The Cultural Policy Hub at OCAD University is excited to announce that Patti Pon, president and CEO of Calgary Arts Development, the city’s designated arts funder, has joined as a Policy Fellow. Her visiting fellowship began on March 3 and continues to May 3, 2025.
Pon is a veteran community and arts champion with an extensive track record of leadership and service in Calgary and beyond. In the fall of 2021, she was given the honour of a Blackfoot name Miss’tommohtsaamiaakii—Two Standing Headdress Woman.
“Patti’s passionate and visionary championship of community—alongside her deep belief in the power and potential that creativity and innovation bring to cities—will support the hub to build its partnerships and sector engagement work,” says Miriam Kramer, executive director, Government and Community Relations and Public Policy.
As a Policy Fellow, Pon will contribute to the hub’s efforts to drive policy change and mobilize knowledge through thought leadership, participation in policy roundtables/workshops and engagement with the hub’s network and the OCAD U community, including at the 2025 DemocracyXChange Summit. Her guidance will inform the hub’s research into precarity and resilience in the arts, culture and heritage sectors and the ways in which organizations can adapt and transform to address the challenges they face.
Pon has a reputation as a strong, collaborative leader with extraordinary community engagement skills and credibility among the many stakeholders affiliated with the arts and entertainment industry, the not-for-profit sector and city-building agencies. Leveraging this network, she will help the hub establish new relationships in Western Canada.
About Patti Pon
Patti Pon has deep and diverse experience in the arts sector, having served in senior leadership positions at the EPCOR CENTRE for the Performing Arts (now Arts Commons), Alberta Performing Arts Stabilization Fund, and Alberta Theatre Projects, among others. She has been president and CEO of Calgary Arts Development since 2013 and led the organization through the process of tripling its budget in 2019.
In the community, Patti was elected in 2021 as the first person of colour to the board of the Calgary Stampede and chairs the board of the Toronto-based Agora Foundation, publisher of the online journal The Philanthropist.
She completed her full nine-year term on the board of The Calgary Foundation in 2020, is a founding board member of the Asian Heritage Foundation (Southern Alberta), served on the steering committee for imagineCalgary; and is a past board chair of Canada’s oldest public radio station, CKUA Radio Network. She also served as a board member for the Calgary Bid Exploration Committee and related entities who explored the potential for Calgary to submit a bid for the 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Pon has been awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal, the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal and was the recipient of the 2013 Harry and Martha Cohen Award, to recognize her significant contribution to Calgary’s theatre community.
About the Cultural Policy Hub
The Cultural Policy Hub at OCAD U is a national, bilingual network of researchers, policymakers, artists and creators from across Canada’s academic, government, non-profit and private spheres. Through policy research, convening and analysis, the hub supports cultural policymaking from the local to the national levels. It is an independent, objective partner in public policy issues to which the cultural sector contributes—and those by which it is affected.
The Cultural Policy Hub’s funders include the Department of Canadian Heritage, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, City of Toronto; Metcalf Foundation, Azrieli Foundation and Power Corporation of Canada.
To stay up to date with the hub, follow us on LinkedIn and subscribe to our monthly newsletter!
