At its March meeting, California Arts Advocates elected two individuals to join its Board of Directors:  Keasha Dumas Heath, Board Member, The Museum of African American Art, Los Angeles; and Eliza Tudor, Executive Director, Nevada County Arts Council, Grass Valley.  More about our new Board members below…

Keasha Dumas Heath is a member of the board of directors for The Museum of African American Art, a small nonprofit in Los Angeles, where she helps guide communications, member engagement, visitor experience, community outreach, and program development. Keasha is also a member of the board of directors for the California Association of Museums, a statewide museum advocacy organization, where she is a Vice President and serves on the Government Relations, Membership, and Executive committees. She is a past participant in the annual Museums Advocacy Day hosted by the American Alliance of Museums in Washington, DC, and her interests include arts education, museum/school collaborations, public/private partnerships in the arts, and issues affecting community arts organizations. Keasha holds an M.A. in English from Howard University, and she is an alumna of the Getty Foundation’s Multicultural Internship Program.

Now Executive Director at Nevada County Arts Council, Eliza Tudor‘s experience as an arts leader spans the visual, literary and performing arts across three continents. From ten years producing film and theatre in Australia, to producing opera, Ancient Greek theatre and ballet in the Sierra, Eliza then moved to the UK to complete her MA in Cultural Policy. Working as a Senior Commissioner for the UK’s National Health Service in one of London’s most deprived areas, she then worked as Senior Development Executive – Arts & Humanities at the University of Oxford, while also serving on the Board of Trustees of Magdalen Road Studios and Rosetta Life – working nationally through the arts with people suffering life limiting illnesses. Eliza returned in February 2015 to direct Yuba Sutter Arts, then in 2016 accepted the role of Executive Director with Nevada County Arts Council. This implied simultaneous overview of three counties under California Arts Council’s State-Local Partnership Program. Since late 2016 Eliza has focused solely on Nevada County Arts Council, last year gaining state recognition for Nevada County through consulting two successful applications for California Cultural District designation.