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Emerging Leader Council: Member Bios

Ebony McKinney
Program Associate
San Francisco Arts Commission
25 Van Ness Ave., Suite 240
San Francisco, California 94102
T 415-252-2553
E-mail: ebony.mckinney@sfgov.org

Ebony McKinney

Ebony McKinney, Program Associate for the Cultural Equity Grant Program of the San Francisco Arts Commission, is directly responsible for managing the grant making process of five core grant making programs and two successful pilots: one supporting innovative, community-based arts/non-arts partnerships, the second addressing the sustainability of San Francisco's Native American arts community.

In the past fiscal year, CEG received nearly 300 applications and awarded funds to 147 individual artists and arts organizations for the development of new work, space planning and capital improvement projects, capacity building initiatives and arts engagement activities.

Prior to joining the Arts Commission, she worked at Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco's oldest alternative arts space, as Fiscal Sponsorship Coordinator. Ms. McKinney also served on numerous funding boards such as The Sprout Fund, managed outreach and development for the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater an updated 1916 movie house and community performance space serving as a nexus for arts and economic development activity and acted as an aide to a local city Councilman. An consummate explorer, who recently relocated to San Francisco, California from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania she has also backpacked through South Africa and the United Kingdom and worked with NGO's in Botswana to support participatory communication for sustainable development and democracy through training and distribution of communication tools for social change.

She is on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco Bay Area Emerging Arts Professionals, a peer-based membership organization dedicated to evolving the professional capacities of arts administrators, managers, and cultural workers within the Greater San Francisco Bay Area.

Her personal interest lies in supporting arts access for diverse, underserved and traditional communities, community cultural development and innovative arts engagement. She enjoys watching documentary film, contemporary dance and listening to live jazz, hip-hop and soul.