Anita Walker has served as Executive Director of the Massachusetts Cultural Council (MCC) since April 2007. Ms. Walker is the Commonwealth’s highest ranking cultural official, overseeing a $14 million budget that supports a range of grants, services, and programs for the arts, humanities, and sciences in every community in Massachusetts. Ms. Walker has raised the visibility of the creative economy as a driving force for growth and prosperity in Massachusetts. With support from the Boston Foundation and MAASH, she led advocacy for the Cultural Facilities Fund, which has invested $24 million in arts and cultural building projects statewide since 2006. The program has resulted in 577 new jobs and nearly $840 million in new investment in Massachusetts. She led a successful effort to include the arts as part of the Massachusetts Board of Education’s recommended core curriculum for high school students. She launched the Creative Minds initiative, through which MCC invested more than $3 million in new funding to support arts education in school and in communities. She created a partnership with Bank of America to launch the Big Yellow School Bus program to help schools pay for field trips to cultural organizations. In 2008 Massachusetts Education Secretary Paul Reville named Ms. Walker to his 21st Century Skills Task Force, which called for hiring 1,000 artists and scientists to foster creativity and innovation in the public schools. Before coming to Massachusetts, Ms. Walker was director of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs for seven years, serving simultaneously as executive director of the Iowa Arts Council, administrator of the State Historical Society, and the state historic preservation officer. Ms. Walker is a native of California and a graduate of Arizona University. She lives in Newton, MA with her husband and two sons.