Andrea (Olin-Gomes) Kaiser
President

Andrea Kaiser has spent the last thirty-eight years teaching, administering and consulting for community-based arts organizations, institutions, public and private schools and municipalities. She has worked with local, state, regional and federal agencies to develop and implement public arts policy and funding. She has been a lecturer at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana and Butler University in Indianapolis. She also served as adjunct piano faculty at Hunter College.

She is President of Cultural Consulting Services in Boston, a firm which provides hands-on cultural planning assessments and implementation, including capital fundraising, marketing and capacity building for organizational development. Many of the firm's clients are developing new presenting facilities in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. She recently completed a cultural plan for Northwest New Jersey (funded by the New Jersey Council on the Arts), a capacity-building project for the National Folk Music & Dance Alliance (funded by the NEA), completed a feasibility for a new performing arts Amphitheater in Central Massachusetts and is currently completing a strategic planning assignment with the League of New England Storytellers.

For fifteen years, Andrea served as Director of the AMICI Institute of the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts. She also served two-terms as a Trustee for the Guild and was a member of the Development Committee. She co-chaired all three national "Performathons" at Guild Conferences.

- North American Folk Alliance

In 2002, Andrea returned to the roots which nourished her as she created a youth program within a large Boston low-income housing complex. This program was up and running within three months to serve 300 children. She now is undertaking the challenge of creating a formal capital campaign to raise $11 million for a new facility for Bird Street Community Center, a landmark among the City's private non-profit youth agencies.

She was a founding director of the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation and continues to serve on the Executive Committee as Program Chair, leading the Grants Committee and working on the National Teacher Awards.

She is currently serving as Chair of the Wellesley Cultural Council, the municipal re-granting organization, is secretary of the Wellesley Rotary Club and continues her love of the Community Music Center of Boston as a member of the Board, serving on the Nominating Committee.

In 2003, she was acknowledged for her work nationally with community arts development by the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts with its President's Award and with the Frank Farnham Award for Community Service given by the Unitarian-Universalist Church.