BOARD AND STAFF

THE HONORABLE EDWARD A. POWELL, JR. | Board chair

Edward A. (Ned) Powell is the Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Telluride Council for the Arts and Humanities. In January 2002, Ned became President and CEO of the USO World Headquarters, the only global civilian organization supporting the U.S. military. Founded in 1941, the USO today operates more than 130 centers in the United States and overseas. 

    • Under Ned Powell’s leadership the USO saw significant expansion.  The operating budget expanded from less than $40 million a year to almost $250 million in 2008.  USO’s active donor base grew from 200,000 to more than 1.5 million individuals.  Today the organization enjoys a solid balance sheet, as well as strong relationships with Congress and the Department of Defense.

    • While a member of the Defense Business Board, Ned developed the concept of concurrent credentialing for service members to translate their military training into civilian credentialed careers.  He chaired the Board Study that led to Congress passing legislation approving acceptance of military training for US Government certification

    • Prior to joining the USO, Ned served as Assistant Secretary for Management (CFO) and Deputy Secretary (Acting) at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).  During his tenure as CFO, the VA achieved its first-ever clean audit opinion.  Secretary Powell oversaw the implementation of a purchase card system, the development of the department’s first budget accountability reporting (the VA was one of two federal departments to be graded “A” by the Office of Management and Budget and the Congress), and he played an instrumental role in the integration of financial, operational, and inventory management of the VA’s huge healthcare system. Through improvement in its prescription formulary and prescription mail-out program, the VA saved almost $650 million annually in drug costs, while improving patient service and safety.

    • Ned consults on healthcare, nonprofit management, CEO coaching, and veteran related matters and serves on the Patient Advisory Board of the Telluride Medical Clinic.

CHRIS HARDEN | VICE PRESIDENT

Chris Harden spent his entire 26-year career in energy commodities trading. During his 16 years in Philadelphia, Harden was active as a board member and volunteer for Play On Philly, a charitable organization promoting social change through music education. POP serves over 300 inner-city children in Philadelphia. In 2019 he moved to Telluride to pursue his passions for outdoor adventure and music composition/performance. As an active musician, Harden is passionate about helping to build and sustain music culture while serving the local community.

Diana Farrell | Treasurer

Diana Farrell is an independent director and trustee of various organizations, including the Urban Institute, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Institute for Applied and Practical Mathematics, a National Sciences Foundation Center at the University of California Los Angeles, and until recently, eBay.  She was the founding President and Chief Executive Officer of the JPMorgan Chase Institute.

    • Previously, Diana was a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, where she served on the Partner’s Evaluation committee, and was the founder and Global Head of the McKinsey Center for Government as well as the Global Head of the McKinsey Global Institute.  At various points in her McKinsey career, she was a leader in the Public Sector, the Financial Institutions Sector, and the Strategy practice. 

    • Additionally, Diana served in the White House for over two years as Deputy Director of the National Economic Council and Deputy Assistant to the President on Economic Policy. In that capacity she led the interagency process on behalf of the President on a broad range of initiatives, including: financial reform, which resulted in the Dodd Frank Act; housing finance policy; innovation and competition policy.

    • Diana was a member of the Auto Recovery Task Force overseeing the restructuring of the auto sector.

MICHELINE KLAGSBRUN | Secretary

Micheline is a visual artist whose multi-media work focuses on transformation and displacement. She is President and co-founder of CrossCurrents Foundation (CCF) which as part of its mission sponsors art to promote social justice. In addition to CCF, she serves on several boards, including the Phillips Collection (DC), Transformer (DC), and Telluride Arts (CO). Through the Corcoran Outreach program, she served for a number of years as a mentor for inner-city youth. In 2016, she and her husband found and fell in love with Telluride and Telluride Arts, and have been living here part-time ever since.

    • She has exhibited widely and is in private collections nationally as well as in Europe and the Middle East.

    • Born and raised in London, graduate of the University of Cambridge, she received a clinical doctorate in psychology (D.C.P.) from the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. Upon moving to the USA she continued to work as a psychologist in the Center for Family Research at GWU Medical School.

    • For many years she also co-chaired the Forum for the Psychoanalytic Study of Film and edited its journal “Projections”. Her published writings have been largely in the field of film and psychoanalysis.

ASHLEY HAYWARD

For the past three decades Ashley Hayward has been dedicated to the arts through fine arts education and working with various museums and galleries. These endeavors and the relationships that developed eventually led her to the acquisition, with her husband, of the long-established Telluride Gallery of Fine Art.

Ashley is indebted to her father, James Hayward (contemporary artist and fine arts professor) who began taking her to museums as a toddler and showed her how to see the world through the lens of art.

