upcoming community versity the big event in princeton on april thirtieth so today to thank you very much for coming on the show tonight thank you so much for having me well thank you and i know you're very busy but i want everybody to know a little about the issue before we get into our our questions there was a recent national search and the arts council of princeton selected to nisha as its new executive director and she is a regionally and they're actually recognized leader in arts and economic development and she's only the third executive director since the organization's founding about fifty years ago prior to her appointment to the issue was the principal of legacy business advisors a community economic development consultancy with clients across the country previously she was c marketing officer of missed harlem which is a multimillion dollar cultural and entertainment center focused on the african and latino the asper from two thousand and six to two thousand and eleven she served as executive director of the trenton downtown association where she led a reorganization that focused on business development placement and tourism with the belief that the arts are essential to the revitalization of an urban community she launched a new community the art gallery and the destination trenton cultural tourism initiative under her leadership the trenton downtown association one of the word of recognition from the new jersey historical commission and the diamond award from the new jersey term association he also serves on the board of trustees of the art pride new jersey foundation and she is a member of the voting academy of the foundation for the augmentation of african american in films black real awards as well she's a corporate board member and chair of the strategy and operations committee of k t did manufacturers of the kadian your brand of dance apparel she's done a lot of things we're very fortunate to have her in princeton she's going to be a great leader for the arts council and i'm very fortunate to have her on my show tonight so tenacious thank you what a biography thank you so much the little log sorry it's a little long but when you have a lot of accomplished or a period of time people should get to know that it's thank you and it's good so obviously the main focus of the arts council in the next week or so is the upcoming community versity which is always a big event and not just a big event everybody who comes to it but in the planning stage getting ready for the event which will be on sunday april thirtieth from one o'clock to five o'clock i believe  over four hundred applications for two hundred slots so it was a really difficult decision on deciding who the merchants the artist and the performers are going to be and the nonprofit which also count on the exposure that they get from commune of our city since we attract over forty thousand people to our town of twenty eight thousand which act of forty thousand people the community annually it's amazing it is amazing it's amazing this we have become really good parking parking we encourage people to park a places like the princeton shopping center and we provide a free shuttle so this free parking free shuttle easy breezy great so everybody will be there because it's the place to be you get a chance to meet initiative which is you know which is the best  what and i will be wearing a cotton candy wig i was told by the staff it was part of my an issue a sion but that is there's only been three directors and fifty years i'm not sure if that's true but they tell you that they had to get up with one of the bands to sing a song i'm not going to be doing that but i will wear the hat so there was the wig or the cotton candy wig so well so you would be noticed with the cotton candy of it but the pink wig yes that's great so we know you know the arts council runs community or a city and you know it's a big event for the community for the university and it's just a wonderful wonderful event if if you haven't been to it you must come if you have been to it you should be there and it's a great time during your families and friends and just stroll around nassau street and with a spoon and just see all the great businesses and the nonprofits and the arts and see exactly what the town has to offer but more importantly i know the arts council there's a lot more than just community versity and i like to talk to you about what you see is the  current mission of the earth council some of the programs that that the earth council runs and where you see the earth's council developing in the years gone by the question so yeah our mission is building community through the arts and we do that a number of ways  do our big arts fest which a lot of people know us might mainly for that though they might think we only exist to put our community first because it is quite an undertaking it takes a lot of on the plan that's not all we do every semester we have about one hundred forty visual and performing arts classes that we run at the arts council and that extension sites so you could take a visual arts class you could take a flamenco class as in all levels of form and go from adult children beginner to advance that's probably our most popular form of dance that we offer at the arts council flamenco and spanish dance we have performances we have a theater the sollie theater but we also have a visual art gallery an art gallery has won five of the last six years favorite art gallery in new jersey the welling gallery yes so eighteen thousand people vote online at jersey arts and one that does pretty good i mean i didn't have to do anything and i started i like come collect this award in atlantic volunteers in fact tonight i will be doing the first of two orientations so we're pretty excited about that wells fargo is sending sixty of those one hundred fifty volunteers that we have but yes we could always can use volunteers year round sometimes when you walk through the front door we do it right you don't know whether that's a volunteer at the desk or if that's a regular receptionist at the desk but we have volunteers in all aspects of what we do but it's our main staff that keep things rolling is that fifteen of us and we have another seventy five instructors and our base for people who don't know is the paul robeson center for the arts at the intersection of witherspoon and paul robeson place but we also have a location at the princeton shopping cent r one classes other places around for sculpture so we were pretty or regional arts organization we operate from princeton pennington hopewell we have partnerships and ewing and trenton so we're pretty substantial organization located right that's right across from the library so where do you get most of your funding for one of the programs that you run how we raise it which is it is great so we have the earned income for the tuitions classes but we also deliver about three hundred thousand and what we call community outreach free classes for under resourced youth and seniors and that's money that we raise in order to run that and we're really fortunate that we have some passionate