NEA Chair to Deliver Keynote at USC Price School’s Commencement

Maria Rosario Jackson, chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, will be the keynote speaker at the 2024 Commencement ceremony for the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy.

Jackson, who earned a Master of Public Administration from the USC Price School in 1989, made history as the first African American and the first Mexican American woman to serve as chair of the NEA – the federal government’s largest funder of the arts and arts education in communities nationwide.

“Chair Jackson embodies the value of a Price degree,” said Dana Goldman, dean and C. Erwin and Ione L. Piper chair of the USC Price School. “She has amplified the crucial link between the arts, culture, and healthy communities on the national stage. Her pioneering approach to community-building—breaking down silos between the public and private sectors—will inspire our graduates as they prepare to shape public policy through a wide range of careers.”

Jackson will address more than 6,000 USC Price School undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students and their families at The Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall on May 10, 2024. The event will also be live streamed.

Appointed by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in December 2021, Jackson has worked to elevate the NEA’s role as both a grant funder and a national resource that can help build healthy communities through the arts. This includes a recent first-of-its-kind summit co-hosted by the NEA and the White House Domestic Policy Council that brought together leaders from across sectors to consider the ideas, policies, and actions that will move forward a broader understanding of how arts and culture can contribute to other fields and unlock new opportunities for artists. Jackson has also helped the arts sector navigate challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic and changing technologies.

“I once studied at USC just as these graduates and remember feeling the sense of possibility and motivation to improve people’s lives and communities,” Jackson said. “As these graduates embark on their careers, I’m thrilled to share what I’ve learned working in government, philanthropy, and nonprofits, including the role the arts can play in enriching our lives, communities, and nation.”

Advocating for the arts in public policy

Jackson has spent more than 25 years promoting arts, culture, and design as crucial elements of healthy communities. In 2012, former President Barack Obama appointed Jackson to the National Council on the Arts, where she served until becoming chair of the NEA. She was previously co-chair of the County of Los Angeles Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative. She is currently on leave from Arizona State University, where she is a tenured professor in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

Under Jackson’s leadership, the NEA has worked with other federal agencies to explore how arts and culture can contribute to public health, community engagement, social connectedness and climate resilience, among other goals. Speaking at last year’s Distinguished Speaker Series convened by the USC Price School’s Center on Philanthropy & Public Policy, Jackson shared her vision for how the arts can be essential in policymaking and community problem solving.

“The arts are intrinsically important,” Jackson said at the event. “At the same time, they’re important because they contribute to other dynamics that can help address community needs and aspirations.”

For example, Jackson shared how the NEA collaborated with the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) and the CDC Foundation on an initiative that engaged artists and arts organizations to promote COVID vaccine readiness in their communities. The CDC Foundation awarded grants to 30 organizations nationwide to support these efforts that allowed arts and public health organizations the ability to deliver crucial messaging in unique ways.

Jackson noted that she’s spoken with Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy about how the arts could be important in addressing mental health as well as with leaders from the Department of Transportation, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency, among other federal entities about how the arts can help reconnect communities, contribute to community and economic development as well as to our good stewardship of the planet. “How do we create the bridges between arts and health, arts and transportation, arts and the things that we interface with as humans every day?” Jackson said.

Jackson grew up in South Los Angeles and spent time in her father’s home state of Ohio and her mother’s hometown of Mexico City. Her career has spanned philanthropy, government, and nonprofit organizations, including 18 years at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based public policy research organization. She was a senior research associate in the institute’s Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, and a founding director of its Culture, Creativity and Communities Program.

In addition to the USC Price School, Jackson graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a doctorate in urban planning.