    • At Telluride Gallery of Fine Art with fellow artists (emerging to established), they curated dream shows, brought in artists from all over the country, and partnered with local schools to create educational opportunities for students and our community.

    • They augmented these shows in a variety of ways with artist profile videos, films, interactive installations, onsite library and resource center, presentations and discussions.

    • They partnered with local festivals and events to increase visibility towards their collective goals and promoted their shows all over the country.

Penelope Gleason

A graduate of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Penelope has been an interactive electronic arts performance and installation artist, an arts facilitator and a supporter of the arts throughout her life.

While in Boston she was a collaborator in the avante guarde performance and electronic arts program Red Alert at the Boston Film and Video Foundation, assistant program director for Monday Night Screenings with Ricky Leacock at MIT Media Lab, and co-founding partner in the Eleventh Hour Gallery, a groundbreaking showcase of multidisciplinary arts and artists that highlighted the emerging punk and new Boston art scene of the late 70s and early 80s.

  • After move to New Mexico with then husband and landscape artist Paul Shapiro in 1981 she began a new chapter of creating and supporting the arts. At the emerging Center For Contemporary arts she collaborated with 19 artists of multiple disciplines for a performance installation work, Tickling the Tail of the Dragon, an exploration of the overlap of the ancient and present Native American symbolism with the development of the nuclear bomb at Los Alamos Labs. She met and became a protege of Woody and Stena Vasulka, the founders of The Kitchen in NYC. Through that collaboration she became director of Santa Fe’s Raul’s Center for the Arts, an alternative arts space featuring local artists’ traditional arts, electronic arts, dance and theater. She was Assistant Producer for Woody Vasulka’s seminal work The Art Of Memory. She worked with the Santa Fe Community Arts to facilitate installations and performances in alternative public spaces such as the abandoned Woolworths and Sears department stores.

    Penelope also worked into documentary film making. She co produced The WIPP Trail an investigation of the first major repository of nuclear waste in southern New Mexico along with multiple short video portraits of artists. For four years she was the Director of the Santa Fe Community Television Station and taught classes in video production, documentary film making and contemporary video art history at the College of Santa Fe, The American Indian Arts Institute and the Santa Fe Community College.

    In 1998 Penelope moved to Telluride where she immediately started classes at Ah Haa and got involved with the TCAH Stronghouse Gallery. She and her husband Bob Gleason grew The Bootdoctors stores into a highly successful business and active community contributor. 

    Penelope has been a Board Member of Telluride Arts on and off for 25 years. She recently rejoined to help enrich and fulfill our mission and to help guide our continued service to our community.u

    “I believe that the arts are essential for the existence of all. Arts and artists lift us up, remind us of essential meaning of life, bring ideas to light and keep us thinking in new ways that result in inspiring innovative solutions to problems, a shared human experience and joyful celebration of life.”

     “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

    ― Maya Angelou 

TODD BROWN

Todd Brown has a Professional Engineering degree in Metallurgical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and a Masters in Business Administration (Finance) from Washington University in St. Louis. As a manufacturing executive, he worked for Fortune 50 companies in the US and Europe before moving to Telluride. He served on the Telluride Town Council and as Mayor Pro Tem for 8 years, is a professional ski instructor, and is active on several cultural and environmental non-profit boards in addition to having served on the Telluride Arts board since 2006.

ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS

  • Ken Meredith

    Entrepreneur

  • Shasheen Shah

    Author

  • Sean Mahoney

    COMPOSER

  • Christopher Ho

    EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

STAFF

GENE SOBCZAK | EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Former Chief Executive Officer of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, Gene is a turnaround executive with 30 years' experience in performance improvement, staff development and business restructuring in nonprofit, commercial and public sectors. Accomplished communications and community engagement professional with proven commitment and achievement in the advancement of diversity, equity and inclusion.

gene@telluridearts.org

CAMILLE LEWIS | OPERATIONS DIRECTOR

A Georgia native, Camille moved to Telluride in 2014 to see what magic the San Juans held. Deviating from her background in agriculture and wildlife management, she has since built a career centered in operations and venue management. When she's not in the office, Camille enjoys live music, a good book, and reveling in the outdoors.

camille@telluridearts.org

Melannie Tavano | Marketing and Development Manager

Proudly Mexican and currently living in the beautiful mountains of Telluride, Mel has over six years of experience as an engagement strategist, people and culture leader, and internal communications manager. She is known for her leadership in driving cultural transformation and making a significant impact on employee engagement through inclusive communication strategies, team development, and customer experience. Her passion for fashion led her to start her own business, becoming a fashion coach.

melannie@telluridearts.org