Ruby Lerner
Chief Executive Officer and President, Creative Capital
Panelist - 2:00 pm, Wednesday, April 6th – Funding Innovation: Public & Private Investments in Talent
Ruby Lerner is the founding Executive Director and President of the Creative Capital Foundation, an innovative arts foundation modeled on venture capital concepts. Creative Capital was established in 1999 to provide support to individual artists in all disciplines and has funded 242 artists’ projects to date. Prior to Creative Capital, Ms. Lerner served as the Executive Director of the Association of Independent Film and Videomakers (AIVF) and as Publisher of the highly regarded Independent Film and Video Monthly. She has worked regionally in both the performing arts and independent media fields. She served as the Executive Director of Alternate ROOTS, a coalition of Southeastern performing artists, and IMAGE Film/Video Center, both based in Atlanta. In the late 1970’s, she was the Audience Development Director at the Manhattan Theatre Club, one of New York’s foremost nonprofit theatres.
A native of North Carolina, Ms. Lerner worked in the state’s visiting artist program following graduate work in theatre at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Her undergraduate degree is in comparative religion from Goucher College where she currently serves on the Committee of Visitors. During nearly 30 years in the arts, she has written and lectured extensively on arts issues, served on many boards, steering committees and grantmaking panels, and has consulted with hundreds of arts organizations on audience development and related areas of arts management. She is currently on the advisory committee for City at Peace and the annual Documentary Festival at the Museum of Radio and Television, on the steering committee for WNET’s REEL New York, and was recently elected to the board of the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
Ms. Lerner was the keynote speaker at the annual Arttable luncheon in April 2001, and in 2003 she received a Special Citation from Artists Space for her support of individual artists and the Artist Advocate award from the Alliance of New York State Arts Organizations.
