Bill Ivey

Bill Ivey was a writer, teacher, nonprofit executive, and long-time public servant. He was Senior Research Fellow with Americans for the Arts, a Washington-based arts advocacy group, and Visiting Research Scholar in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University.  He was past-president of the American Folklore Society and served that organization as Senior Advisor for China.  Ivey served as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in the Clinton-Gore administration, and was team leader for arts and culture in the Barack Obama presidential transition.  In 2002 he became founding director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University, and since 2001 had been a trustee of the Center for American Progress, a Washington “think-tank.” Ivey was also a four-time Grammy nominee, and had produced and written television shows for the CBS and PBS networks. He was a lecturer and consultant whose clients include the Ford Foundation and other leading nonprofits. He was based in Nashville, Tennessee and Calumet, Michigan.