partnership, and Arts Every Day.

Abel Lopez

Abel Lopez, Associate Producing Director of GALA Hispanic Theatre, is president of the board of directors of the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture. Lopez is also Vice President of Americans for the Arts and Treasurer of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters. He is Chair-Emeritus of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and immediate past president of the Helen Hayes Awards, the Performing Arts Alliance, and Theater Communications Group, the national service organization for professional theaters. Lopez is also immediate past chair of the Creative Communities Initiative of the Community Foundation of the National Capital Region. Lopez also is a member of the Federal City Council.

Lopez is a member of the Boards of Directors of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts, In Series, and Black Women Playwrights Group. He is a member of the Kennedy Center Community Board, Latino Advisory Board of the Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution, and Advisory Committee of The Playwrights Forum. Lopez also teaches in graduate arts management program at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

Lopez is a member of the Selection Committee of the David H. Lawrence Scholarship awarded by the Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., and served on the Grants Committee of the Laurel Fund, which provides arts scholarships to youth. Lopez, with Rebecca Read Medrano, spearheaded the $4.4 million capital campaign for GALA Hispanic Theatre for its new 274 seat theater in Washington, DC.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Lopez is a producer, frequent lecturer, director whose productions have appeared at GALA, Horizons Theatre, DC Arts Center, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Source Theater and the In Series in Washington, DC; the Arizona Theater Company; the Public Theater in New York; Jomandi Productions in Atlanta; the James Knight Center in Miami; Theatre on the Water in San Francisco; the Teatro Nacional in San Jose; Costa Rica; Teatro Nacional in San Salvador, El Salvador; Teatro San Martin in Caracas, Venezuela; and the National Theatre of Cuba. His production of The Pearl for the Kennedy Center toured throughout the United States.

Carlos Martinez

Carlos Martinez is Principal and Firmwide Design Director for Gensler, a global design firm. Using his design talent and innovation planning training, he works locally in the Chicago office and at a national and international level to inform and enhance Gensler's design of memorable and compelling places.

Carlos is acknowledged as one of the industry's innovative and influential designers. His focus is on creating places that are informed, purposeful and compelling. He has been Design Director on many award-winning projects.

As a professional committed to social responsibility, Carlos aligns his artistic talent with several important charitable organizations. He is a past Chairman of the Board of Directors for DIFFA Chicago, and currently serves on the Board of Trustees at the Harrington College of Design, the Board of Trustees of the Chicago Architecture Foundation, the Board of Directors at Marwen, the Board of Directors for Chicago High School for the Arts and as President of the Condominium Association Board of a historic Holabird & Roche 19th Century building, located in a landmark district of Chicago's Gold Coast.

Carlos rounds out and sharpens his practice with an appointment as Adjunct Professor of Design at the world-renowned School of the Art Institute of Chicago and through his design affiliation with Niedermaier, a contemporary furniture manufacturer. Niedermaier commissioned him to design a line of furniture that received national attention in House & Garden's "50 Things to Love about Chicago."

In his formal training, Carlos earned his Bachelor of Architecture from Ohio State University and his Master of Architecture from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Stephanie Perrin

Stephanie Perrin was the Head of Walnut Hill School, an international boarding high school for the arts, for 25 years and is now a consultant focusing on arts education and organizational development in schools and other organizations. She has an A.B. in Art History from Boston University, two graduate degrees from the Harvard Graduates School of Education (HGSE), and an Honorary Doctorate in Music from the New England Conservatory of Music. She was also a Klingenstein Fellow at Columbia University Teacher's College. She began her career as a teacher of art history and studio arts at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA. In addition she is trained as a counselor and has worked with students in both college and personal counseling. She came to Walnut Hill in 1978 as Academic Dean, a position she held for five years before becoming Head in 1984.

In her time at Walnut Hill the School became one of the premier schools for the training of young artists in the world. She oversaw substantial growth in the endowment, the creation of facilities to support the School's mission, and the growth of the School from 210 to over 300 students by 2008. All students at Walnut Hill major in one of arts - dance, theater, music, visual arts, or creative writing - as well as engaging in a rigorous college preparatory academic program. In 1985 Walnut Hill and the New England Conservatory of Music formed a joint program for the training of young musicians, the only formal collaboration of its kind between a high school and a conservatory in the United States.

