With a rich fundraising history, including work at Actors Theatre, Christen Boone was named the Fund for the Arts Designate President and CEO.
The Fund for the Arts [4] Board of Directors unanimously selected Boone to replace retiring Fund President and CEO Barbara Sexton Smith. Boone will start with Fund for the Arts on July 7 and will take Sexton Smith's place on Aug. 31.
Boone will bring enthusiastic fundraising and community experience to the position. Among other roles, she served as the director of development at Actors Theatre, raising more than $13 million for an endowment campaign. Boone currently serves on Actors Theatre's Board of Directors as well as Director of the Greater Louisville Project.
Boone earned a Bachelor of Arts in Public Relations degree from the University of Kentucky and a Masters of Business Administration at Bellarmine University.
Sexton Smith, meanwhile, will retire after being Fund President and CEO for the last three years. In that time, she won numerous awards for her fundraising and was part of the Kentucky/Southern Indiana part of Power2Give [5] crowd-funding initiative, which raised more than $1.8 million for local arts groups.
Fund for the Arts was established in 1949 and, per its mission located on the Fund website, aims to increase the effect arts has on economic development, education, and in people's lives via inspiring people, using and increasing resources, and making connections.
(Image from Fund for the Arts)