Staff

Executive Director - Ingrid Zimmer

Managing Director - Shelley Brown

Director of Education - Shannon Quinn

Production and Administrative Manager - Carter Sligh

Director of Development - Patricia Ruane

Inspired Child Senior Advisor - Dr. Jessica Phillips-Silver

Graphic Designer - Chantay Carter

Board of Directors

Chair - Kelvin Coleman

Vice Chair - Anya Grundmann

Treasurer - Virginie Carey

Founding Director - Constance S. Zimmer

Kelvin Coleman, Chair

Dumbarton Arts and Education announced Kelvin Coleman, as the newly-elected Chair of the Board of Directors, as of the new fiscal year July 1, 2022.  He succeeds Charles A. Miller who held the position since 1990.  Ingrid Zimmer, Executive Director says “We are thrilled to welcome Kelvin as board chair. His new leadership will provide us with a fresh perspective, expertise in technology, commitment to education equity, and firm belief in the transformative power of the arts.”  

Kelvin Coleman, a distinguished cybersecurity leader and former member of the White House National Security staff, currently serves as the Chief of Global Cyber Diplomacy at Cyber Eagle, an international firm based in the US and Europe. In this role, he is the principal architect and executive leader of Cyber Eagle’s international diplomacy and government engagement strategies. Prior to this role, he was an Executive Partner at IBM.

Kelvin has served in several roles in the public, private, and non-profit sectors including as Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of the National Cybersecurity Alliance. He has also served in executive roles at the National Defense Information Sharing and Analysis Center and managed National Security Agency and Department of Defense issues related to protecting government intelligence networks. Kelvin spent several years with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security where he was the staff director for the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee and Branch Chief for Intergovernmental Affairs – Office of Cybersecurity and Communications.

Kelvin currently serves as Chairman of the boards of Dumbarton Arts & Education and the Beauvoir School. He previously served on the boards of Fair Chance, the Black Student Fund, and the National Child Research Center as well as the Mayor’s Homeland Security Advisory Commission.

Meet Our Staff

Ingrid Zimmer  |  Executive Director

Ingrid Zimmer is a visionary leader in arts administration and education, currently serving as Executive Director of Dumbarton Arts & Education since 2015. She has driven significant organizational growth by expanding budgets, launching innovative programs, and forging strategic partnerships that have enhanced both grant awards, earned revenue, and community impact. Previously, as Education Program Director, Ingrid revitalized the organization’s curriculum, implemented strong evaluation systems, and built a talented teaching artist team. 

A nationally recognized speaker, Ingrid shares her expertise in arts integration, early childhood brain development, and social-emotional learning. She is a passionate advocate for arts-integrated early childhood education in under-resourced communities and has been featured in the media and before policymakers as a leading voice in the field. Her signature programs—Dancing With Books and Dancing With Babies—are widely recognized, and she regularly leads workshops in collaboration with Project Zero at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, including at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, National Gallery of Art, and Smithsonian Institute. 

Ingrid’s three-decade career includes key roles such as Associate Director of Word Dance Theater, where she supported award-winning productions and educational initiatives, and Director of the Dance Program at National Cathedral School, where she expanded enrollment and transitioned the program to a new facility.  She is also an accomplished professional dancer, who has performed at renowned national and international venues.  

Ingrid holds a BA in Dance/Theater from Pomona College and a Graduate Certificate in Dance Performance from Folkwang Hochschule in Germany. She serves on the boards of the Bishop Walker School for Boys and Word Dance Theater and received House of Ruth’s Distinguished Service Award in 2021.    

Shelley Brown | Managing/Artistic Director

Since 2015, Shelley Brown has managed the administration of Dumbarton Arts & Education. In her thirty years of arts administration in the Washington, DC area, she has worked for two other non-profit organizations: The Kennedy Center and Strathmore Hall Foundation, Inc.

For 12 years until 2015, Shelley served as the Vice President for Programming and Artistic Director for Strathmore Hall Foundation, Inc., where she oversaw the planning and implementation of Strathmore presentations in the Music Center (1800 seats) and the Mansion at Strathmore. Her producing credits include: Free to Sing: The Story of The Story of the First African American Opera Company; Washington Area Timeline Concert Series; Tribute to Ella Jenkins concert for the Strathmore/Smithsonian Folkways DVD; The Celebration of the Piano; The Guitar Festival; and the 2012 Celebration of the American Violin. In recent years, Shelley has led concert hall programming nationally by connecting innovative concerts, experts, and students in thematic programs that have captured national attention. Examples include Strathmore’s 2010 Interpreting Stravinsky and 2011 Ives Project, which were broadcast nationally by WFMT and XM Sirius. In 2012, she developed and produced Strathmore’s acclaimed Discover Ellington Festival. In 2014, Shelley produced The Appetite Festival. She joined Strathmore in 1998, first as the Rental Coordinator, then was promoted to Vice President of Marketing and Public Affairs. 

