Dr. Karen Chandler is Associate Professor Emerita in the Arts Management Program at the College of Charleston. Since 1999, she has taught in its undergraduate and graduate programs and has also served as director of both programs for several years during her tenure. She received her B.S. degree in Music Education from Hampton University in Virginia, a M.A. in Music Education from Columbia University-Teachers College and a Ph.D. in Studies in Arts and Humanities from New York University in New York City. 

A classically-trained pianist, she is also Co-Founder/Principal of the Charleston Jazz Initiative (CJI) that documents the history of South Carolina musicians who contributed to jazz in America and Europe. With a National Endowment for the Arts grant, she served as Executive Producer of LEGENDS (2011), a CD of songs by musicians the initiative is studying. In 2012, she was awarded the South Carolina Governor’s Award in the Humanities for her leadership and research with the Charleston Jazz Initiative. 

Chandler has formerly served as director of the College of Charleston's Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, director of the University of Virginia's African-American Cultural Center, and as an Assistant Professor of the graduate program in Arts Management at American University in Washington, DC. She has served as a grant reviewer with South Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and with many local and state arts councils and foundations throughout the country. 

Among her most recent publications are “Bin Yah (Been Here): Africanisms and Jazz Influences in Gullah Culture” in Jazz @ 100: An Alternative to a Story of Heroes, W. Knauer, ed. (Frankfurt: WolkeVerlag); “Uniquely Gullah: Africanisms in Jazz” in Arts Management, Cultural Policy, and the African Diaspora, A. Cuyler, ed.; and “Prelude to Gershwin: Edmund Thornton Jenkins” in Porgy and Bess: A Charleston Story, H. Greene, ed.

Dr. Margaret Jane Wyszomirski is Emerita Professor at the Ohio State University following 21 years as professor in the Department of Arts Administration, Education, and Policy and as an affiliate faculty member at the John Glenn School of Public Affairs.  She has also held faculty positions at Dickinson College, Rutgers University, and Case Western Reserve University.  In 1990,  she was the Staff Director of the Bi-partisan Commission on the National Endowment for the Arts.  From 1991 thru 1993, she was the Director of the Office of Policy Planning, Budget and Research at the National Endowment for the Arts. She has served as a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, Cultural Trends, Non-Profit Management and Leadership, and ARTIVATE: a Journal of Arts Entrepreneurship. From 1999 to 2005, she was a member of the Washington, D.C.  Research Task Force of the Center for Arts and Culture and its char from 1999 to 2002.   In 2005-6, she was head of the Review Committee on Competency Guidelines for AAAE and a board member from 2005 to 2008.  She was a member of the International Committee for the Global Cultural Report five volume series from Sage Publications from 2005 to 2012. In addition to many journal articles and book chapters, she has co-edited and been a contributing author to seven books. Currently, two additional collaborative book projects are nearing publication:  Arts in Healthy Aging: Exploring Research, Policy and Professional Practice published by Oxford University Press (Co-authored with Patricia Dewey Lambert and Doug Blandy) and Professionalization in the Creative Sector: Policy, Collective Action and Institutionalization published by Routledge (Co-edited with WoongJo Chang).  Her research interests have ranged across the Arts and cultural policy, cultural diplomacy, Creative and cultural industries, arts entrepreneurship, cultural development and cities, nonprofit management and advocacy, policy design and administration, and the American presidency.