Olive Mosier
Director of Arts and Culture
William Penn Foundation
Olive Mosier is director of Arts and Culture at the William Penn Foundation, a regional foundation based in Philadelphia, where she manages the program’s annual grantmaking budget of $14 million and oversees activities intended to benefit the local nonprofit sector.
Prior to joining the Foundation in February 2000, Olive served in a Clinton White House appointment as director of the Office of Policy, Research, and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts. At the NEA, her responsibilities included advising the chairman, reviewing, and recommending policies to achieve agency goals, preparing position papers, and managing agency-wide issues of major significance. She also represented the United States as part of an international delegation working with Nelson Mandela’s post-Apartheid government to establish cultural policy.
Immediately prior to joining the NEA, Olive briefly worked with Keens Co. (now Wolf Brown), consulting on several projects for national funders such as the Ford Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts. She served for four years as executive vice president and chief operating officer of the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies (now Americans for the Arts), and five years as executive director of the National Artists Equity Association, both in Washington, D.C.
Olive holds a master's degree in arts management from The American University and a bachelor of fine arts degree in art history with a minor in studio art from Howard University.