Staff

Project Manager - Deborah Edward  

Deborah Edward, Ph.D. has been hired to oversee and support attainment of the identified goals and objectives, coordinate efforts of the participating entities and monitor progress.  As project manager, Deborah is accountable for Action Plan implementation, operations, fundraising, community relations and communications.  She works for the Sacramento Public Policy Foundation.

Deborah comes to Sacramento from a long record of service to the arts in Austin and internationally.  She was co-founder and Executive Director of the Austin Children's Museum which grew from a museum-without-walls into a significant downtown cultural resource for Austin families.  Deborah also was founding director of Greenlights for NonProfit Success, a regional nonprofit management support center for Central Texas. Her work in the arts includes consulting with museums in California, Texas, Czech Republic, and Russia and on issues of museum education, governance, fundraising and planning.

Edward was one of the consultants that led Austin's cultural planning effort from 2006-2008 which resulted in the CreateAustin plan focused on helping Austin's creative community flourish.  After the Austin City Council accepted this report, Edward moved into a new role on the Create Austin Leadership Team. This team, chaired by Ballet Austin's Cookie Ruiz, has continued to work on community-based implementation of the recommendations of the plan. Edward was instrumental in establishing Austin's new arts education initiative – mindPOP – by supervising a team of graduate students from the LBJ School of Public Affairs who conducted research on the landscape of arts education resources in the area.

Deborah Edward holds a Ph.D. in Education Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. She has been on the faculty of the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin for the past three years – teaching courses in program evaluation, nonprofit management, arts and philanthropy. She is a Fulbright Fellow, and continues to consult on issues of arts and nonprofit management in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria. Deborah is married to attorney Lynn Sanders; their three children currently all live in California.