Season IV, Ep. 4 feat. Dr. Lee Bynum

In February 2023, Bynum assumed the role of Chief Education Officer at Lincoln Center for the  Performing Arts, providing strategic leadership, creative vision, and administrative direction for  the organization’s educative initiatives, and serving as an advocate for the value and importance  of arts education. Prior to Lincoln Center, Bynum inaugurated the role of Vice President for  

Impact at Minnesota Opera, guiding the company’s educational, engagement, and equity work.  During Bynum’s tenure, the company made diversification a priority, and the percentage of the  staff who identified as people of color rose by fifteen percent, including at the director, vice  president, and board levels; built its access apparatus to begin addressing internal policy and  artistic programming gaps relative to physical ability and neurodivergence, socioeconomic class,  sexual orientation, and gender identity; produced multiple mainstage works by Black, Asian,  Latinx, and women composers and librettists; and unveiled a community commissioning  program that advanced conversations around who-creates-opera-and-for-whom. Additionally,  Bynum launched the Creative Development Program, which gave Minnesota Opera a fully  articulated set of educational programs—from babies to seniors—rooted in the values of  inclusion, diversity, equity, and access and social emotional learning pedagogy. The programs  directly address pipeline issues among underrepresented singers, composers, and technical  artists, as well as prioritize de-gendering vocal pedagogy and broadening the canon to normalize  the programming of underrepresented composers.  

Before Minnesota Opera, Bynum was on the program staff of The Andrew W. Mellon  Foundation for a decade, working in the Higher Learning, Diversity, and Scholarly  Communications and Information Technology funding areas. At the Foundation, Bynum made  diversity, equity, and inclusion grants to colleges, universities, community music schools, and  museums; supported the creation of K-12 music education programs and arts majors at HBCUs; and funded two PBS documentaries, Tell Them We Are Rising and Driving While Black. As  Associate Director of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, Bynum steered a program  that shepherded several hundred budding scholars of color through the PhD process at dozens of  colleges and universities in the United States and South Africa. Before joining the Foundation,  Bynum was the Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia  University, managing the Latinx, Asian American, Native American and comparative ethnic  studies programs. Bynum also was invited to be a visiting scholar at the Caritas Institute of  Higher Education at Hong Kong’s St. Francis University. 

Bynum was part of the 2019 cohort of the Council on Foundation’s Career Pathways Executive  Leadership Development Program, as well as a professional mentor for Opera America’s Opera  Leaders of Color program for two years. Additional field service includes peer reviewing for the  Educating Harlem program; writing for the Harlem Heritage Project; researching as the staff  historian for We Are 2042; coordinating the Critical Approaches to Race and Ethnicity Working  Group; making regular contributions on film and television to The Amsterdam News; and serving  on the editorial board of Journal of South Asian Studies. As a dramaturg, Bynum has  collaborated on the development of new works with American Opera Projects, the Herberger  Institute for Design and the Arts, the John Duffy Institute for New Opera, and Columbia  University. And as a librettist, Bynum recently was

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