In 1998, Ms. Perrin, a believer in supporting arts education for all children, co-founded the National Arts and Learning Collaborative an organization that supports arts programming in public schools and which includes teaching partnerships between independent and Boston public elementary schools and teacher training programs through Lesley University in using the arts in the curriculum. The School has also supported the important work of the SPHINX organization in providing musical training for young people of color by hosting the Sphinx summer program.

Ms. Perrin writes and speaks about arts education in its many forms. She serves on a number of boards including the Massachusetts Board of Education Arts Advisory Council; NETWORK of Schools of Visual and Performing Arts; School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Boston Music Education Collaborative (WGBH, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, New England Conservatory, and the Boston Public Schools); National Arts and Learning Collaborative; Board of Overseers of New England Conservatory and as Chairman of the Board of the Conservatory Lab Charter School in Boston, a public elementary school focused on learning through music.

Leslie Shepard

Ms. Shepard was a member of the leadership team that created the Baltimore School of the Arts and held the position of Dean of Arts prior to becoming its Director September 2001.

Ms. Shepard has a background in dance, having trained and performed with Ballet Etudes Company and Peabody Chamber Ballet. She holds a Masters degree in Community Planning from the University of Maryland.

Before joining the staff at BSA, Ms. Shepard was the Deputy Director of the Mayor's Committee on Art and Culture.

Ms. Shepard currently serves as a board member of the Mount Vernon Cultural District, Arts Everyday and the Education Committee of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Ann Markusen

Ann Markusen is an economist and Professor and Director of the Project on Regional and Industrial Economics at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota. Via PRIE's Arts Economy Initiative, launched in 2002, Markusen and her associates have produced a number of new artist-centered studies: San Jose Artists' Resource and Space Study (2008), Leveraging Investments in Creativity Artist Data User Guide (2008), Crossover: How Artists Build Careers across Sectors (2006), Artists' Centers (2006), and The Artistic Dividend (2003), as well as a dozen articles and book chapters. She has also presented keynotes and papers nationally and in Brazil, South Korea, Japan, Germany, France, and the UK, for both scholarly and public audiences.

Markusen's work in economic development includes From Defense to Development: International Perspectives on Realizing the Peace Dividend (Routledge, 2003). America's Peace Dividend: Essays on the Achievements of the 1990s and the Challenges Ahead (Columbia International Affairs On-line, 2000); Second Tier Cities (University of Minnesota, 1999), Arming the Future: A Defense Industry for the Twenty-first Century (Council on Foreign Relations, 1999), Trading Industries, Trading Regions (Guilford, 1993), Dismantling the Cold War Economy (Basic Books 1992), The Rise of the Gunbelt (Oxford 1991), Regions: the Economics and Politics of Territory (Rowman and Allenheld 1987), High Tech America (Unwin Hyman 1986) and Profit Cycles, Oligopoly and Regional Development (MIT Press 1985) as well as more than one hundred journal articles and book chapters. Markusen has contributed op eds and shorter articles to publications such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, International Herald Tribune, Foreign Policy, World Policy Journal, and The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

Professor Markusen received a Bachelor's Degree in Foreign Service at Georgetown University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics at Michigan State University, and has held faculty positions at the University of Colorado, University of California Berkeley, Northwestern and Rutgers Universities. Markusen won the 2006 Alonso Prize in Regional Science, the 2005 Margarita McCoy Award in Urban and Regional Planning, the 1996 Walter Isard Award for Outstanding Scholarly Achievement in Regional Science, and the 1992 and 1998 Chester Rapkin award for the best article in the Journal of Planning Education and Research. Markusen served as Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York (1995-2002), as a member of the Presidential Commission on Arms Trade Offsets (2000-1), as Member and Chair of the Committee on Science, Engineering and Publc Policy of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1994-2000) and as President of the North American Regional Science Association (2000). She was a Brookings Institution Economic Policy Fellow (1976-7), a Fulbright Lecturer in Brazil (1983), a Public Policy Institute of California Visiting Fellow (2002), and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Dortmund, Germany (1997), and in the past two years as Visiting Chair/Faculty/Scholar at UCLA, Cornell University, Korea University and Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil.

