Mary Kelley, Boston, MA
Principal
Mary Kelley helps organizations, cities and towns with strategic planning and project design/implementation. She brings years of professional experience in leadership positions in the performing arts in New York City and New England including eleven years as Executive Director of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency supporting cultural organizations, artists and schools in the Commonwealth. At the Council, she oversaw several new initiatives including the nationally known Cultural Economic Development Program (aka Adams Art Program) which provides funding for municipal cultural planning and over the past several years invested over $2.4 million in projects designed to engage the cultural assets of a city or town and spur economic development. Mary also served as a member of the Steering Committee for the Creative Economy Initiative which launched the seminal study in 2000 on the New England Creative Economy. She was responsible for forming public private partnerships with foundations and corporations to provide additional funding for cultural initiatives in the state. She has been a dedicated advocate for arts education, arts in healing, and using the arts as a pathway to improve the lives of others.
Mary previously served as the founding Executive Director of The Music Hall in Portsmouth NH; Director of Marketing and General Manager of The Big Apple Circus; and Production Associate at Warner Theatre Productions which produced or co produced 22 Broadway and off-Broadway productions. For Tom Field Associates, Mary created the Westbeth Theatre Center in New York from the old Bell Sound Laboratories on Bank Street in New York. From incorporation of the Center to hiring the theatre architect and designer, she oversaw the operations of this Off-Off Broadway theatre complex during its formative years. She was General Manager at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and ETC Theatre Company. She served as New York State Director of Hands Across America, a project of USA for Africa and managed the South American tour of EVITA.
With a firm belief in the necessity for international cultural exchange, Mary has participated in several international projects. Last April, she presented at the first policy Seminar on Cultural Access in Santiago, Chile. Over 200 people attended the conference which was sponsored by the Instituto Culturo Norteamerciano, the Pontifical Catholic University and the US Embassy in Chile. Earlier she arranged a residency with England's Streetwise Opera Company (www.streetwiseopera.org) at Tewksbury State Hospital and homeless shelters in Boston for the Healing Arts Initiative of the Mass Cultural Council. While at the Council, Mary led two cultural tours to Cuba and assisted the New England Foundation for the Arts in developing a week long seminar for Cuban arts administrators in Havana. She also designed a three week U.S. residency program at Boston cultural organizations for arts administrators from the United Kingdom.
She is Board Chair for the New England Foundation for the Arts. She has served both on the theatre and state partnership panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and on panels for the Bank of America Community Awards as well as the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. She was the recipient of the 2007 Irene Buck Service to Arts Education Award given by the Massachusetts Alliance for Arts Education. She received Outstanding Woman of Achievement in the Arts Award from the General Federation of Women's Clubs of Massachusetts as well as Official Citations from the Massachusetts Legislature for her work. She served on the board of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. Prior to her appointment at the Council, Mary earned a law degree and served as Special Assistant Attorney General in the AG's office in Massachusetts.