The Arts + Business Council is proud to announce the 2021 Arts + Business Council Leadership Award honoree, Maida R. Milone, Chair, Board of Directors, CFEVA, who is being awarded for service in stabilizing nonprofit organizations for over 40 years and developing new approaches for supporting artistic practice.
Maida R. Milone has been working to stabilize non-profit organizations for at least half of her over 40-year professional career. Currently, she serves as Board Chair for the Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA), where her tenure first began as President & CEO in 2002. She is an accomplished lawyer, who has served as Senior Counsel for several companies, including as General Counsel for the Dupont Merck Pharmaceutical Company (’91-’98), before turning her attention full-time to the nonprofit world. Most recently she led the non-profit Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts (PMC) (’16-’20). And prior to PMC, she had CEO and Senior Directorship positions at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (2010-13) and the Philadelphia Art Alliance (2009-2010), among others.
As a nonprofit leader and Board member, Maida has led major donor development initiatives, fundraising campaigns, volunteer-based programs, and community outreach initiatives. Now recently retired, Maida continues her civic and philanthropic support in our region, while having more time to appreciate and collect the art of many artists in Philadelphia and beyond.
During her dedicated and transformative tenure at CFEVA, she was a pioneer in determining how career development and business marketing could give artists control over their own paths and their subsequent success. Her business and corporate experience was instrumental in how CFEVA perceived and developed new approaches for supporting artistic practice. Longtime arts administrator, Director, Arts & Culture, at the William Penn Foundation, Olive Mosier, said, “Without a doubt, Maida is one of the most talented administrators I encountered during my 20-year stint in the arts and culture program. Her training as a lawyer, combined with her talent, tenacity, and work ethic allowed her to steer CFEVA through a founder transition into a top-rung artists’ organization.”
Maida used corporate strategies and her legal chops to help artists support themselves and their practices before most were considering those methods. Giving artists independence and autonomy over their careers was not yet common practice. On her watch, CFEVA’s longstanding and most public program, Philadelphia Open Studio Tours (POST), expanded into what is now an integral part of the city’s arts calendar each year. Under her management, CFEVA’s Board of Directors grew substantially, and she developed earned income revenue streams that continue to be successful today. With her inspiration, CFEVA’s custom exhibition program brought new works into Philadelphia’s corporate environments for the first time. Some of these most visible partnerships established over many years include Morgan Lewis, Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, and The Sonesta Hotel Center City.
Maida has always had a passion for imagining new paths for the organizations she supports and matches that vision and drive with a substantial skill set. She has put her passion and skills behind her many efforts to empower the artists of the Philadelphia region and thus is an important reason why artists stay in our city to do their work. Her patronage of so many regional artists — she has hundreds of works in her own collection — was born out of love for their talent but has become something much more than that over the years. In her retirement, rather than closing the book on how Philadelphia’s cultural and regional art spaces can be improved for citizens and visitors alike to focus on herself, Maida believes she now has time to focus even more on supporting artistic endeavors in Greater Philadelphia.
[Virtual] Arts + Business Council Awards
Wednesday, May 19, 2021 | 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | Virtual Event
The Arts + Business Council’s annual awards program honors leaders in the Philadelphia region who embody and foster cross-sector collaboration between creative and business communities. Join us in celebration of this year’s honorees along with creative and business community leaders from throughout the Greater Philadelphia region.
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