WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — The Community Arts Center (CAC) Board of Directors today announced the addition of two veteran arts administrators to the staff of the CAC.
Sharon Mack will join as the new managing director, working with previously named Operations Director Dave Whitnack in the organization’s dual executive office. Dana Beth Evans has been hired for a new general manager position, leading patron services efforts and overseeing other day-to-day functions at the theater. The arts consulting firm SiG Productions, which had been engaged to help guide the CAC’s transition over the past months, conducted both searches.
Mack comes to Williamsport from Jackson, Michigan, where she was most recently with the Jackson Symphony Orchestra. Previously, she was executive director at the Wolfeboro Institute of the Arts in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, and she spent two years as executive director at South Haven Center for the Arts in South Haven, Michigan. In addition, she has many years’ experience working in Michigan and New Hampshire with multiple client organizations as a freelance strategic planning, fundraising and business development consultant. She began her career as executive director for the St. Cecilia Music Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where for 10 years, she ran the venerable classic music presenter (in operation since 1883).
Mack is a graduate of Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, as well as an alumna of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. She has sat on numerous boards for nonprofit organizations, as well as municipal committees, and she served as a two-term elected city council member in Marshall, Michigan.
Evans moves to Pennsylvania from Indiana, where she is director of the Monroe County History Center. Previously, she was executive director of the refurbished 1920s Tivoli Theatre in Spencer, Indiana. From 2003 until 2010, she held dual roles in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, as executive director of the Elizabethtown-Hardin County Heritage Council and executive director of the Historic State Theater Complex. She’s a graduate of Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, as well as Louisville College. Evans was a federally recognized community development grants administrator and has sat on multiple boards, preservation committees and councils.
In December, the Arts Center announced it was moving from a one-role executive director office to a dual-leadership executive office. Whitnack, a Williamsport native and CAC staff member of over 10 years, took on the role of operations director while a search began for his counterpart. Mack, as managing director, will provide her expertise in fundraising, business development, strategic planning and organizational management. Together, Whitnack and Mack will work closely with the Arts Center’s Board of Directors to oversee all aspects of the organization’s management while beginning planning for the theater’s 25th anniversary in 2018.
Evans will also fill a new role at the CAC. As general manager, she will work closely with the executive office to manage all day-to-day operations and functions. Drawing upon her experience in community development, as well as patron services, she will work closely with staff to continue providing the top-quality experience that patrons, artists and community partners alike have come to expect from the Community Arts Center.
Of the new hires, William J. Martin, chairman of the Community Arts Center Board, said: “Throughout the search process, board members unanimously felt that both Ms. Mack and Ms. Evans represented the best of what we look for in CAC employees. They’re accomplished, experienced and dedicated supporters of not only the arts, but community engagement through the arts. We are thrilled to have them joining us.”
Mack and Evans are scheduled to begin their work on April 1.
For more about the Community Arts Center, visit www.caclive.com. For more information, contact William J. Martin, chairman, Community Arts Center Board, at 570-322-7619 or bmartin@pct.edu<./span>