CANVAS, the Jewish arts and culture funding collaborative incubated at JFN, is delighted to welcome its first-ever Chief Operating Officer Sarah Burford, who begins her role this week.

Sarah is a D.C.-based arts professional with a passion for creating an equitable future for the arts. After seven years at the National Endowment for the Arts, where she served artists and cultural organizations nationwide as a Program Specialist in Media Arts, she joins CANVAS with a vision to help us better serve our grantees and elevate the entire Jewish arts and culture community.

She has held previous roles in grantmaking and curatorial work at the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and The Jewish Museum. Sarah is also an artist in her own right, working in mixed media and collage. 

Sarah says that she is looking forward to fostering “transparency and accessibility throughout the grantmaking process. I’ve worked in arts nonprofits and in a public service space, and all that informs the work I want to do with CANVAS—how to think of oneself less as a gatekeeper, and more as a partner or a resource provider.

“I’ve always looked to have a positive impact on the arts and cultural space, and I want to take those values with me and keep them central to this work moving forward.” Learn more about Sarah here.

CANVAS is a funding and field-building collaborative that seeks to encourage, support, and promote a 21st- century Jewish cultural renaissance. Learn more at www.bycanvas.org