Ruby Lerner, IDEA LAB Moderator

Monday and Tuesday breakfast plenary IDEA LAB presentations will be refereed by Ruby Lerner, founding Executive Director and President of Creative Capital

Under her leadership, Creative Capital has committed $30 million in financial and advisory support to 419 projects representing 529 artists.

Prior to Creative Capital, 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. Having 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 1970s, she was the Audience Development Director at the Manhattan Theatre Club, one of New York’s foremost nonprofit theaters.

Ms. Lerner has served on numerous boards, steering committees and grantmaking panels, and consulted with hundreds of arts organizations on audience development and related areas of arts management. She currently serves on the Headlands Center for the Arts Advisory Council; the Shapiro Center Advisory Committee; the Goucher College Committee of Visitors; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Innovation Circle; the National Advisory Board of the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, NC; and the National Advisory Board of the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

A native of North Carolina, Lerner worked in the state’s visiting artist program following graduate work in theater at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her undergraduate degree is in comparative religion from Goucher College.