Mitch Menchaca was appointed as the executive director for the City of Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture in 2018. An Arizona native, he relocated from Phoenix to Washington, DC in 2009 to lead the Local Arts Advancement Department at Americans for the Arts, where he guided a team of professionals serving and advancing the nation’s 5,000 local arts agencies by delivering programs and services in the areas of public art, arts education, cultural planning, leadership development, and civic engagement. Prior to 2009, he served as the senior director of grants and programs at the Arizona Commission on the Arts where he administered an extensive portfolio of grants from all artistic disciplines. Mitch garnered executive leadership by most recently serving as the executive director for the Association of California Symphony Orchestras, a statewide advocacy, research, and leadership development organization for 150 orchestras and their 2,000 board and staff members. Before leaving DC, Mitch served as the first chief operating officer for Chorus America, a national arts service organization, where he was charged with understanding and implementing the vision and philosophy of the association and working with staff to coordinate efforts to advance the organization and its strategic goals and objectives. He is the past chairman of The Association of American Cultures (TAAC); president of the Robert E. Gard Foundation; on the advisory board for SMU DataArts (formally the Cultural Data Project); and served on the boards for Latinos LEAD and Californians for the Arts.