EISENHOWER FELLOWSHIPS WOMEN’S WEBINAR SERIES: IGNITING FUTURE WOMEN LEADERS

Women Leaders in the Arts Creating Social Impact

February 6, 2025 | 9 am ET

SPEAKERS

Ruwanthi de Chickera

Sri Lanka 2014
Artistic Director | Stages Theatre Group

Ruwanthie de Chickera is a founding member and artistic director of the Stages Theatre Group, one of Sri Lanka’s most well-known and highly-respected theater groups. In the past 15 years, she has written and/or directed more than 20 plays, while lecturing widely on acting and directing. She also wrote the script for the international award winning comedy Machan, and has produced feature and short films. De Chickera used her fellowship to explore community theater; theater and film festivals; actor training techniques; and the development of film and theater scripts.

Ioana Ciocan

Romania 2023
CEO and Shareholder
Art Safari

Ioana Ciocan is responsible for strategic planning, financial management, sponsorships and donor communications at Art Safari, a cultural organization that promotes the visual arts through curated retrospectives, guided tours, museum visits, exhibitions in unconventional spaces and workshops for children. For most of the 20th century, Romania’s communist regime acquired private museums, demolished them and scattered their collections. On fellowship, Ciocan met with directors of prominent museums in the U.S. to learn techniques for building new museums, attracting exhibitions and growing audiences. Against the backdrop of her country’s turbulent past, she aims to recover and re-energize its legacy values.

Natalia Crujeiras

USA 2021
CEO | History Miami Museum

As the first female chief executive officer of HistoryMiami Museum, Natalia Crujeiras is spearheading the museum’s efforts to identify a new location to house its exceptional collection and execute accessible programming to reflect the city’s dynamic diversity. In her previous role as executive director of cultural affairs at Miami Dade College, the largest and most diverse institution of higher learning in the nation, Crujeiras led the school’s cultural programming, including the nationally renowned Miami Book Fair and Miami Film Festival as well as the historic Freedom Tower. On fellowship, Crujeiras traveled to Belgium and Ireland to bring back to Miami adaptable, scalable and sustainable models to help build a more resilient and inclusive arts and culture economy. She explored best practices of organizations, community leaders, policymakers, artistic collectives and associations that have developed accessible and equitable experiences for historic sites, placemaking heritage, and cultural centers in the wake of the Covid pandemic.

Jane Golden

USA 2003
Executive Director | Mural Arts Program

Jane Golden is the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. She is also currently an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania teaching the history and practice of the contemporary mural movement coupled step by step with analysis of the process of designing with painting a mural. Golden has overseen the growth of the Mural Arts Program from a small city agency to the nation’s largest mural program and a model for community development around the globe. Under Golden’s direction, the program has created more than 3,800 landmark works of public art through innovative collaborations with community-based organizations, city agencies, nonprofits, schools, the private sector and philanthropies. Sought after as an expert on urban transformation through art, Golden has received numerous awards for her work, including the 2016 Woman of Influence Award from Pearl S. Buck International, the Philadelphia Award, The Hepburn Medal from the Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center at Bryn Mawr College, the Visionary Woman Award from Moore College of Art & Design, the 2012 Governor’s Award for Innovation in the Arts, a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania Award from former Governor Edward G. Rendell, the Adela Dwyer / St. Thomas Peace Award from Villanova University and LaSalle University’s Alumni Association’s Signum Fidei Medal. Golden has co-authored three books about the murals in Philadelphia. She is an adjunct instructor at the University of Pennsylvania and Moore College of Art & Design. She holds an MFA from Rutgers, degrees in fine arts and political science from Stanford, and honorary degrees from Drexel, St. Joseph’s, Swarthmore, University of the Arts, Widener, Haverford and Villanova. In addition, Golden serves on the Mayor’s Cultural Advisory Council, the Penn Museum Advisory Committee and the board of directors of The Heliotrope Foundation.

