From Learning to Practice: Integrating Racial Justice into Arts Leadership

Quanice Floyd (she/her) is a renaissance woman who wears many capes. Born and raised in NYC, she has spent over a decade in Washington, DC where she has received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Music Education from Howard University and Kent State University respectively. Her passion for arts administration led her to pursue her second Master’s degree in Arts Management at American University and is currently a doctoral student at Drexel University. Quanice was recently appointed as the Executive Director of National Guild for Community Arts Education after previously serving as the Executive Director at Arts Education in Maryland Schools Alliance, an arts education advocacy and service organization. She is also the Co-Founder of the Arts Administrators of Color (AAC) Network, an organization committed to empowering artists and arts administrators by advocating for access, diversity, inclusion, and equity in the arts in the DC and Baltimore metropolitan areas. She has also been a public-school music educator where she taught elementary and middle school general music, chorus, band, and orchestra. Quanice serves as a commissioner for the DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities and is an alumna of Fractured Atlas’ Artist Campaign School, the National Guild for Community Arts Education’s Leadership Institute (CAELI), ArtEquity’s Racial Facilitator Cohort, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Music Educators and Arts Administrators Academy, 4.0 Schools’ Essentials Program, and the Arts Education Collaborative’s Leadership Academy. Quanice received the Americans for the Arts’ American Express Emerging Leader Award and the Arts Advocate of the Year Award from the Coalition of African Americans in the Performing Arts.

Alysia Lee’s full circle role as an artist, arts educator, teaching artist and arts advocate, gives her a broad perspective of the arts ecosystem. Alysia received national recognition for advancing access, equity, visibility, representation, and power-sharing between artists, organizations, and communities. Key to her methods are empowerment, partnership construction, and intersectional approaches to community exchange while centering anti-racism, creativity, and social justice.

She is the Founder and Artistic Director of Sister Cities Girlchoir(SCG), the El Sistema-inspired, girl empowerment, choral academy in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey. SCG has performed for audiences at Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, The Smithsonian Institute, The Kimmel Center, Citizens Bank Park, National Constitution Center, The Barnes Foundation, New Jersey Performing Arts Center and throughout their local communities. The girls cherish their recent performances with The Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Vijay Gupta, Opera Philadelphia, Westminster Choir College, and a host of community artists.

Alysia Lee is the education program supervisor for Fine Arts education for the Maryland State Department of Education where she shares her vision of statewide equity and excellence across five arts disciplines: music, dance, visual arts, theatre, and media arts. She is a proud member of the State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education (SEADAE). Lee is a Board member of Chorus America.

Recent recognitions include awards from The Kennedy Center, The Knight Foundation, National Association of University Women, Stockton Bartol Foundation, and Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. Recent speaking/facilitation engagements include the U.S. Department of Education, The Kennedy Center, Americans for the Arts, Arts Education Partnership, Chorus America, Maryland Citizens for the Arts, Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, TEDX, and Temple University.

A Baltimore native, Lee is an alumna of Maryland public schools. She earned her graduate degree from Peabody Conservatory. In 2011, Lee was selected from an international pool of applicants to the third cohort of the Sistema Fellowship at New England Conservatory in partnership with TED. Alysia also completed Executive Education programs at Harvard University and La Salle University.