Prior to Strathmore, Shelley was at the Kennedy Center From August 1988 to December 1997.   Shelley was Festival Manager at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where she oversaw the implementation of expanded international festival programming, including the 1994 Australian Festival, 1992 German Festival, 1998 Israeli Festival, and annual Japanese events. She devised the initial program concepts for the nightly free Millennium Stage Series, which she launched and booked. Shelley was also responsible for the programming and management of the Open House Arts Festival, the Kennedy Center's largest outreach project, and the Holiday Celebration. She began her career as a press agent at the Kennedy Center. She holds a B.A. from Connecticut College and an M.B.A. from George Washington University.

Carter Sligh | Production and Administrative Manager

As the Production and Administrative Manager, Carter serves as the operational base of Dumbarton Arts and Education. He is the Production Manager for the Dumbarton Concerts series, as well as the chief administrative support for the organization at large, including Inspired Child. Carter comes to Dumbarton with a background in arts operations and logistics, working for 7 years in the concert touring industry. He planned and led dozens of tours ranging from children’s choirs to symphony orchestras, at home in Washington, DC and around the world.

Carter is also an active professional musician, and as a working singer and pianist, he brings his love of and lifetime experience in the classical music world to work every day. He is a bass in the professional choir of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, and is collaborative pianist for the Cantate Concert Choir, in addition to other piano and singing engagements locally and nationally. He has worked as a private piano and voice instructor, as well as a high school choir and voice teacher, and has an educational background in stage directing and production.

A native of central Florida, Carter is a proud graduate of Oberlin College, with a BA in Theater, and of the University of York (UK), with an MA in Ensemble Singing.

Shannon Quinn | Director of Education

Shannon Quinn earned a Master of Fine Art in Dance from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee and a Bachelor of Arts in Dance with K-12 certification from Winthrop University. She has taught throughout the DC Metropolitan area in DC public and charter schools as well as Knock on Wood Tap Studio, Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, Dance Place and City Dance. Shannon served as Dance Place's Education Director for 18 years, overseeing onsite and offsite programming, staff and teaching artists. Under Shannon’s direction, the organization’s Education Department grew exponentially, doubling in size of programming and staff.

Shannon is extremely excited to serve as the Director of Education at Dumbarton Arts & Education, focusing on early childhood education through the Inspired Child programming. For the past thirteen years, she has served on the faculty at the Catholic University of America as the Dance Coordinator and teaches Modern Dance, Dance Composition, Tumbling for Dancers. Shannon is also a frequent Guest Artist at Montgomery College, Rockville Campus. In 2011 she co-founded ReVision Dance Company, a resident contemporary company at Dance Place, and currently serves as its Artistic Director. In 2014, ReVision was awarded a highly competitive Sister Cities Grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities to travel to Pretoria, South Africa for a week-long residency at the Tiqwa School and Tshwane University of Technology.

Since 2014, Shannon has traveled to Pretoria three times, collaborating with South African company, Usuthu Arts Productions and continues to be a guest artist at the Tiqwa School and Tshwane University of Technology. Shannon and ReVision have made a commitment to working with children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, with teaching residencies at The Arc in many DC and Baltimore locations and is in residence at River Terrace Education Campus in Washington DC. She has led many professional development dance education workshops at various universities and organizations, including Towson University, National Dance Education Organization (NDEO), and many others. In addition, Shannon has been a panelist for many of the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities grants and is a proud recipient of the 2020 Individual Regional Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council.

Patricia Ruane |  Director of Development

Patricia leads Dumbarton Arts & Education’s development efforts, which includes conducting grant research, grant writing and reporting, and cultivating relationships with organizational and individual donors. She has eight years of experience in PreK-12 education with nonprofits and as a consultant, and she has worked closely with large urban districts around the country to meaningfully improve student outcomes. She previously worked for the U.S. Department of Justice. Patricia earned her B.A. from the College of William and Mary and serves as a volunteer with Reading Partners, a national nonprofit that offers individualized reading support to children between kindergarten and fourth grade.

Jessica Phillips-Silver | Senior Advisor, Inspired Child

Jessica Phillips-Silver, Ph.D., is a researcher in the Department of Neuroscience at Georgetown University Medical Center and served as adjunct professor in the Faculty of Music, where she developed Georgetown's first course on Music and the Brain. Jessica is also the founder of the company Growing Brains®: A brain-based approach to raising children and communities. The mission of Growing Brains is to empower families and institutions with a model for raising children and educating communities, integrating evidence from brain science with core values from the arts, medicine and advocacy for social justice.

Jessica earned a Bachelor of Humanities and Arts in Cognitive Psychology and Music from Carnegie Mellon University, a Ph.D. in auditory development and music perception at McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind in Ontario, and she completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the International Laboratory of Brain, Music and Sound in Montreal.

Jessica's original research examines how 'feeling the beat' in music is a multisensory experience from infancy through adulthood, and she documented the first case of the musical disorder 'beat deafness'. She currently studies the musical processing and cortical plasticity in blindness, and the development of musical rhythm and executive functions in Deaf and hearing children. Jessica’s work has been featured in USA Today, Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Men’s Health, the Atlantic, NPR and The Discovery Channel, and in popular books including The Body has a Mind of Its Own, and Welcome to Your Child’s Brain.