Participant Bios

Ben Cameron
joined Theatre Communications Group staff as executive director in June of 1998. Prior to this appointment, he had been senior program officer at the Dayton Hudson Foundation and manager of community relations at Target Stores, a division of Dayton Hudson Corporation in Minneapolis, MN. In this position, he supervised a $51 million national giving program which focused on grant giving, cause marketing and volunteerism at the community level.

From 1988 through 1992, he worked for the National Endowment for the Arts, serving as director of the theatre program from 1990. His experience working in not-for-profit professional theatre includes three years as associate artistic director at Indiana Repertory Theatre (1981-1984); literary manager for PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, NC (1984-1986); and a host of freelance assignments at Baltimore’s Center Stage and Yale Repertory Theatre, among others.

He has taught theatre at the Yale School of Drama, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. He has published many articles on theatre, including a monthly editorial column in American Theatre, and authored a chapter on The Philanthropist for Christopher Hampton: A Casebook, edited by Robert Gross.

He received an MFA in dramaturgy from the Yale School of Drama in 1981, where he was the first recipient of the Kenneth Tynan Prize, and a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a John Motley Morehead scholar. In 1998, he was named a Salzburg Fellow by the Humphrey Institute, and as such, participated in an international seminar on changing relations between government, foundation and corporate sectors.

Adrian Ellis
is the founder of AEA Consulting. Between 1986 and 1990 Adrian was Development Director and subsequently Executive Director of the Conran Foundation, an educational charity based in London. He was responsible for planning and managing the establishment of the Design Museum, which opened on Butlers Wharf, London in 1989.

Between 1981 and 1986, he was a civil servant in the UK Treasury and the Cabinet Office. He was College Lecturer in Politics at University College, Oxford between 1981 and 1983.

Adrian is on the board of the Kaufman Center in New York, which comprises Merkin Hall, the Special School of Music and the Lucy Moses Dance School. He was a member of the Governing Council of the National Museums and Galleries of Wales (1996-2000) and a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects' Architecture Centre Committee (1997-2001). He is on the board of Pathe Pictures, a film production company, and a member of the Getty Leadership Institute's advisory board. He writes and lectures extensively on management and planning issues in the cultural sector. He was educated at University College Oxford and the London School of Economics and has lived in New York since 1998.

Bill Ivey
Bill Ivey is the Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University, an arts policy research center with offices in Nashville, Tennessee and Washington, D.C., as well as the Director of the Center's Arts Industries Policy Forum. Ivey also serves as Facilitator for Leadership Music, a music industry professional development program, and chairs the board of the National Recording Preservation Foundation, a federally-chartered foundation affiliated with the Library of Congress. He is currently at work on a book about America's endangered 20th century cultural heritage.

From May, 1998 through September, 2001, Ivey served in the Clinton-Gore Administration as the seventh Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal cultural agency. Ivey is credited with restoring Congressional confidence in the NEA and its work. Launched early in 1999, Ivey's Challenge America Initiative has to date garnered more than $25 million in new Congressional appropriations for the Endowment.

Prior to government service, Ivey was director of the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, Tennessee. The Foundation, and its principal division, the Country Music Hall of Fame, is a research institution dedicated to the preservation of American folk and popular music.

Ivey was twice elected board chairman of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and was recently elected president of the American Folklore Society. He holds degrees in History, Folklore, and Ethnomusicology, as well as honorary doctorates from the University of Michigan, Michigan Technological University, Wayne State University, and Indiana University. Ivey is a four-time Grammy Award nominee (Best Album Notes category), and is the author of numerous articles on cultural policy, folk, and popular music.

Joli Jensen
Joli Jensen is a professor in the Faculty of Communication at the University of Tulsa. Her teaching interests are in media, culture and society. At the University of Tulsa, she regularly teaches Mass Communication and Society, the Honors Junior Colloquium, Media and Popular Culture, as well as seminars on Popular Feminisms, Advocacy Journalism, and The Conduct of Life.

Dr. Jensen’s research interests are in American cultural and social thought. Her first book, Redeeming Modernity: Contradictions in Media Criticism, (Sage 1990) analyzes how the media are blamed for the perceived ills of modern life. Her second book, Creating the Nashville Sound: Authenticity, Commercialization and Country Music (Vanderbilt 1998) explores how and why cultural genre change, in relation to concerns about culture and commerce. She has also written a number of essays on media criticism, communication technologies, communication theories, the social history of the typewriter, and fans and fandom.

