Ben Cameron

Brainstormer, Concerned citizen, Educator/Teacher, Gay, Philanthropist, Promoter

Current Director of Arts Program at Doris Duke Charitable Foundation in New York City. Previously Executive Director of Theatre Communicatioms Group, the national organization of nonprofit professional theaters for US; director of Theater Program at National Endowment for the Arts; Senior Program Officer at Dayton Hudson Foundation in Minneapolis, and Manager of Community Relations supervising national charitable giving for Target Stores. Frequent public speaker on the arts with more than 300 keynote addresses in US, Australia, England, Ireland and Canada, as well as a TED Talk in Calgary at TED XYY in 2009. Miscellaneous: lecturer on Queen Mary 2 and Queen Victoria, 15 seasons as panelist on Live from Metropolitan opera quiz feature on radio broadcasts, twice ridden from Minneapolis to Chicago on bicycle to raise money for HIV, seven years on Tony Awards Nominating Committee.

The need for the arts. The need for an alternative to markets to validate meaning. My chocolate labs.

Just because we can may not mean we should.

Modern Dance, Nonprofits, Philanthropy, Theatre

Nothing has brought me a greater response than a TED talk I did in Calgary-- a talk that was the single scariest thing I have done in the last decade. As the penultimate speaker of the day I spend far too much time pacing and sweating bullets backstage. TED Global will not only let me experience a TED Conference as an attendee without the speaker pressure. It will also I hope by renewing professionally, provoking new ideas and helping me articulate a new strategy for organizational innovation in the performing arts.

Baking bread. Singing old show tunes only slightly off key. Time steps.