Kathleen Sharpe

Pres­i­dent & Chair of the Audit Com­mit­tee (Ontario)

Kath­leen Sharpe is a senior man­ager and admin­is­tra­tor in gov­ern­ment and the cul­tural sec­tor. She has been exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Ontario Cul­tural Attrac­tions Fund since its incep­tion in 1999. The Fund, a unique pro­gram estab­lished to sup­port cul­tural tourism attrac­tions through a com­bi­na­tion of grants and loans, has com­mit­ted over $40 mil­lion to almost 400 orga­ni­za­tions around the province. Prior to OCAF, Kath­leen was direc­tor of the Cul­ture Divi­sion of the Munic­i­pal­ity of Met­ro­pol­i­tan Toronto, a post she held from 1991 until amal­ga­ma­tion of the munic­i­pal­ity into the City of Toronto in 1998. Kathleen’s lead­er­ship led to the adop­tion by Metro Coun­cil of its first com­pre­hen­sive cul­tural pol­icy, Metro’s Cul­ture Plan, in 1994. She man­aged the tran­si­tion of cul­tural pro­grams and staff of 150 dur­ing the changeover from Metro to the new amal­ga­mated City of Toronto. Kath­leen has also held man­age­ment posi­tions at the Ontario Col­lege of Art and Design and The Banff Cen­tre. Kath­leen is past chair of Toronto Artscape, pres­i­dent of the Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of the Arts and pres­i­dent of SharpeCulture.