Private Consultant for Arts and Education
Nominee: Leon Botstein
Jeanne Butler brings more than 35 years of experience in developing and investing resources within the not-for-profit and private sectors. Since 2003 her consulting practice has focused on philanthropy, education, and the arts. She served as a Special Consultant for Partnerships in the Arts and A+ Schools Program at UNC-Greensboro; as a Senior Research Fellow for the Center for Arts and Culture in Washington, DC; and as a Senior Advisor to Creative Capital in New York. She helped develop a sponsoring partnership for the Foundation with TARGET for Great Schools by Design. She coordinated the planning of a national forum on 21st century Stewardship of Historic Sites; she assisted in the development of the K-12 Architecture & Design Education Network (A+DEN). She also works with the Arts Education Partnership, Grantmakers in the Arts, as well as the Kirkpatrick Foundation on a national conversation on creativity and learning. More recently she was retained to research and locate a museum/university repository for a major private anthropological collection. She established the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at UNCSA and served as the Executive Director for ten years.
She established the A+ Schools Program, which is the largest arts-based school reform effort in recent history, and the only one to have had significant research funding attached to it. Other major programs and conferences initiated during her tenure include: The Assembly of Conservatory Leaders: Preparing Performing Artists for the 21st. Century; Consortia of Liberal Educators of Artists (CLEA); Shakespeare Lives! Program; and Building Creative Economies: A Conference with Handmade in America, NEA and Appalachian Regional Commission.