Michael Kaiser

Michael M. Kaiser has been President of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts since January 2001. He has expanded the educational and artistic programming for the nation's center for the performing arts, has overseen a major renovation effort of most of the Center's theaters, and has led the country in arts management training.

In 2001, Kaiser created the Kennedy Center Arts Management Institute, renamed the DeVos Institute of Arts Management in May 2010, to provide advanced training for arts administrators at varying stages of development. In February 2009, he created Arts in Crisis: A Kennedy Center Initiative, a program which provided free arts management consulting to non-profit performing arts organizations around the United States.

Kaiser is also the author of seven books and has written a weekly column for The Huffington Post since 2009. He received his master's degree in management from M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management and his bachelor's degree in economics magna cum laude from Brandeis University. He has been an adjunct professor of arts administration at New York University and a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. In March 2011, Georgetown University conferred him with the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa.

He received the Dance Magazine Award in 2001, Capezio Award in 2002, Helen Hayes Washington Post Award for Innovative Leadership in the Theater Community in 2003, the St. Petersburg 300 Medal in 2004, Washingtonian of the Year in 2004, a U.S. Department of State Citation in 2005, the Blacks in Dance Award in 2005, and was the first American to receive China's “Award for Cultural Exchange” in 2005. He was awarded The Order of the Mexican Eagle in 2006 and was named Impresario of the Year in 2006 by Musical America. In 2009, Kaiser received the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America and the Kahlil Gibran “Spirit of Humanity” Award from the Arab American Institute Foundation.