The Seattle Arts Commission and the Office of Arts & Culture are excited to welcome Terri Hiroshima as the new chair of the Seattle Arts Commission. Hiroshima will take over from Vivian Phillips, who was chair from 2015-17. The Seattle Arts Commission is an advocacy and advisory body for the City of Seattle.

Terri Hiroshima at the City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture 15th Annual Mayor’s Arts Awards reception at Chihuly Garden & Glass at Seattle Center on August 31, 2017.
Photo by Marcus R. Donner

“It’s an exciting time to chair the commission as we work to increase awareness of the value and role that the arts has in creating vitality and sustainability in Seattle,” says Terri Hiroshima, Senior Director of Marketing and Communications, UW. “Seattle Arts Commission work has never been more important now that the arts have become an essential tool for helping to address the challenges of a growing city — be it housing, work space, education, community building — and the equity issues that are tied to them. Vivian’s skillful leadership is one for the records and I hope to serve by strengthening what is now fully put in motion.”

Hiroshima was recently featured in a piece on KUOW, “I’m not the submissive Asian woman you think I am” and has been on the Seattle Arts Commission since 2012.

She is a Senior Director of Marketing and Communications at the University of Washington, and was formerly Vice President of Communications at Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. Hiroshima has served and worked in Seattle’s non-profit sector for more than 20 years, holding executive and marketing leadership positions at Crosscut Public Media, Seattle Theatre Group, Empty Space Theatre, and One Reel. She currently serves on the LANGSTON board and the Pratt Fine Arts Center board; in the past she has served on the boards of Shunpike and Degenerate Art Ensemble. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Public Relations from Boston University, and completed Seattle’s Leadership Tomorrow program in 2009.