Media Room

Chris Lorway is the President and CEO of Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Chris brings senior leadership experience across a broad range of artistic disciplines in both Canadian and international contexts. Well-positioned to strengthen Banff Centre’s position as Canada’s creative leader in arts, leadership, and convening, Chris has a proved record as a global influencer in arts and culture. 

Chris is a Canadian citizen, born and raised in Cape Breton, and comes to Banff Centre from his recent position as both Executive and Artistic Director at Stanford Live in California. His artistic and community programs draw on the breadth and depth of Stanford University to connect performances to the significant issues, ideas, and discoveries of our time in a season featuring over 200 performances and events across four primary venues. 

Prior to his role at Stanford Live, Chris was Director of Programming and Marketing at The Corporation of Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall, where his focus was on developing a cohesive brand identity for the institution and ensuring that programming in the halls reflected the diversity of the city of Toronto. 

Prior to that position, he was the inaugural Artistic Director of the Luminato Festival, where he commissioned or co-commissioned nearly 50 new works from Canadian and International artists. 

Before his return to Canada in 2007, he was a consultant in the United States with AMS Planning and Research and AEA Consulting. These two roles offered him detailed insight into the governance and operations of major cultural organizations, including Carnegie Hall, New York City Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the West Kowloon Cultural District and San Francisco Opera. 

Prior to his consulting experience, he worked for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, where for two seasons he was part of the Lincoln Center Festival team. It was there he was introduced to some of the world’s top artists and companies. He also had roles in marketing and development at Lincoln Center and worked on the first phase of the $1.5 billion campus redevelopment project.

Josephine is Executive Director, Arts, for Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, a position she has held since May 2024. Banff Centre is a global organization based in the Canadian Rocky Mountains that provides learning, leadership and creative development opportunities in arts and culture across all disciplines. Prior to this, from 2020, she was Vice President, Programming for TO Live in Toronto. 

Josephine has spent her professional lifetime working in the arts in a career that encompasses theatre, opera, ballet, music and the visual arts. Her work has taken her from Melbourne to Sydney and now to Canada where she moved in 2016 to be Artistic Director of Luminato Festival. Her programs were conceived with the purpose of deeply connecting the festival with Toronto’s local artists as well as curating a balanced program of work from around the world. Before leaving Australia, she was Artistic Director of Melbourne’s international arts festival, now known as Rising, one of Australia’s most respected international arts festivals.  

Her earlier career was focused on executive roles including 10 years as Executive Director for Sydney Festival, and leadership roles with The Australian Ballet, the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Malthouse Theatre. 

This experience has given her a strong understanding of and love across all the arts and an appreciation of the interconnectedness that exists throughout artistic practice. Her belief in the vital role that the arts play in achieving an open, tolerant, thoughtful and forward-looking society governs her curatorial vision and work at all times.  

Mark is the Executive Director, Leadership, at Banff Centre. In this role he oversees the Leadership programming at Banff Centre, including Indigenous Leadership, Cultural Leadership, and a suite of Convening activity that includes summits,  think-tanks and thought leader gatherings that inform the renewal and relevancy of Banff Centre’s core Leadership and Arts programs.

Mark is an experienced leader and administrator with 25 years’ experience in the post-secondary, arts, culture and leadership development sectors. 

Throughout his career Mark has regularly collaborated with influential leaders, artists, artistic directors and curators, along with senior administrators, faculty, production teams, architects, designers, national arts and culture partners, provincial and federal government agencies, donors, elders, and local audiences and community members.

He has led the design, implementation, and evaluation of numerous program planning processes, change management processes, has overseen several capital and infrastructure development projects, and has been a negotiator on many multi-party projects and collective bargaining agreements. 

Born and raised in Alberta, Mark is a member of several national and international leadership and education networks, has served on numerous artist awards juries, and has attended leading festivals and exhibitions across North America, in Europe, and in Africa.