Urban Bush Women Welcomes New Executive Director
The Urban Bush Women Board of Directors
is delighted to announce the appointment of Executive Director
Michele Kumi (久美) Baer
Michele Kumi (久美) Baer (she/they)
Photo Credit: Eddie Rhea Hemphill
Image Description: A mixed-race, East Asian woman with short black hair wears a flowy black jumpsuit, neon nails, and chunky rings on her fingers. She stands in the middle of a clearing, surrounded by tall shoots of emerald-colored bamboo, sunlight floating through. She holds a confident, serene gaze, looking into the camera and ready for the journey ahead.
Michele Kumi (久美) Baer (she/they) has devoted her career to igniting, kindling, and sustaining people’s capacity to practice equity and liberation in their lives. She has designed and directed programming that has seeded new funding and cultural initiatives; fostered greater authenticity and trust among colleagues and collaborators; and advanced bold agendas to further social justice in the cultural and philanthropic fields. As a program director, grantmaker, and facilitator, she has led convenings, research, strategic plans, funding, retreats, and capacity building programs. As a coach, she has supported artists and culture bearers in cultivating greater senses of agency and empowerment as they navigate their careers.
Michele will wind down a successful consulting business as she joins the Urban Bush Women team. As a consultant, she has worked with a wide variety of cultural and philanthropic organizations, including Arizona Community Foundation, California Arts Council, California Community Foundation, Center for Cultural Power, Creative West, Creatives Rebuild New York, Dance/USA, Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, Foundation for Advancement in Conservation, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Knight Foundation, Leadership Fellows New York, Mellon Foundation, National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, New York Foundation for the Arts, Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group, Philanthropy New York, and Sundance Institute. Additionally, Michele’s employment history includes tenures at Race Forward, The New York Community Trust, Dance/NYC, and the Global Fund for Women.
Active in the nonprofit field, Michele regularly contributes to field-wide events, coalitions, and grants and fellowships panels. She has served as a dance panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, an advisor for the National Dance Project, a panelist for the California Creative Corps Artist Fellowship and Constellations Culture Change Fund Fellowship, on the steering committee of the Cultural New Deal, and on the design team of the National Arts Policy Alliance. Michele is currently the guest curator for Dance/USA’s 2025 National Conference.
A lifelong dancer, Michele’s sensibilities as a mover and choreographer shape how she leads, strategizes, and collaborates. Colleagues know Michele to be someone who brings insight, compassion, and direction to the spaces she inhabits. Her leadership style has matured through her work as a facilitator, educator, and coach. She’s developed a keen ability to build consensus and shared commitment among a variety of people, perspectives, and priorities; to create work spaces that nourish people’s sense of belonging and agency; and to lead teams in service of various curatorial, programmatic, funding, and operational goals.
Born and raised on the lands of the Ohlone people—currently referred to as the San Francisco Bay Area—Michele is a mixed race, East Asian, cisgender, and non-disabled woman. Learning about the United States government’s incarceration of her Japanese American family at Tule Lake, Topaz, and Poston during World War II propelled Michele into critical inquiry at a young age.
UBW Board Chair Tammy Bormann observes, “After a robust nationwide search, the UBW board and staff are uniformly thrilled to welcome Michele Kumi Baer to the next generation of executive leaders! Michele’s wide experience across the social justice, arts, dance, and philanthropic fields, combined with her deeply intentional strategy, research, and process skills that are rooted in UBW core values, make her an ideal executive leader at this moment in UBW history. We look forward to working together, aligned in passion and purpose, to continue the UBW legacy of visionary leadership, paradigm-shifting art, and risk-taking programs that create meaningful change in the dance world and beyond! Michele will officially join the UBW team on Monday, January 6, 2025. On this date, Tahnia Belle, Acting Executive Director, will transition to the role of Executive and Transition Advisor to support Michele’s integration into the Urban Bush Women organization.”
Michele offers, “It is an honor to join Urban Bush Women as the company celebrates 40 years of courageous, boundary-defying work. Since first being touched by UBW’s work as a young twenty-something, I have received an abundance of inspiration, beauty, and wisdom from UBW’s productions, programs, and people. As I begin my journey as executive director, I am grateful to Jawole for the legacy she has created and energized by the artistry and vision of our Co-Artistic Directors Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Speis. I look forward to bringing my leadership to the team and giving life to the ambitions embedded in the strategic plan.”
“Amidst the challenges and threats that the dance field is facing today, we have an opportunity to embody what an anti-racist, anti-patriarchal work culture sustained by a dynamic, resilient business model can look and feel like. I envision Urban Bush Women—arms linked with our sibling and partner organizations—creating radical shifts that positively ripple throughout the arts sector and dramatically alter the material conditions of this company, the network it has built over the past 40 years, and future generations of UBW and other Black women+ -led dance companies across the country.”