Shaza Ishak

Singapore 2020
Managing Director | Teater Ekamatra Ltd

Shaza Ishak guides strategy for the only ethnic minority theater company in Singapore, where the main minority groups are Malays (14 percent), Indians (9 percent), and Eurasians and others (2 percent). Under her leadership, with annual revenue of $360,000 USD, the company brings to center stage issues of race, religion, sexual discrimination and economic inequality. She sees this as “globalizing local issues and localizing global issues” in a country that is wealthy but ranks low on protection of human rights. On fellowship she developed a plan to campaign for funding of ethnic minority artistic projects.

Kirsten Mason

New Zealand 2022
Former Director, Artistic Programming, Innovation and Audience Engagement |New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

As a leader with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Mason is responsible for the planned development of a National Music Center based in Wellington’s historic Town Hall encompassing spaces for performance, education, recording, broadcasting and technology. Set to launch in 2025, it will house the 90-musician orchestra and New Zealand’s premier music conservatory. Because the Wellington region is home to significant Maori, Pacific Island and immigrant communities, Mason wants the center to serve a much wider audience than the typical concertgoers, who are overwhelmingly white and middle class. On fellowship she visited orchestras and performing arts centers across the United States to learn how they serve diverse communities.

Ntokozo Mbuli

South Africa 2021
Managing Director | Sugar Bean Pictures

Ntokozo Mbuli is the managing director and executive producer at Sugar Bean Pictures, a 100% female-owned production company that creates educational, nation-building television content. Sugar Bean produces scripted and non- scripted programs on African heritage, children’s shows and environmental conservation. Mbuli works with the South African government and educational and conservation organizations to develop both long- and short-form programming—from television series to PSAs and campaigns—that address some of the most pressing social issues facing the country. Public health care in South Africa is at the forefront of these issues, with an infant mortality rate six times higher than other OECD countries and rural communities lacking access and availability of proper medical facilities. Mbuli plans to shed light on these growing crises by producing a medical television program that connects patients in rural, impoverished parts of South Africa with specialists and treatment. She believes this will educate audiences and spark necessary conversations about the need for an increase in public health initiatives.

Zane Vagnere

Latvia 2023
Deputy State Secretary for International Affairs, Integration and Media Policy | Ministry of Culture, Latvia

Leading a team of 30 professionals across five departments and divisions, Zane Vagnere is responsible for international cooperation on cultural affairs, social integration and media policy for the Latvian Ministry of Culture. She facilitated the establishment of an independent media ethics council to promote self- regulation. Her responsibilities include the integration of Ukrainian refugees in a welcoming and inclusive environment. Fluent in four languages and proficient in two more, she spent eight years in Brussels as Counselor at the Permanent Representation of Latvia to the EU. She intends to use her learnings from fellowship to develop Latvia’s first coordinated Media Literacy Strategy to counter propaganda principally emanating from Russia.

MODERATOR

Diane Melley

USA 2001 
Former Vice President | IBM Foundation

Melley previously led planning, execution and partnership-building at the Philadelphia Foundation in support of a year-long series of initiatives with the regional corporate responsibility community launching the organization’s second century of civic and philanthropic leadership. She proved key day-to-day planning and oversight in support of the Covid-19 fund and helped oversee relationships with the Greater Philadelphia Corporate Volunteer Council, the Arts and Business Council and the Key Skills Hub.

Melley worked for 36 years at IBM, where she was vice president of the IBM Foundation and vice president for Global Citizenship Initiatives, including the company’s Global Volunteers Program and its Impact Grants program, which brought technology solutions to communities around the world and humanitarian responses to natural disasters. A systems engineer and technologist by training, she led IBM’s systems integration practice prior to leading the global citizenship team. She also led IBM’s Centennial Celebration of Service in 2011. A long-time Philadelphian with a bachelor’s degree in computer science from LaSalle University, Melley holds an MBA from Drexel University, and is a graduate of executive leadership programs at Harvard and Stanford Universities.

Melley serves on the boards of Independent Sector, the Points of Light Institute and the International Association of Volunteer Effort. She formerly served on the board of the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia and as a two-term chair of the Philadelphia Education Fund, as well as two-term chair of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Center for Corporate Citizenship. She is a founding faculty member of the Institute for Corporate Social Responsibility at Johns Hopkins University and is certified by IBM and the Project Management Institute as a Project Executive.  She is passionate about mentoring and providing opportunities for girls and the underserved in the STEM fields.

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