PERFORMING OUR FUTURE:
F O R U M
mina matlon
Mina Para Matlon is the Managing Director of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life. She previously served as the director of research and information services at Dance/USA, the national service organization for U.S. professional dance, where she conducted and managed research impacting the dance field and handled evaluation of Dance/USA programming. She is also the co-founder of Plural, a nonprofit in residence within the Department of Arts & Communication at Oregon State University and dedicated to advancing equity in the arts through support of Canadian and US ethnocultural and community grounded arts organizations, artists, and arts administrators. Mina brings to these roles years of experience working as an intellectual property attorney, researcher, and arts administrator to address the particular needs of organizations and individuals operating in the creative industries and to develop strategies to support, protect, and share the cultural assets of local communities. Her previous work spans both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, including work within the intellectual property group of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, the India-based Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions, the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management, Arts Alliance Illinois, Northwest Lawyers & Artists, and the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. She has been appointed to the boards and advisory committees of nonprofit arts organizations based in New York, Illinois, and Oregon and has served as a grant panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts. She currently sits on the advisory committee of Pepatian, a South Bronx-based multidisciplinary art organization, and the editorial board of the American Journal for Arts Management. Mina has a background in dance, theater, and analog photography and holds an AB from Dartmouth College (Government & Environmental Studies), a JD from Harvard Law School, and an MA in Arts Administration & Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.