individual donors and corporate donors was really really nice to have what's going on inside the building has incredible history of itself so the most recent iteration that people when they walk in and see they'll see a beautiful sculpture right when you walk in you asked about our donors that there's a donor w write when you come in it's a sculpture piece but it's also recognition for donors so you know i don't know if you are donna but if you are for our capital campaign if you press the g the wheel will turn and a light up and a light up all the people with the last name gee that donated but that but that's that's what particular piece was donated by one of our donors to andrews donated the funding for that but the actual design was donated by someone very famous is no longer with us michael graves and so michael graves donated his architectural design for the arts council to expand that building into what you see today well you know in this early to apply for the position you know i know you have a background in i talked a little background maybe can tell us a little about mr elements of the things what drew you to princeton so i've lived here since ninety eight and you know i knew of course i remember the old referring other people that they should apply and finally it was someone who i consider a mentor who said to me can you should you should apply for the job really i'm recommending you another friend of mine who was born or raised in princeton is actually the godmother to my daughter she said the same thing that was actually a few people who said you should apply and i said i don't want the job i wasn't sure what i was you know they were looking for someone like me most of my background is really business  i'm fortunate to have a really passionate board of about twenty two members we met last night and i gave my reflections on my first one hundred days as i was telling him before we started right the main thing that is about increasing our partnerships  existing partnerships for program and broadening it to other folks i mentioned again before you went on the air that we partnered with princeton university to exhibit some short films something i know you're very passionate about short films that were produced by their students and we passed the house so we announced it only maybe about a couple of weeks before we actually did the screening and we actually had to set up an overflow room i went home that my own television and put it in the commune of err city of rome and the arts council and the destructor for the class went home and i think got a d v d player and that's how we we did the overflow room because we really wanted people to see the same things that folks were seeing in the theater but we we literally could not get any more folks in the theater so expanding our partnerships doing more with princeton university again when i walked in i asked george the director of print the community t v have you ever done anything at the arts council showing some of the work of some of the producers here so that's macarthur but we have an opportunity for people to come and be on stage whether on the screen and our theater or in front of one hundred twenty of their friends so that's really what what we're talking about doing at the arts council that's great and would be nice you know come from the schools and if we could work out some type of you know partnership where we could expand the arts council into the schools to yes to well we are already in some schools like the hopewell school system uses us for their after school  clubs and when i started i noticed that we were not necessarily in the princeton schools or the our club so that's something we'll talk about after will but yes i would love to do more with the schools you know we have kids that come and they volunteer with us already so you should be you should know we have princeton high kids that come and they are really exciting we had a princeton high school just to give an example of how people want to see people they know up on we did a paul robeson birthday party on april ninth because it was his birthday and we had a young man by the name of matthew hawes portray paul robeson at the beginning of the performance and he was just phenomenal and everyone and in fact i had a one of the local paper editors called me later and e mail said who was that some preston high student and so we have incredible talent right here in town and i hope that they will look at the arts council as a place that they can put their talent on display great now when you are when you're thinking about some of the you know we dancer and i dance i was was i grew up in new york and so i was part of a pre professional dance program called the west arts program which was designed to identify talented students and performing artists but i mean any one to be a television i want to be you i want to be a television host i wanted to oprah of course but it was really more about how can i use my talents to build community so my role models were always people that i saw giving back to the community there were celebrities of course that i notice but there were other people that campbell mary schmidt campbell is now the president of spelman college but she was the commissioner of culture for new york city she was the director of the harlem school scuse me she was a director of the studio museum in harlem and when she made her name is that she was the dean for the to school for the oh yeah absolutely c'est example but i had a notebook and so i tell people i had inspiration he's he is doing some work with us at the arts council he's an attorney and he's doing some pro bono work for us i was obsessed with your mom your mother so yes i don't i don't even know what i would say you know it's sort of like oh probably know what to say madonna would know  so i was involved in community development for many years in interesting ways so i started my own business in new york city and so i had a little office much smaller this is a studio and i provide marketing consulting to real estate developers bass forward years later i ended up working for the city of trenton as the head of economic development i got to know the developers that were formerly my clients in a different way and they talked about how they were doing this condo development but they had this vision that on the first floor they would have an entertainment center so that the people that they were trying to attract you know downtown manhattan midtown manhattan to come up and buy really expensive million dollar condos in harlem would have a place that they could be entertained right there and the idea of around the programming is that when you looked at what harlem was historically african american and latino kids were right near east harlem which is primarily latino so the idea was we'll do programming that is around the african and latino diaspora because holland changing it's not it's frankly speaking it's not primarily african american and latino anymore but that's the rich culture when you think about the harlem renaissance you think about all the people who were being creative