Diane Ragsdale.
In Tuesday’s (1/16) Broadway World, Stephi Wild writes, “Diane Ragsdale, Director of Masters of Creative Leadership at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, has died at age 57. According to … the school’s website, she ‘passed away suddenly.’ ” Ragsdale was a speaker at the League of American Orchestras’ 2021 Midwinter Managers Meeting and led the League’s December 2023 “Board Accountability Beyond the Bottom Line: Shifting Measures of Excellence in Governance” webinar. (Watch a video clip of Ragsdale leading the webinar.) “Ragsdale served as Director of the MA in Creative Leadership, an online master’s program [that began] in summer 2022 and for which she additionally had an appointment as Faculty and Scholar.” She worked with a number of institutions including as director and co-lead faculty of the Cultural Leadership Program at Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity. “After 15 years working within and leading cultural institutions and another several years working in philanthropy at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in NYC, she made the shift to academia and along the way became a widely read blogger, frequent speaker and panelist, published author, lecturer, scholar, and advisor to a range of nonprofit institutions, government agencies, and foundations on a wide range of arts and culture topics.”
