• BA, Marketing, Miami University
• National Art Strategies Executive Nonprofit Leadership-Arts Fellow, Stanford University

Denise Montgomery is founder and principal of CultureThrive, a consulting practice focused on communications, marketing, audience development, organizational development, and program development and implementation for arts and cultural organizations. Denise is currently Project Director on a national project for The Wallace Foundation with the goal of increasing access and equity for urban, low-income middle school and high school students to quality, out-of-school time arts programs through a national partnership with Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Y-USA. She is the primary author of the forthcoming white paper on the project’s research insights to be published by The Wallace Foundation. Additional clients have included the Australia Council for the Arts, Balboa Park Learning Institute, New Children’s Museum, La Jolla Playhouse, Nevada Humanities, National Performing Arts Convention, Next Level Strategic Marketing Group, and WESTAF (Western States Arts Federation), among others.

Montgomery has held leadership positions at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, as Director of the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs (DOCA), as Executive Director of the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts, and in the corporate sector. Montgomery’s work at the Denver Office of Cultural Affairs earned national attention and was cited in RAND’s Arts and Culture in the Metropolis report, which during her tenure ranked DOCA as one of the top two municipal arts agencies in the United States. The Create Denver program, which she initiated and launched, continues to be on the leading edge of creative economy work in cities.

Montgomery has effectively linked programming, marketing and social media plans, and strategic plans to organizations’ overall goals and vision; guided complex processes involving stakeholder input and community engagement; successfully created and launched major new programs involving numerous organizational partners; and designed matrices for the purposes of evaluation and achieving measurable outcomes.

She has written and published three full-length Op-Ed pieces in major daily newspapers on the value and role of arts and culture and was commissioned to create the advocacy content for a major national cultural advocacy resource. She Tweeted weekly for over two years as part of paid “Web curator” blogging engagement for a nonprofit client.

Montgomery holds a B.S. in Marketing and Minor in Art History from Miami University of Ohio. She was selected as a fellow by Stanford University for its nonprofit management program for arts leaders and completed the program in 2005. She serves on The San Diego Foundation’s Arts and Culture Working Group and volunteers with the San Diego Regional Arts and Culture Coalition. Her past community involvement includes service on The Denver Foundation’s Arts and Culture Advisory Group as well as on the boards of Denver Civic Ventures, the Clyfford Still Museum, Alliance for Contemporary Art of the Denver Art Museum, and as a volunteer mentor with Big Sisters.