Her most recent book, Is Art Good for Us? Beliefs about High Culture in American Life (Rowman & Littlefield 2002) questions our taken-for-granted assumptions about the transformational power of high culture. She argues that our faith in art as social medicine allows us to keep faith with the ideals of democracy while deploring popular culture. She draws on work by Tocqueville, Whitman, Dewey, and a variety of 20th century social critics to explore how the arts are good, even if they don’t do good.

Dr. Jensen received her PhD in 1985 from Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois. She has taught at the University of Virginia, where she helped to develop a media studies program, and at the University of Texas-Austin, where she represented American cultural studies perspectives in the department of Radio-TV-Film.

Jim Kelly
is the executive director of 4Culture, formerly the Office of Cultural Resources of King County, Washington in Seattle. Kelly has served with the Arts Commission since December of 1993, beginning as the cultural facilities program coordinator, and serving as associate director prior to being named executive director in November of 1997. Prior to that, he was with the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in the community arts development and real estate programs. He has extensive theater experience both behind the scenes and in front of the lights. His first job in the theatre was constructing sets at Olney Theater, a summer theatre in Maryland. He toured both nationally and internationally with the National Players, America's oldest continuing touring repertory theatre company.

He holds a Masters of Fine Arts/Acting from Catholic University in Washington D.C. Kelly is a former member of the Actors Equity Association and the American Federation of Television/Radio Artists.

Phil Kennicott
is culture critic for the Washington Post, and formerly classical music critic there.

Glenn Lowry
is the director of the Museum of Modern Art

Robert L. Lynch
is president and CEO of Americans for the Arts

Midori
Midori Midori first picked up the violin at the age of four in Osaka, studying and practicing with her mother, Setsu Goto, herself an accomplished violinist. At the age of six Midori made her concert debut in Osaka, and three years later came to The Juilliard School in New York to study with Dorothy Delay. When she was eleven, she made her debut with the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Zubin Mehta..

In 1990 she made her Carnegie Hall debut, which was recorded and issued as a live recording to wide acclaim. In 1991 she was back at Carnegie for the concert hall's historic 100th Anniversary concert, which was recorded and broadcast around the world.

That year she also set up the first of her non-profit organizations, Midori & Friends, to promote music education in New York City; she later added Music Sharing in Japan and Partners in Performance in North America. Midori devotes a significant part of her schedule each year to all her organizations, working to bring music to outlying communities and to children in particular. In the mid-90s, she entered New York University, ultimately graduating magna cum laude with a degree in psychology and gender studies. She completes her Master's Degree, also in psychology, in May 2005.

In 2001 Midori was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, and in 2002 was named Instrumentalist of the Year by Musical America. Besides performing worldwide and actively participating in outreach projects through her foundations, she is on the violin faculties of two music schools: the Manhattan School of Music, and Thornton School of Music at USC, where she holds the Jascha Heifetz Chair.

Andrew Taylor
Andrew became Director of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration in September 2000, after serving as its Assistant Director for six years. An alumnus of the Bolz Center program, Andrew is published author on arts administration issues and a frequent speaker at national arts conferences. He advised the American Assembly exploration of "Art, Technology, and Intellectual Property," and is an active participant in national discussions of cultural policy, management, philanthropy, and information technology in the arts. Andrew has also served as a management, technology, and communications advisor to major arts organizations such as the International Society for the Performing Arts, the League of Historic American Theatres, and American Ballet Theatre. Working with leading arts management consultant Steven Wolff, he helped develop the operating plan and budget pro formas for Madison's upcoming $205-million Overture Center for the Arts. He also authors a weblog on arts and business hosted by ArtsJournal.com, The Artful Manager.

Russell Willis Taylor
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 1985 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 through 2000, she rejoined the ENO as executive director.

Mrs. Taylor 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 has most recently served on the boards of A&B (Arts and Business), Cambridge Arts Theatre, Arts Research Digest, and Society of London Theatre. Mrs. Taylor is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the recipient of the first Garrett award, an annual recognition for one individual's outstanding contribution to the arts in Britain. She returned to America in 2001 to take up the post of President and CEO, NAS.