in the time that my mom and you know and people her mom you know the age or in harlem so they got together  my husband and my former clients and they decided to to start this venture and i was just providing consulting and the i mentioned earlier that p b s i watched all the time and you know this idea that one day that i would have my own venue that p b s could shoot at because we also are pleased that television pretty much every network has done something at miss i second i love trenton i love my job at the time the tritone downtown of those it was a great board but it was an opportunity to to work it missed and i gave it the name so i was like so that's in how i ended up that missed it was sort of a transition or go to harlem and do my dream job and dream business i should say and we were really fortunate we're free to you know wall street journal the new the cover below the fold but the cover of the art section of the new york times as a highly anticipated opening of a new venue in harlem because most people traditional stadium seating ok but there were tractable so you have we can pull it out and we can have stadium seating up where we could push it back and make it an open floor but they are still very intimate there one hundred one hundred and one hundred sixty we have three theaters but there's multi purpose so we can do both film screenings as well as live performances from the film screenings oh my gosh i would have lost count because i don't really go there much but ava du vernay who most people will know is right out of my head she was in a number of films this year jenelle monet who was in the film that won the oscar when that really one damien movie who i love but the other our she was a spicy one in that ok she's that she's a singer and so she's performed there she would just come and hang out harry belafonte which is kind of common hang out twenty twenty century fox rented us out when we were still under construction to don't go there much because you know my children and i are here and they're they're young but it was definitely fulfillment of a dream that's great that's great and as you look at your cancer right now you walk around town you see how rich you know the town is  for the arts culture and what's going on as you walk through town what are some of the things that come to your mind you know when you look around with that as exactly that that this is a place that is rich in culture you know of several years ago i started something called the baker street social club so to bring mr here a little bit and that it was focused on the african african diaspora i didn't want you know i'm not not latino but what was great is that the university art museum had an exhibit called the african presence in renaissance europe and the princeton symphony orchestra had a piece that was based on jacob lawrence's a very famous african american painter they had a piece that was based on him not to leave town you don't have to go to new york you don't have to go to philadelphia to get the same incredible high quality art exhibit that was at the arts council my first week with our work in the arts council that probably with about a half a million dollars by him just you know that saturday that opening the way for instance to see somebody that indeed they were yes exactly that's what i think about town and i  think we're all incredibly fortunate to have such high quality cultural institutions right here in town you think a lot of artists are realizing that princeton is a venue to come to a place to you know have the exhibits as opposed to going to  think many people know that the second floor was closed for a very long time because they were renovating it when it reopened and it featured artwork that was curated by artistic director maria evans and the art that we had there i think that first night by the artists also want to sell their work right so that first night five pieces were sold so i think i think we're doing a good job in supporting the artists here in town to now you're doing a great  you have the background and now you're going to do a great job i'm not worried about that little and it's not just me i mentioned earlier the staff so i can't take credit i have you know as the executive director where to my job is to lead motivate wri right and what they do should be and you know it's been appreciated they just said so one of the things i do want to ask you before we for we wrap up is that i know that we'll have commune of ursa enable serious yes and it will be huge will be great any plans going down the road to change from university at all yes there's been a lot of discussion about that you know it started out and when it was started one hundred seventy was a very small lawn party in front of nassau hall it was the art peoples party and so on from that small thing to a very huge thing i think one of the questions that persists is are we still helping the smaller there's many questions here and that and that's such a big big thing we want to do no harm we think we do a great thing by bringing a lot of attention on princeton and as we're selecting the people that are going to be a part of it that's what we're thinking we're thinking princeton first so we think it's an incredible opportunity to showcase princeton who princeton has been who that offer but it's quite an undertaking and we are small town and we have it concentrated in downtown so forty thousand people downtown is is quite a thing to manage and i and that sense i say thank you for mentioning it because the other partner that we have is the town and they do an incredible job the police the health department public works everybody does an incredible job and making sure that that event goes really well but after this commercial commune of ur city because there is concern that it might be fifty thousand people this year we're going to sit down and e and that's going to premier at the nest of film festival which is may twentieth and twenty first at the princeton guard the other and so we're looking at that they view of the film which will be exciting and so university will live on after april thirtieth  if you're not doing anything make sure you go to community versity make sure you go nestle film festival on the twentieth and twenty first and those are two big events and prints in there which have a great time it and should be really good and i wish you the best because i know you have your hands full in the days or walk into the building i want people to actually come in right it's a public space just like the public library come into the building welcoming place and we have a great i want to mention the artist in residence that we have in there right now fiona and maria it's  artist collaborative to come in and learn the art of collaboration from artist in residence as well ok well i thank you very much for coming on the show tonight it was wonderful with a great conversation and hopefully we'll have more conversations and talk about more things at the earth council is doing remember stay healthy they focused and i'll see you next week another edition of focus on have a good night