GCDN Annual Convening – Los Angeles 2025

I am a Director of AEA Consulting and chair of the Global Cultural Districts Network. I have worked in senior management and as a board member in both museums and the performing arts and as a strategy consultant to clients in the cultural, public, and business sectors around the world. Areas of interest include the development of successful cultural building projects, the capitalisation needs of cultural organisations, cultural district planning, the creation of new business models and investment strategies for cultural infrastructure, and strategic responses to long-term societal changes in technology, public values, philanthropy, demographics, and in the use of leisure time. A lifelong lover of jazz, I served as Executive Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center (New York) from 2007 to 2012. Prior to founding AEA in 1990, I managed the creation of the Design Museum in London as Executive Director of The Conran Foundation. I began my career as a civil servant in the UK Treasury and the Cabinet Office. Since 2020 I have lived in Umbria, in central Italy.