Acknowledged as the nation’s foremost expert on audience diversification by the Arts & Business Council, Donna Walker-Kuhne, an accomplished arts administrator and adult educator, has devoted her professional career to increasing the accessibility and connection to the arts by our nation’s rapidly growing multicultural population.  “I firmly believe that the arts are the only pure vehicle we have in today’s society that cross cultural and ethnic barriers and allow people to transcend their differences.”

Since 1984, Ms. Walker-Kuhne has been president of Walker International Communications Group.  She conducts seminars and workshops while providing marketing consultation services to arts organizations, performing and visual artists, dance companies, Broadway and off-Broadway productions, and non-profit groups.  Among her clients are major multicultural performing arts organizations, including: The Romare Bearden Foundation,  Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company,  Three Mo’ Tenors, Columbia University Arts Initiative, The Montclair Art Museum, Oregon Shakespeare Festival,  the Broadway production of Thurgood starring Laurence Fishburne, August Wilson’s Radio Golf, Carribbean Cultural Center, The Apollo Theater, The Sphinx Organization, Sony/BMG Music, WNYC Radio, the Arts and Business Council, and Dance USA.   She was recently an associate producer for the critically acclaimed production of George C. Wolfe’s Harlem Song at the world-famous Apollo Theater.  She was honored in 1998 as the first American invited by the National Arts Council of Singapore to teach a week-long marketing workshop.  

More recently, in 2003 she was the first American invited by the Australian Council on the Arts to do a three-city lecturing tour on the topic: Ethnic Diversity for Arts Organizations.  She was invited back in 2007 for a six-city lecturing tour on the same topic.  In 2004 she was honored with the Pioneering Women in Theater award by the Black Public Relations Society of Greater New York, proclamation from the Manhattan Borough President, C. Virginia Fields, City Council Citation from Brooklyn Council member Yvette Clarke, and Certificate of Recognition from 11th Congressional District, Brooklyn from Member of Congress, Major R. Owens.

In 2009, Walker International Communications Group, Inc. was one of 10 organizations awarded grants from the Theater Subdistrict Council to implement projects to diversify Broadway.  Impact Broadway is a socially and technology driven audience development initiative serving 300 African American and Latino students throughout the five boroughs of New York City.  These students have participated in Broadway productions, social networking, and participation in seminars and lectures.

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