Staff report
Community Partnership for Arts and Culture president and CEO Tom Schorgl announced his retirement after 20 years of leading the arts-advocacy nonprofit organization.
Schorgl will officially step down from his position – which he’s held since CPAC’s inception in 1997 – at the end of 2017. He’ll be succeeded by longtime CPAC chief operating officer Megan Van Voorhis – an appointment unanimously approved during the organization’s quarterly board meeting on June 23, according to a news release.
“The opportunity to help guide CPAC for 20 years is a high point in my career” said Schorgl in a statement to board and staff. “It has been a deep honor to help Northeast Ohio’s arts and culture sector become rightfully viewed as not just a valued contributor to the region’s development but as a critical asset worthy of significant public investment. I look forward to sharing my knowledge on these issues with more arts and culture organizations as I move on to the next stage of my career.”
Schorgl’s signature achievements include developing the region’s first cultural plan, the passage and subsequent renewal of a groundbreaking excise tax to support arts and culture in Cuyahoga County, and increasing the influence of arts and culture in the community and economic development realms.
“Tom has made an indelible mark on the region’s cultural landscape,” aid CPAC Board President Gary Poth, Head of Key Family Wealth, Executive Managing Director, Key Bank, in a statement. “His perseverance and commitment to serving the arts and culture sector and the public interest has been critical to CPAC and our community’s success over the years.”
Van Voorhis is looking forward to what’s ahead for her and the organization.
“I am delighted by the opportunity to lead CPAC into its next iteration,” she said in a statement. “From our founding as a nonprofit organization following the regional cultural planning process in the late ’90s, we have filled functional gaps in the arts and culture environment through a unique combination of expertise – research, policy analysis and advocacy, communications, counsel and cross-sector relationship building. I have had the pleasure of working for CPAC during the entire time that those areas were developed, tested and refined. The landscape is changing along with the forces at work in the arts and culture sector. So, as we move forward, we will aim to apply CPAC’s expertise to resolving the concerns the arts and culture sector faces today and those we anticipate it will face in the future.”
