We’re excited to welcome four new members to AAAE’s Board of Directors. Read a little about each member below. Welcome to the team!
AYDEN ADLER
With degrees from Princeton University (A.B.), the Juilliard School (M.M.), and the Eastman School of Music (M.A., D.M.A., Ph.D.), Dr. Ayden Adler currently serves as Associate Professor of Arts Administration at the University of Houston-Downtown (UHD) where she also teaches in the graduate Nonprofit Management program. Dr. Adler’s vision is to sustain the arts through robust inclusivity and diversity, superlative artistry, and innovative approaches to audience engagement and retention. This is reflected in her work at UHD as a Fellow of the Center for Critical Race Studies and as Director of the Cultural Engagement Center. Previously, she served as Dean of the Conservatory at Michael Tilson Thomas’ New World Symphony, as Dean of the School of Music at DePauw University, and as Executive Director of the world-renowned Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, in addition to senior staff positions at the Atlanta and Philadelphia orchestras. As a nonprofit consultant and executive coach, her clients include small and large nonprofit cultural organizations as well as individual administrators, board members, artists, academics, and entrepreneurs. Dr. Adler regularly gives presentations at national and international arts and culture forums that address issues of civic and economic relevance, power and privilege, entrepreneurship, leadership, and new technologies. Dr. Adler is a Chief Executive Global Fellow of National Arts Strategies and a former research affiliate of the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project. She has served as an accreditor for the National Association of Schools of Music, as a director on the board of the College Music Society, and a member of the arts advisory board for the Chumir Foundation. She currently serves on the board of the Star Spangled Music Foundation, on the Board Development Committee for the AAAE, and volunteers as a member (by audition) of the Houston Symphony Chorus. Her current book project, Orchestrating Whiteness: Serge Koussevitzky, Arthur Fiedler, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under contract with the University of Illinois Press, addresses the historical roots of systemic racism in classical music in the United States.
JESSIE BOWER
Jessie Bower (she/her) is an experienced arts administrator, educator, and marketing professional with a diverse background spanning nonprofit arts organizations, higher education, and digital marketing. She is currently the Communications Manager at Tessitura, where she leads global content strategies and supports arts administrators in bringing cultural experiences to communities. Jessie’s career includes teaching at the College of Charleston, where she pioneered the transition of arts management courses to an online format in 2014. She has contributed to arts organizations like The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh Opera, and Art Basel Miami, along with entrepreneurship experience in the food, hospitality, and retail sectors. Jessie’s educational journey includes a Master’s in Arts Management from Carnegie Mellon University, a graduate certificate in Global Marketing Management from Boston University, and studies in cultural economics at the University of Bologna and CREARE Foundation. Passionate about arts administration research, she frequently attends conferences such as ENCATC and AAAE, where she presented her research in 2024. Jessie is an LGBTQIA+ advocate. Her passion for advancing diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI) in the arts aligns with AAAE’s mission. Through her work on the board, she seeks to amplify these initiatives. Having lived and studied in France and Italy, Jessie brings a global perspective to her work and fosters international collaboration in arts administration. As a steadfast advocate for arts administration education, she is eager to contribute her experience, passion, and innovative mindset to shaping a more inclusive and resilient future for the field.
AKUA KOUYATE-TATE
Akua F. Kouyate-Tate is the Vice President of Education at Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts. Kouyate-Tate oversees Wolf Trap’s education programs, including the nationally recognized Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts, and Internship and Apprenticeship program. She also has oversight of Community Programs, including Children’s Theater-in-the-Woods and Grants for Performing Arts Teachers. With its affiliates, Wolf Trap’s education programs reach nearly 100,000 children, educators, and families annually. Prior to joining Wolf Trap in 2001, Kouyate-Tate worked for more than 25 years as a professional artist and administrator with arts and disability organizations and government agencies; and an educator at the public school and university levels, including Memory of African Culture, Inc., Young Audiences – DC Chapter, DC Public Schools, Howard University, United Cerebral Palsy, National Endowment for the Arts, and Library of Congress. Kouyate-Tate holds an M.A. in Arts Management and a B.A. in Performing Arts-Dance from American University. She is a recipient of a Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Award and a 2015 BEYA STEM Global Competitiveness Conference K -12 Promotion of Education Award. Kouyate-Tate has conducted postgraduate research in African Cultural Studies at Howard University and in the countries of Mali, Senegal, and The Gambia.
JANE ZHENG
Jane Zheng, Ph.D., specializes in cultural management and planning, with expertise spanning cultural tourism, art history, and the intersection of culture and urban development. She holds two doctoral degrees: the first from the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong (2009), where her research focused on creative industry clusters in China, and the second from the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2022), where her dissertation proposed innovative mechanisms for evaluating cultural plans.
Jane has held diverse academic and professional roles. Early positions include assistant researcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Technology Sydney. From 2012 to 2018, she was an assistant professor in the BA Program of Cultural Management at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, teaching core and elective courses such as “Introduction to Cultural Management,” “Management of Public and Non-Profit Cultural Organizations,” and “Public and Community Art.” Currently, she serves as the executive director of the Cultural Cities Research Institute (Chicago) and a professor of cultural planning in the College of Fine Arts at Shanghai University, where she teaches courses on topics like cultural heritage, urban regeneration, and Western urban theories. She also holds honorary research fellow positions at both the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
A pioneering scholar in the study of creative industry clusters in China, Jane’s current research focuses on cultural resource planning in American and Chinese cities, cultural facilities, and the impacts of platformization and cultural globalization. Her extensive publication record includes articles in leading journals such as Urban Studies, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society. Jane has also secured multiple academic grants since 2014, supporting her innovative contributions to the field.
View Jane’s Google Scholar publication list and her faculty profile at Shanghai University.