Dr. Ivonne O’Neal To Present At Collective Impact

By Suzanne Lynch, Director of Marketing and Development –

Dr. Ivonne Chand O’Neal, Ph.D. is a highly sought speaker and we are thrilled to have her join us in June for a plenary session at Collective Impact, the statewide arts conference. Dr. O’Neal currently serves as the Chief Research Officer and Senior Policy Analyst for Creativity Testing Services, a creativity research think tank which provides assessment, research design and evaluation services for multinational companies both in the United States and abroad.

Prior to her current position, Dr. O’Neal served as the founding Director of Research and Evaluation for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. With an emphasis on creativity, Dr. O’Neal directed all research and evaluation efforts at the Kennedy Center and designed research studies to collect, analyze and report evidence of the impact of arts and culture on American life on local, national and international scales. Projects included examining the impact of programs such as Changing Education through the Arts, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, National Symphony Orchestra, Washington National Opera, Any Given Child, Ballet with Suzanne Farrell, Theater for Young Audiences, and assessing accessibility to the arts for K-12 students living with disabilities.

Trained as a Cognitive Psychologist with emphasis on the creative process, program evaluation, psychometrics and experimental design, Dr. O’Neal has published and presented over 100 research papers, book chapters and webinars in a wide variety of fields, including creativity, innovation, research design, education, museology, visitor studies, student engagement and quality of life. Her book, Arts Evaluation and Assessment: Measuring Impact in Schools and Communities will be published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2017.

Read more about Dr. O’Neal here and mark your calendars to join us in Murfreesboro June 7-10, 2016.