Bebe Miller

Bebe Miller, a native New Yorker, has been making dances for over twenty-five years, and has created over forty original works for companies here and abroad. Her interest in finding a physical language for the human condition is a connecting thread throughout her work, and, in order to further a process of group inquiry, she formed Bebe Miller Company in 1985. After two decades of national and international touring, the company is now structured as a "virtual company," with dancers, collaborating artists and designers living in various locations around the U.S. In recent years, she has been investigating a mix of theatrical narrative, performance and design to expand this language, most notably in Landing/Place (2005) and Verge (2001), both works receiving New York Dance and Performance Awards (a.k.a. 'The Bessies'). In 1999, she, along with choreographer Ralph Lemon and filmmaker Isaac Julien, completed the award-winning, collaborative film, Three. Collaboration being fundamental to her working process, she has worked with composers, visual artists, writers, filmmakers and directors such as Robin Holcomb, Fred Frith, Don Byron, Caroline Beasley-Baker, Robert Kushner, Ain Gordon and Kit Fitzgerald. Miller has created original works for Boston Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Philadanco, Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, among other companies nationally. She has also received commissions from Phoenix Dance Company in Leeds, England; Groupe Experimental de Danse Contemporaine, in Martinique; PATH Dance Company, Johannesburg, RSA; and Sbrit Dance Company, Asmara, Eritrea.

Ms. Miller has been a Full Professor in Dance at The Ohio State University since 2000. She has collaborated with OSU's Department of Dance in producing several digital documentation works, including a DVD-ROM of Going To The Wall, a CD-ROM of Prey that accompanies the Labanotation score, and DanceCODES, a software template for choreographic documentation, and ias collaborated with OSU's Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) in exploring motion capture technology and digital animation in new works.

Bebe Miller's choreography has been performed internationally in Europe, the Caribbean and the African continent, and nationally in venues ranging from New York City's Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Walker Center for the Arts, the Wexner Center for the Arts to numerous colleges and universities around the country. She has been honored with four 'Bessie' (New York Dance and Performance) Awards, a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, an American Choreographer's Award and Artist's Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and New York Foundation for the Arts. She currently serves on the boards of Bearnstow (a retreat center in Maine), Dance Theater Workshop and Danspace Project, and is a member of the International Artists Advisory Board of the Wexner Center for the Arts.

Carla Peterson

Carla Peterson is Artistic Director of Dance Theater Workshop since fall, 2006. She is responsible for leading the institution's overall artistic vision and designing programming that advances dance and live performance in New York City and worldwide. She continues to serve on panels, most recently, as advisor for the New England Foundation for the Art's National Dance Project, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Fellowship Grants to Individuals, the Pew Fellowships in the Arts' Discipline-Specific and Final Interdisciplinary Panels, and The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography's Choreographic Fellowships panel. From 2002-06, she served as the Executive Director of Movement Research. She has also worked as a writer, project manager, project development advisor and fundraiser for independent artists and arts organizations, including the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, SURDNA Foundation, Association for Performing Arts Presenters, and the National Performance Network. From 1993-96, Ms. Peterson was Director of Inter/National Projects at Dance Theater Workshop. From 1988-93, she was Assistant Director of Performing Arts at the Wexner Center for the Arts.

Gwyn Richards

Now the leader of one of the world's foremost musical education institutions, Gwyn Richards received a Bachelor of Music Education degree in 1973 and a Master of Music in Choral Conducting degree in 1974, both from the University of Michigan. He has worked in higher education since 1974, beginning as the director of choral music at Montana State University.

Born in Wales and a naturalized U.S. citizen, Richards completed his coursework for a Doctor of Music in Choral Conducting degree at IU in 1979, leaving to become the director of choral activities at McGill University in Montreal. From 1980 to 1986, he was the assistant dean of music and director of choral activities at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, where he started the masters degree program in choral conducting. He then went on to serve as associate dean of music and associate professor of choral music at the University of Southern California.

In 1992, Richards returned to the IU School of Music as the director of admissions, eventually becoming the associate dean of admissions and financial aid. In July 2001, he was appointed as dean, after serving as interim dean since January 1, 2000. In May 2006 he received an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Anderson University.

James Undercofler

James Undercofler currently serves as Senior Advisor to The Philadelphia Orchestra and teaches arts administration at Drexel University. He has held positions as President and CEO of The Philadelphia Orchestra, Dean and Professor of Music Education at the Eastman School of Music, Executive and Founding Director of the Perpich Center for Arts Education (formerly known as the Minnesota Center for Arts Education) and Director of the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven, Connecticut.

Mr. Undercofler's background includes activity as a French horn player, youth orchestra conductor, as well as that of an active teacher. His education includes degrees from the Eastman School of Music and Yale University and extensive post-masters study at the University of Connecticut. He serves on numerous not-for-profit boards, including the League of American Orchestras, the American Music Center and the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. Over his long career he has been the recipient of numerous award and citations, and has been a featured speaker at national and international conferences.