The board of directors of the Talbot County Arts Council has announced that Joan Levy of Oxford has been appointed as the organization’s executive director effective August 1.
Arts Council President Patrick Rogan says, “Our board’s search for the new executive director drew high-quality applications from throughout the Mid-Atlantic Area. After due consideration, Joan was the search committee’s clear first choice. She has in abundance the qualities we considered essential for great success in the position, including past experience managing non-profit organizations, a deep and broad appreciation for the arts, and a commitment to contributing to the cultural, economic, and educational benefit of the community. We are thrilled that she has agreed to serve as our executive director.”
Levy is an experienced marketing, communications and business development executive, she has had a long career successfully designing and executing plans to support strategic initiatives for large and small non-profit organizations. After a 30-year career with Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, she relocated to the Eastern Shore. In 2015, she established JM Levy and Associates, offering a full range of business support and fundraising services to the Maryland Mid-Shore community as a working professional and as a volunteer.
She says, “It is my belief that the arts play a major role in the quality of life in our communities and bring people together across boundaries. They are key to our building stronger connections with each other by increasing understanding between people who may have little on common on the surface. I’m honored to represent the council as its executive director and to implement its mission.”
Levy fell in love with the Eastern Shore on a trip to Oxford in 1977. She and her husband, moved there ten years ago, restoring an original waterman’s cottage in the historic district.
She succeeds Gerry Early whose term as executive director began on January 1, 1999. He was a career officer in the U.S. Army whose last assignments before retiring as a colonel with 35 years of service were as a brigade commander in Korea and director of academic affairs for the National Defense University at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington D.C.
