THE CENTER FOR ARTS EDUCATION

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THE CENTER FOR ARTS EDUCATION ANNOUNCES CHANGE IN BOARD LEADERSHIP

Founding Board Chair Laurie M. Tisch Becomes Chairman Emeritus, Jill Braufman Elected to Chairman Position

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - October 1, 2007, New York, NY - The Center for Arts Education (CAE), the leading voice in restoring, stimulating and sustaining arts education in New York City public schools, announces the transition of their Founding Chairman, Laurie M. Tisch, to Chairman Emeritus after 10 years of service. While Ms. Tisch will continue to support CAE as an active board member, she will now focus more of her time on an important new venture: The Laurie M. Tisch Foundation.

Taking over the role as Board Chairman will be Jill Braufman, formerly Board President, who was unanimously elected to the new position at the September 25, 2007 meeting of CAE’s Board of Directors. As Ms. Tisch expressed at the meeting, Mrs. Braufman’s intelligence, drive, and passion about the issues surrounding arts education make her the perfect choice for this role and she already has her sights set on the future.

In just over a decade, CAE has achieved great success under Tisch’s leadership. Having served nearly half a million students, 50,000 parents, 17,000 teachers, 500 schools and more than $40 million invested in support of arts education, the organization is poised to become an even stronger voice in arts education advocacy and is eager to find new ways to grow and sustain arts education funding for New York City public schools.

“Serving as Board President alongside Laurie has been an extraordinary experience and I have learned a great deal from her leadership,” Mrs. Braufman said after the Board elected her its new Chair. “I look forward to serving as CAE’s new Board Chairman and continuing to make new connections and strengthening existing ones as we start our second decade of service.”

Under Mrs. Braufman’s leadership, The Center for Arts Education will focus on initiating new public engagement campaigns, establishing government relations, and creating more resources and professional events for educators, policy makers and business leaders.

In addition, the CAE Board has elected three new members: Micha C. Lasher, Kavitha Mediratta and Jennifer Sucov. Mr. Lasher is an aide to Congressman Jerrold Nadler (NY-08), handling community affairs on Manhattan’s West Side. He currently serves on Board of Trustees of the Community Service Society, the Manhattan Borough President’s Community Board Reform Task Force and the Board of Directors of Community Free Democrats, and is a past member of Manhattan Community Board 4.

Ms. Mediratta is the Principal Associate for the Community Involvement Program at The Annenberg Institute for School Reform. She helps youth organizing groups develop school-improvement campaigns; supports the work of the Urban Youth Collaborative, a coalition of youth organizations aimed at influencing high school reform in New York City; and oversees research on community organizing for school reform at the Community Involvement Program (CIP).

Ms. Sucov has recently joined Rodale Inc. as the Editorial Director of Prevention SIPs (special interest publications). She will be in charge of 16 single-topic newsstand specials on a wide range of subjects. For the last year, she has been an Executive Editor at Real Simple. Ms. Sucov is an active volunteer and has participated in many youth programs including The Actor’s Theatre Workshop, Young Women’s Leadership School in the Bronx and Junior Achievement.

The Center for Arts Education is leading the charge to restore quality arts education for New York City’s more than one million public school students and is committed to establishing New York City as the arts education capital of the world by making the arts a core component of every public school child’s education. CAE uses public engagement and strategic alliances with the city’s elected officials, arts and cultural organizations, business and creative industries, education leaders, parent groups, funders and other art education supporters to enrich the lives of children, their families, and neighborhoods and help improve the quality of New York City public school education

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