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Keynote Speakers
Friday Keynote Speakers
Welcome Keynote: PAM BREAUX, President & CEO National Assembly of State Arts Agencies
Pam joined the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA) in 2015. As president and CEO, she works with the association’s board of directors and staff to advance NASAA’s policy and programmatic mission to strengthen America’s state and jurisdictional arts agencies. A native of Lafayette, Louisiana, Pam has held leadership positions at the local, state and national levels. While in Louisiana state government, she was secretary of the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism (CRT), assistant secretary of CRT (overseeing its cultural development portfolio), and executive director of its state arts agency (the Louisiana Division of the Arts). During her time at CRT, Pam developed and led Louisiana’s cultural economy initiative and spearheaded the successful UNESCO inscription of Poverty Point State Historic Site (an ancient Indian site) as a World Heritage site.
Before working in state government, Pam was executive director of the Arts and Humanities Council of Southwest Louisiana and managed southwest Louisiana’s Decentralized Arts Funding Program. She has served on the boards of the U.S. Travel Association, NASAA, South Arts and the Louisiana Board of International Commerce. Pam is currently a member of the U.S. National Commission on UNESCO. She graduated from McNeese State University with a B.A. in English and earned an M.A. in English and folklore from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Opening Keynote: LAURA ZABEL, Executive Director Springboard for the Arts
Laura Zabel is the Executive Director of Springboard for the Arts, an economic and community development agency run by and for artists. Springboard provides programs that help artists make a living and a life, and programs that help communities connect to the creative power of artists. Springboard is a nationally recognized leader in artist-led community development, creative placemaking and cross-sector collaboration. Springboard’s work has been featured by the New York Times, PBS, Wall Street Journal, Stanford Social Innovation Review and The Guardian and directly impacts over 25,000 artists each year. Through their free toolkits, training and resources Springboard’s programs have been replicated in over 100 communities across the U.S. and internationally.
In the last year, Springboard scaled their artist emergency relief fund to support over 2,500 artists in their region and helped over 80 communities nationwide start their own locally-rooted emergency funds. Through their Artists Respond program, Springboard is supporting artists to respond directly to urgent community needs, including racial justice, social isolation, and rural-urban solidarity. In 2021, Springboard launched one of the nation’s first guaranteed income programs focused on artists, inspired by the city of St. Paul and Mayors for Guaranteed Income.
Zabel has been honored with numerous awards, including the YBCA 100, Gard Foundation Award of Excellence, Common Future Local Economy Fellowship and the Bush Foundation Leadership Fellowship. Zabel chairs the board of directors of the Metropolitan Consortium of Community Developers and serves as an advisor to Dakota Resources, The Laundromat Project, Local Initiatives Support Corporation and the University of Kansas Department of Theater and Dance.
SATURDAY KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Lunch Keynote: SEC. JIM HAGEN Secretary South Dakota Department of Tourism
Jim Hagen has served as South Dakota’s Secretary of Tourism since 2011. After a decade of leading the department, he is as passionate as ever about seeing the tourism industry in our state attain new heights.
Before being appointed to oversee the Department of Tourism, Jim served four and a half years as the National Fundraising and Public Relations Director for the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation. From 2004-2006, he served as South Dakota’s Secretary of Tourism and State Development. From 1995-2002, he served as Chief of Staff and Special Advisor to Governor Bill Janklow.
Under his leadership, and in close partnership with the tourism industry, the state set new tourism economic impact records nine years in a row, including all-time spending and visitation records. Despite the challenges thrown at travel and tourism during the global COVID-19 pandemic, which saw average nationwide visitation and spending levels drop 50 percent or higher in other states, Secretary Hagen and his team were able to guide the tourism industry in South Dakota to much stronger numbers. In 2020, visitor spending was down only 18%, and visitation down only 13%. During the pandemic year of 2020, South Dakota was one of the three best-performing states in the nation in travel and tourism. It was the very first state tourism industry in the country to fully recover from the effects of the pandemic and return to pre-COVID spending and visitation levels.
Secretary Hagen has also been active on the national travel and tourism stage. In March 2014, he was appointed to the 32-member National Travel and Tourism Advisory Board (TTAB) by then-U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker. The board is charged with advising the United States Secretary of Commerce on travel and tourism issues affecting the United States. In March 2016, he was reappointed by Secretary Pritzker to an additional two-year term. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross reappointed Secretary Hagen to a third term in September 2018. Secretary Hagen also served five years on the Executive Board of the U.S. Travel Association, chaired the association’s Membership Governance Committee, and also served a recent two-year term as Chairman of the National Council of State Tourism Directors.
During his tenure as secretary, the Department of Tourism has been the recipient of numerous state, regional and national marketing and public relations awards. Jim was named the National State Tourism Director of the Year in 2014. In January 2021, Governor Kristi Noem honored him with the South Dakota tourism industry’s highest honor, the Ben Black Elk Award, for exceptional lifetime achievement and contributions to tourism in the state.
Secretary Hagen grew up in the northeast corner of the Mount Rushmore State. He is an honors graduate of the University of Southern California.
