Rachel Fine

Rachel

Fine

Rachel Fine joined YSC as executive director in October 2022 following her role as executive director and CEO of the Los Angeles-based Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.

Rachel had joined The Wallis in its first 18 months of operation, following a 19-year capital campaign and building project to convert the historic Beverly Hills Post Office into a vibrant cultural hub and performing arts campus for Southern California. Together with the board of directors and administrative team, she established The Wallis, which serves Los Angeles County and Southern California, as a major player and leading cultural organization in Los Angeles' burgeoning arts scene; demonstrated dedication to diversity, equity, inclusion and access; built dynamic artistic partnerships and projects between The Wallis and Los Angeles' cultural organizations; launched and implemented a $55 million campaign, which more than doubled the organization's endowment and established a healthy cash reserve in the campaign's first year; and steered and managed The Wallis successfully through the pandemic.

Also a concert pianist, Rachel attended the Music Academy of the West and Eastman School of Music. She is a graduate of the University of California, Irvine, from which she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and recently received the Distinguished Alumna Award from UCI’s Claire Trevor School of the Arts. Other educational pursuits led her to Yale, where she studied musicology, and The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., where she was an arts management fellow.

Prior to her tenure at The Wallis, Rachel was executive director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (2010-2015) and Los Angeles Children’s Chorus (2007-2010). In 2009, she founded and built the Los Angeles Children's Chorus' Young Men's Ensemble, a rare chorus for boys with changing voices, and which has toured the United States, Canada, Cuba, Vatican City, and Mexico City.

With the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Fine introduced and produced “Play Me, I'm Yours,” a citywide piano installation and community art project. She also conceived and produced Strad Fest, a weeklong international festival of Stradivarius violins. Additionally, Rachel has held leadership positions at the DeVos Institute of Arts Management, Aspen Music Festival, Santa Fe Opera, and The Juilliard School, among others.

Rachel is married to Christopher Hawthorne, chief design officer for the City of Los Angeles and former architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times. Christopher teaches courses in journalism, criticism, and urban design at Yale College and the Yale School of Architecture. Rachel and Christopher have two daughters.

Rachel Fine
she/her
Executive Director

Yale Schwarzman Center
PO Box 208299
New Haven, CT 06520
T 203-436-4603
rachel.fine@yale.edu

Featured image: Rachel Fine. Photo: Luke Fontana