David O’Fallon is an experienced educator and leader who works at both the national and local levels to develop innovative programs to improve education and link learning with the arts. He is currently the chief executive officer of MacPhail Center for Music, one of the largest community music education centers in the nation. MacPhail’s mission is to transform lives and enrich our community through music education. MacPhail has exceeded its goal of a $25 million capital campaign for a new facility located in downtown Minneapolis on the Mississippi River. The new James Dayton-designed flagship opened on January 5, 2008, and is the center of a network of 7500 students, 165 faculty, 48 community partnerships and multiple expansion sites.
David previously served as the executive director of the Perpich Center for Arts Education. A Minnesota state agency, the Perpich Center works to make the arts a fundamental part of an excellent education for all of Minnesota’s students, pre K-12. The Center houses the State Arts High School, a Professional Development Institute and research program on a 30-acre campus. In partnership with Minneapolis Public Schools, the Perpich Center was one of three sites in the nation to receive Annenberg Challenge Funds—a $10M Arts for Academic Achievement project--for education reform through the arts. It has increased student achievement through the arts.
Prior to the Perpich Center, he served as the education director for the National Endowment for the Arts and was then a senior staff member at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. There he directed a national task force to bring the arts into the national education standards. It succeeded. He also consulted with the Leonard Bernstein family on the Bernstein Institute for Education Through the Arts in Nashville, Tennessee.
While at the University of Minnesota he was the creator of the acclaimed Arts Leadership Institute which was conducted with the Reflective Leadership Center of the Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs. Participants came from over 30 states and 4 other nations for intensive work on leadership and strategic planning.
Dr. O’Fallon consults with educational and arts organizations across the U.S. from small rural nonprofits to large national and multi-national organizations. He has frequently been a keynote speaker at national and international conferences in London, Dublin, Glasgow, St. Petersburg, Russia, New York and Los Angeles, to name a few. He facilitates conversations and task forces on arts and education, on leadership and organizational development, including recent discussions for the Education Commission of the States national conference, the National Endowment for the Arts Education Leadership Institute, as well as serving on the “Theme Team” for the 2008, National Performing Arts Conference in Denver.
David has served on the boards of the American Composer’s Forum, the nation’s first national service organization in support of the American composer, and on the national board of the Alliance of Young Artists & Writers, Scholastic Art Awards for Scholastic, Inc. He has served on national advisory committees for Harvard Graduate School of Education, Project Zero, and for major national research projects sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. He was on the steering committee of the Arts Education Partnership, a group of 100 national organizations dedicated to bringing the arts into education in schools and beyond. In addition, he co-founded “In the Heart of the Beast,” a Minneapolis theater now in its 35th year.
He recently received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from St John’s University for services to the arts and to education. He earned a PhD from the Union Graduate Institute for the creative connections between theatre and community.