Ted DeDee
Ted DeDee has been hired as the new chief executive officer and president of the Overture Center, to start on Monday, April 2.
DeDee currently works for the Jeanne B. McCoy Community Center for the Arts in New Albany, Ohio, which he oversaw the opening of in 2008. He is scheduled to be at a press conference on Wednesday, February 8 at 1 p.m. at the Overture Center.
"Ted has an amazing amount of experience running and operating new facilities, large facilities like the Overture Center," says Linda Baldwin, a board member of the Overture Center Foundation (and associate publisher of Isthmus). "He has an excellent set of recommendations in personnel development, staff development."
Overture spokesperson Rob Chappell says that all five of the finalists for the job "had the experience, background and knowledge to run a large arts facility. It was really about who would fit in best with our organization."
"We have a terrific staff, we just need a great leader," Chappell says, adding that DeDee had a "warm sense of humor." Baldwin says DeDee is wryly funny, but "not bombastic."
Baldwin says that another of the five finalists had been considered first, but that as the negotiations progressed, it became clear that it was not a good fit. "The person was not in the place we needed the person to be in a career perspective," she says. "It just turned out it wasn't the right fit."
Overture's current CEO, Tom Carto, will remain on as interim CEO until DeDee starts. The Overture has been undergoing a restructuring, after it settled its debt at the end of 2010 and created a new non-profit to manage the facility.
