LOUISVILLE BALLET WELCOMES NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Leslie B. Smart brings extensive experience in leadership and dance

by Amy Higgs

Louisville Ballet has appointed Leslie B. Smart as Executive Director, effective April 1. She brings extensive experience in philanthropy and nonprofit management, and has held numerous executive leadership roles in the arts, environmentalism, faith, health care and education.

Her experience includes cultivating regional donor bases to effectively grow institutions across a variety of nonprofit sectors. She has spearheaded multimillion-dollar fundraising campaigns, implemented strategic planning programs for major gift drives, managed multiple nonprofit organizations, secured federal and community development grants and deployed marketing and communications efforts to support development initiatives.

“Leslie brings a perfect combination of career experience, leadership strength and even personal history to this job,” said Ralph de Chabert, President of Louisville Ballet board of directors.

“She is that rare leader who understands the artistic side of Louisville Ballet, but also has a firm grasp of the business and development side. We are incredibly lucky to have her join our organization at this critical moment in Louisville Ballet’s history.”

A Lifelong Love Of Dance

This new position brings Smart’s personal life and career full circle. Her background in the arts started at the age of seven when she studied ballet under Cecile Heller, who danced with the Roland Petit Ballet and later would lead the University of Louisville Dance Academy. Smart danced in many Louisville Ballet performances of The Nutcracker along with her sister, Lisa Hayes Matthews, and both would go on to join Louisville Ballet in the 1970s, performing lead roles.

Smart and her sister studied under the direction of three of the five artistic directors in the past 71 years since Louisville Ballet was established. In addition, they studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Dance and at School of American Ballet at Juilliard, the official school of the New York City Ballet –where Louisville native and former principal dancer, Wendy Whelan, is now Artistic Associate Director.

Smart’s daughter, Emily Buddeke, studied at the Louisville Ballet School and her son, Charles Buddeke, was a founding member of the Relevè Society supporting Louisville Ballet. Her mother, Anne Fears Hayes, an accomplished pianist and opera singer, also served as a volunteer costume seamstress during Smart’s dancing tenure at the ballet. Her history with the arts and specifically Louisville Ballet comes complete with personal family connections, broadening her personal understanding of the impact of Louisville Ballet across the community.

For more information, visit louisvilleballet.org