Barry Hessenius is the current author and moderator of "Barry's Blog at CCI," a news, advice and opinion column designed to speak to the needs of individual artists. Barry was appointed Director of the California Arts Council by Governor Gray Davis in March 2000 and was a member of his Cabinet. At the CAC he managed a budget of $70 million, an annual $30 million grants pool, and supervised a staff of 54. Mr. Hessenius was previously the President and Chief Executive Officer of the California Assembly of Local Arts Agencies, a nonprofit statewide service provider organization for 200 local arts councils.
He has been an advisor to the National Policy Committee of Americans for the Arts and the President’s Committee for the Arts & Humanities (Clinton Administration). A founding member and Vice-Chair of California Arts Advocates and the United Statewide Community Arts Association, Mr. Hessenius has also been a board member of the National Association of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), the California Alliance for Arts Educators (CAAE), California CultureNet, the California State Summer School for the Arts, the California Travel Industry Association (CalTIA), and a member of the State Superintendent’s Task Force on Arts Education. He has authored several studies including the California Arts Advocacy Handbook, the Local Arts Agency Funding Study for the Aspen Institute and the City Arts Agency Tool Kit.
A nationally recognized expert on advocacy, he is author of the just published book: Hardball Lobbying for Nonprofits (Macmillan & Company, New York, 2007). He recently served a term as Executive Director of Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet Company in San Francisco. He is currently on the Boards of Directors of the San Francisco Architectural Foundation and the National Association of Artist Organizations.
Mr. Hessenius has previously served on the Board of Directors of the Marin AIDS Project, the Marin Community Playhouse and the Marin Open Space Committee. He chaired the California Cultural Initiative, a joint venture of the CAC and the J. Paul Getty Trust, and the James Irvine and David & Lucile Packard Foundations. He has extensive experience with nonprofit issues facing California today and he designed, launched and oversaw the biggest arts education grant program in the country ($10 million). The California PTA awarded him their Distinguished Service Award in 2003.
Mr. Hessenius represented entertainment industry clients in the music and television sectors from 1971 to 1983; and was the founder, President and Chairman of the Board of the Radiola Corporation, a private sector company brokering satellite transponder leases, and Mass Announcement IAS Telco lines from 1983 to 1992. From 1992 to 1996 he enjoyed success in the high tech venture capitalist sector. In 1993 he won the oxymoronic Funniest Lawyer in San Francisco competition and subsequently performed a one-man show for a year.
Mr. Hessenius received his undergraduate degree in Public Policy from the University of California at Berkeley, and his J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. He is author of Barry’s Blog – “news, advice and opinion for arts administrators” – www.westaf.org/blog - hosted by WESTAF, and home of the HESSENIUS GROUP (a McLaughlin Group style discussion of arts issues), is a frequent keynote speaker and panelist at nonprofit conferences, and has just completed a study of Youth Involvement in the Arts vs. the Environmental movement for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.