Bio

Martha Richards is the Founder and Executive Director of WomenArts , an alliance of over 10,000 women artists and allies worldwide that works for empowerment, opportunity, and visibility for women artists. She is the co-creator of Support Women Artists Now Day/SWAN Day, an annual international holiday that was celebrated with 170 events in 14 countries in March 2009. She blogs at http://blog.WomenArts.org and is the editor of the WomenArts News.

Richards is widely recognized as a leading advocate for women in the arts and as an expert on the status of women in the arts, cultural policy issues, the economics of the arts and media, philanthropy and the arts, and performing arts management.

In April 2006 she was one of three U.S. nominees (with Quincy Jones and Wynton Marsalis) for the prestigious international Montblanc De La Culture Award for outstanding service to the arts. In April 2009 she was inducted into the BayPath College 21st Century Women Business Leaders Hall of Fame for her work in philanthropy. She has been honored as one of three "founding mothers" of the Women's Fund of Western Massachusetts.

Prior to WomenArts, Richards served as Executive Director of Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College and as Managing Director of StageWest, a regional theatre in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Richards has a B.A. in Economics from the University of California Berkeley and a J.D. from the University of California Hastings College of Law. She is a member of the California bar, and she was one of the founding directors of California Lawyers for the Arts.

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