Large Institutions Committee
maxine bailey, Chair, (she/her) is a dynamic member of Toronto’s arts community. Her passion for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility for all runs deeply through everything she does. She currently serves as Executive Director of the Canadian Film Centre (CFC). Previously, maxine served as the Vice-President of Advancement at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) where she founded Share Her Journey, a fundraising commitment to achieving gender parity both on and off screen. She also co-founded the Black Artists Network in Dialogue (BAND), which showcases Black cultural contributions nationally and internationally, and currently participates on the advisory boards and steering committees for the Toronto Arts Council/Foundation Advocacy Committee, the Canadian Academy, the Luminato Festival Toronto and the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund. maxine was named one of NOW Toronto’s Local Heroes and as a voracious reader, she sat on the juries of the Scotiabank Giller Prize as well as the Trillium Book Award.
Kelvin Browne is the Executive Director and CEO of the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. The Gardiner Museum is Canada’s national museum of ceramics, and one of the great specialty museums in the world. Prior to joining the Gardiner Museum in November 2013, Kelvin held several positions at the Royal Ontario Museum – Canada’s largest museum of both culture and nature – beginning in 2004 when he became the Managing Director of the Institute of Contemporary Culture. Here he produced exhibitions and other programs connecting the museum’s collections with contemporary themes. Kelvin subsequently became the Vice-President of Marketing, and then the Vice-President of Marketing and Major Exhibitions, where his portfolio included marketing, sales, public relations, membership, major exhibitions, and all aspects of design at the museum.
Mervon Mehta A student of the late Sanford Meisner, Mehta has performed as an actor in over 100 theatrical productions, including residencies at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, and two seasons at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. He was a founding member of the Neighborhood Group Theatre in New York City, and has appeared on the stages of the Court, Steppenwolf, and Apple Tree theatres in Chicago. In 1994, Mehta put his theatrical career on ‘temporary’ hold and joined the Ravinia Festival in Chicago as programmer for their pop concert series. In 1998, he became Director of Programming and added the title of Director of Production in 2001. In 2002, Mehta was named the first Vice President of Programming and Education at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. Under his leadership, the Kimmel Center brought an array of talent across many genres of music to Philadelphia. Since 2009, Mehta has been the Executive Director of Performing Arts for The Royal Conservatory. He oversaw the launch of Koerner Hall and is responsible for programming Koerner Hall’s successful series of classical, jazz, world music and pop concerts, as well as overseeing all of the other performances and events throughout The Conservatory’s home at the TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning. He has served the arts community in various capacities, including acting as co-chair of the International Society of Performing Arts Congress in Toronto; as a juror for the Juno Awards and the OSM Concours; and as a grant adjudicator for the City of Toronto, Toronto Arts Council, and Ontario Arts Council. He also serves on the board of Intercultural Journeys in Philadelphia and is a member of the Toronto Music Advisory Committee. Mehta still appears on stage frequently as a narrator of orchestral works. He has performed with top orchestras in Munich, Monte Carlo, Los Angeles, Ottawa, Chicago, Houston, Budapest, and Lisbon; and at the Festival de Radio France and the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, Italy, under the batons of Christoph Eschenbach, Lawrence Foster, and Zubin Mehta.
Artist and activist Trina Moyan Bell is nehiyaw iskwew (Plains Cree) from the Frog Lake First Nation in Alberta. She began her career as a writer and producer for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) and co-produced and directed the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards (now Indspire) for CBC Television. Moyan is a co-founder of Toronto-based Bell & Bernard, a First Nations consulting firm dedicated to including the histories and current realities of Indigenous peoples within urban planning projects, and has spoken widely on Indigenous inclusion and empowerment. Moyan is also a muralist, a traditional dancer and a University of Toronto alumna.
Jaspreet Sandhu. VP of Development at Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall with past experience at TIFF, Jaspreet also runs her illustration practice in partnership with her husband, called Back to Punjab and for the award-winning children’s book A Lion’s Mane. Her extensive volunteer experience highlights her passion for building communities for high-impact not-for-profits.