Susan Clampitt

Executive Committee Member-At-Large

For many years, Ms. Clampitt served as a consultant to arts and other nonprofit organizations and foundations in capacity building, strategic planning, board and program development, and executive search.  She held senior executive positions as Director of Arts and Humanities Presidential Appointments at The White House; Executive Director and General Manager of WAMU 88.5 in Washington DC, one of the country’s leading National Public Radio (NPR) stations, where she established the station’s first “arts beat,” garnering several national awards; Deputy Chair for Programs at the National Endowment for the Arts, overseeing a $100-million grants portfolio annually; founder and chair of America’s first museum education graduate program; Associate Director of Media and Communications at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and Curator at the Montclair Art Museum.

At Arena Stage in Washington DC, America’s first regional theater and among the country’s most prominent, Ms. Clampitt served as a board member or honorary board member for 17 years, chairing numerous board committees, including the search committee selecting Bing Thom, architect of the iconic Mead Center for American Theater.  Appointed by three successive Washington DC mayors, Ms. Clampitt served as Commissioner on the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities for more than 10 years, chairing the Grants Committee and serving on the Commission’s Executive Committee . She was also appointed Commissioner to the city’s first Design and Fashion Commission. Ms. Clampitt is a founding board member and Vice President of the Mosaic Theater Company, where she is on the Executive, Nominating and Strategic Planning Committees and chairs the Development Committee.

Ms. Clampitt has been an avid advocate for international cultural diplomacy, executive producing arts documentaries for radio and internet, including the National Symphony Orchestra’s performances in Tokyo and a National Shakespeare Theatre’s production of the Oedipus plays in Athens.  She has lectured and chaired panels on international cultural diplomacy, developed guidelines on international arts exchanges for the National Endowment for the Arts and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and served as a panelist for the U.S Department of State and the National Endowment for the Arts for the 2018 Venice Architectural Biennale..

Ms. Clampitt is a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellow, an Aspen Institute Fellow, and serves regularly as a National Endowment for the Arts panelist.  She has received the Fast 50 Award for entrepreneurship from FastCompany magazine, and is a winner of the Mayor’s Arts Award for service to the arts. In addition to earning both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, Ms. Clampitt has completed six years of conservatory acting training and is a working actress. She lives on Capitol Hill with her husband, Jeremy Waletzky, MD.