2025 Convocation Address by Deborah Rutter
June 14, 2025
Deborah Rutter presented the Bienen School of Music’s convocation address on Saturday, June 14, 2025, in Pick-Staiger Concert Hall.
Rutter is an internationally respected non-profit executive with nearly five decades of leadership at premier cultural institutions. From 2014 to 2025, she served as the first female president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — the nation’s preeminent cultural center — where she led a period of transformative growth while centering artists in all aspects of the institution’s work.