Keryl is a veteran arts manager and administrator with more than thirty years of experience in many facets of the arts. Her background includes serving as managing director of two theater companies, Oakland Ensemble Theater Company, a five-hundred seat AEA theater in downtown Oakland, CA, and Crossroads Theater Company, New Brunswick, NJ, the only Black-run LORT theater at the time, and the first such company to receive the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater.

Ms. McCord served as the executive director of the League of Chicago Theaters/League of Chicago Theaters Foundation in 1990. She left Chicago in 1991 to take a post at the National Endowment for the Arts as Assistant Director of Theater Programs, and was appointed Director of Theater Programs in 1992.

She served on the executive committee of the National Black Theater Summit on Golden Pond in 1998, convened by the late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, August Wilson. Subsequently she was tapped to be a founding board member and Senior Vice President of the African Grove Institute for the Arts (AGIA), Newark, NJ, of which Mr. Wilson served as chairman. She remained with AGIA until Mr. Wilson’s passing.

Beginning 2009 she was Managing Director for Alternate ROOTS, a nationally recognized, regionally-focused network and service organization for activist artists in the South. Ms. McCord was responsible for day-to-day management, including fundraising and development, and helped steward the organization through a period of unprecedented growth. Over the course of her tenure the organization’s budget grew from $250,000 per year to $1.3 million, and upon her retirement in 2016 she had raised more than $5 million dollars.

Ms. McCord has consulted for many nonprofit arts organizations in the areas of institutional development, strategic fundraising, and community and cultural organizing, and she provides small and large group facilitation.

Clients include:

• Wisconsin Arts Board, Madison, WI
• Arts Midwest, Minneapolis, MN
• National Performance Network, New Orleans, LA
• The Center for Performance and Civic Practice, Phoenix, AZ
• Junebug Productions, New Orleans, LA
• Spirithouse, Durham, NC
• Su Teatro, Denver, CO
• Myrna Loy Center for the Arts, Helena, MT
• Dance/USA, Washington, DC
• New Brunswick Jazz Project, New Brunswick, NJ

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