As President and CEO of Washington Performing Arts, Jenny Bilfield has seen the organization thrive as one of the nation’s preeminent multi-disciplinary arts presenters, especially notable for launching and nurturing innumerable performing artists, and sustaining high-impact arts education partnerships with the DC public schools and diplomatic community. Bilfield has significantly broadened Washington Performing Arts’ profile and organizational capacity through new programmatic collaborations and alliances, an institutional re-branding, by launching the Mars Urban Arts Initiative (funded by Mars Inc. and Jacqueline Badger Mars) to fuel connections between mainstage and amateur DC artists, and in conceiving and producing the landmark, multi-partner concert, Of Thee We Sing, at Constitution Hall celebrating the 75th anniversary of Marian Anderson’s historic performance on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

As President and CEO of WPA (and in her previous stint as as Artistic and Executive Director of Stanford Live), Bilfield has seen her share of “meet and greets” and the successful outcomes that can arise from relationships that develop from these sometimes stressful and exhausting post-concert fetes. Bilfield suggests that artists ask questions and learn about those in attendance as a way of developing relationships that might prove beneficial for both parties.