Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance

Cecelia Fitzgibbon, Former President, Moore College of Art & Design

Cecelia Fitzgibbon was the eighth president of Moore College of Art & Design. Prior to coming to Moore, she spent 16 years as a professor, director and department head of Drexel University’s Arts Administration and Arts & Entertainment Enterprise programs. As a professor in that program, she focused her research on leadership and transition in the cultural ecosystem. Serving as department head for Arts & Entertainment Enterprise, she implemented a cutting-edge curriculum, directed revenue-generating academic enterprises and advised the dean on matters related to curriculum development and educational policy.

From 1993 to 1994, President Fitzgibbon directed policy planning, program design, fundraising, communications and organizational development as executive director of the New England Foundation for the Arts. She also spent eight years as director of the Delaware Division of the Arts, where she led a $21.5 million arts stabilization project and the creation of the state’s first economic impact study model. President Fitzgibbon serves as executive editor of The Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society. She has been a speaker nationally and internationally on topics of leadership in the arts and cultural policy. In 2011, she was named one of the region’s top Creative Connectors by Leadership Philadelphia.

Fitzgibbon grew up outside of Philadelphia (both of her parents were from the City) but when she was a sophomore in high school the family moved to southeastern Massachusetts outside of Providence. She is the first in her family to graduate from college. Her father was a pressman at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Providence Journal, her mother was a secretary at Texas Instruments and ended her career there as the OSHA coordinator for the Attleboro, Ma, facility. Cecelia is the oldest of four.

Fitzgibbon has two sons, Stuart, 30, who graduated from Drexel and University of Virginia and is an Investment Director at Cambridge Associates in Boston and Ross, who graduated from Bard College and works in Philadelphia at Helios Media as a brand designer and social media coordinator. She has been married to artist, Scott Cameron for 35 years. Her hobbies are writing poetry, cooking and entertaining, traveling and reading.