Michele Brierre Joins Joan Mitchell Foundation Board of Directors

The Joan Mitchell Foundation is pleased to welcome New Orleans-based nonprofit executive and public health professional Michele Brierre to the Foundation’s Board of Directors. A native of Louisiana, Brierre brings to the Foundation extensive experience in nonprofit leadership, most recently as the Executive Director of The Ellis Marsalis Center for Music in New Orleans (2010-2022), along with many decades overseeing public health initiatives in the South.

“I’m thrilled and honored to have Michele Brierre join the Foundation’s board of directors. As the Founding Executive Director of the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, she understands how the legacy of an artist can be a gift for future generations of artists,” said Christa Blatchford, Executive Director of the Joan Mitchell Foundation. “Additionally, with her career in public health, Michele brings deep experience in working with communities around care, something we at the Foundation value in our work with artists.”

Brierre, whose board service begins January 2025, joins continuing board members: Sandy S. Lee and Paul Ramírez Jonas (Co-Presidents), Marc Chennault (Treasurer), Jim Coddington, Chitra Ganesh, Cheryl Hayes, Kemi Ilesanmi, Miranda Lash, Danyelle Means, Juan Sánchez, and Jean Shin.

“I am delighted to join an esteemed group of colleagues at the Joan Mitchell Foundation and Joan Mitchell Center,” said Michele Brierre. “Through my board service, I hope to be a compassionate facilitator and conscious observer of the Foundation’s mission to affirm and amplify artists’ essential contributions to society. I welcome the opportunity to serve on a national board whose values resonate with my own lifelong values.”

The Joan Mitchell Foundation’s Board of Directors serve three-year terms, with a maximum of three consecutive terms. Of current board members, 40% are practicing artists, many of them former grant recipients of the Foundation. The remaining members represent professional areas of expertise that complement and advise the Foundation’s mission-based work, including curators, conservators, arts programmers, non-profit executives, and financial professionals.

About Michele Brierre

Michele Brierre, the proud daughter of Haitian immigrants and a lifelong Louisiana resident, was nurtured and thrived in an environment filled with music, art, and strong messages of health. Growing up in segregated north Louisiana and often not allowed, as a person of color, entrance to various cultural venues or institutions, her parents focused on curating an environment whereby she would still be exposed to arts and music. Brierre’s family collected Haitian art, amassing one of the largest privately owned collections of Haitian masters, and their home was often referred to as a living museum. Her parents’ high academic standards led her on the path of being the first to integrate a Catholic elementary school in Shreveport, Louisiana, where she enrolled along with her sister and a few family friends in 1966.

Brierre has spent a lifetime of forging paths for others, with public health—the science of protecting and improving the health of people and their community—as the guiding principle in all of her professional work experience. She received her undergraduate degree from Boston University with a degree in Sociology and a concentration in Medical Sociology and Gerontology. She also received a master of science in public health from Meharry Medical College, with a concentration in Community Health Sciences. Michele also was a Public Health Leadership Institute graduate.

Brierre spent the next 28 years managing and providing administrative oversight of public health initiatives in various health environments. This included three freestanding dialysis clinics in north Louisiana, Rossville Rural Community Health Center in Tennessee, LSUHSC Medical school, and two public health institutions: The Institute of Women and Ethnic Studies and the Louisiana Public Health Institute, both based in New Orleans.

Five years after Hurricane Katrina, in 2010, Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick’s manager brought to Brierre the seed of an idea to create a center where they could initiate rebuilding music culture in the 9th ward of New Orleans—an area historically and culturally rich but economically poor. As Executive Director of The Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, Brierre was tasked with creating a center that would be sustainable in time, providing musical access to all in the community. She provided oversight of the building process and managed the Center for 12 years until her retirement in 2022. Through the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, Brierre strived to promote an environment focused on the overall wellness of mind, body, and spirit.

Now in her retirement, Brierre enjoys daily walks in City Park, practicing Iyengar yoga, and daily cello practice. She is an inaugural board member of the Whitney Plantation, on which she has served for the last 6 years. She is a committed volunteer with The Black Men of Labor, a non-profit whose aim is to educate, preserve, and perpetuate the rich African and African-American culture of New Orleans. Brierre also serves as Ambassador to the Trinity City Comics youth art project.