Meet the Network : Lucie Paye

Each month, 1stACT will be highlighting two members of our network to provide some background and in-depth insight on some of the people who are making an impact on our community and who are leveraging the growing 1stACT network. We would like for you to know Lucie Paye, Director of Marketing at San Jose Jazz and a member of the genARTS Silicon Valley steering committee.

Lucie is an arts marketer with experience in America and Europe. Lucie has been the Director of Marketing and Communications for San Jose Jazz the past four years, working with a dynamic, entrepreneurial team to promote America’s extraordinary gift: jazz. Before moving to Silicon Valley, Lucie spent five years as the Director of Communications and Head of Education for the International Festival of Gardens in France— THE #1 garden design competition. Lucie authored four books about gardens.

Q&A

1. What do you think is most unique about arts and culture in Silicon Valley?

Most people will spontaneously answer “diversity” to qualify the uniqueness of the arts and culture in Silicon Valley, but I don’t fully agree. Yes, the arts are protean here and culturally diverse, yet to me it is not their most original trait. I have found an astonishing variety in the arts in some other cities I know well like Paris, Berlin, New York, or Los Angeles.

When I think of the arts here in Silicon Valley, I think of youth and all the virtues attached to it. Youth is free, mostly open-minded, and always eager to experiment. Youth seldom feels limits. Its enthusiasm is infectious. Youth is generous and wants to share its passions.

I like to think of the arts in Silicon Valley as an underdog. An underdog has fewer inhibitions: no pressure from the past achievements, no constraints from strict old rules, less care for conventions. One is free to follow her intuition and to surprise. Success is not certain: it requires endurance and an appetite for risk, but, when it works, it’s an outstanding victory, a highly rewarding achievement, and perhaps a breakthrough

2. What have you gained from being a member of the genARTS Steering Committee?

As a member of the genArts Steering Committee, I have been given the valuable opportunity to work with a group of very talented young arts leaders. I have rarely found a team of people to be at once so professionally effective, highly committed to promoting the arts, and tremendously fun to work with. I am thinking in particular of Josh Russell, the Chair of genArts. Without him, his strategic vision and his team building skills, genArts wouldn’t even exist.  

Therefore, both on a professional and personal level, I have gained a lot from working with great people to achieve what matters the most to me: ensuring that the arts have a significant place in our community.

If one is an arts leader in Silicon Valley (young or not), I strongly encourage her to learn more about genArts. She will most certainly benefit from its networking, professional development, and advocacy opportunities. www.svgenArts.org

3. What do you see for the future of arts and leadership in Silicon Valley?

For arts leadership, I envision a thriving arts leaders’ network, well connected to the local corporate world and to the national arts leaders’ community, and a strong group of local emerging leaders who are ready to serve and lead here and beyond. The latter is specifically what genArts (www.svgenArts.org) is about.

As to the future of the arts in Silicon Valley, I envision larger arts organizations that have stronger relationships with local corporations and philanthropists, ambitious artistic productions that showcase Silicon Valley’s innovative talent, new, state of the art venues, socially responsible education programs, and an artistic influence at the national level. Achieving this, I would still like Silicon Valley’s arts scene to remain “non-finito”: keeping room for the underground and experimental culture, with a youthful and community-rooted spirit. “San Jose is appealing not because it succeeds, but because it tries” wrote Holly Finn in the Financial Times a few years ago. As Gordon Moore, founder of Intel and a Silicon Valley legend said, “If everything you try works, you are not trying hard enough.”