Jessica Mallow Gulley

Jessica Mallow Gulley, Executive Director for the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra, is a dynamic leader and arts executive who has built a reputation as a visionary fundraiser, relationship-builder, and organizational culture expert. In her time working with the Kalamazoo Symphony, she has generated transformational revenue strategies through community partnerships and patron engagement, led revolutionary growth and programs that focus on community collaboration, and created strong financial sustainability.

Mallow Gulley, an experienced change manager and motivator, strives to make positive change through powerful, musical experiences. Having affected powerful change with orchestras and performing arts organizations across the country, she was previously the Director of Business Partnerships for the Jacksonville Symphony in Florida, where she doubled the size of the business giving program and revolutionized the Symphony’s connections and reputation in the Jacksonville community. In Washington, D.C., she worked with Washington Performing Arts, helping to bring international artists to the nation’s capital, and managed all operations of the American University Symphony Orchestra. Her first position with an orchestra, however, was in her home state of Iowa. She assisted in leading Orchestra Iowa through a major strategic brand change and renovation of its historic theater, destroyed in the catastrophic Midwestern floods of 2008.

As a graduate of American University with a master’s in arts management, Mallow Gulley studied organizational culture during pivotal times and works to innovate positive change in arts and nonprofit organizations. In the rapidly changing landscape of marketing and philanthropy, she utilizes technology and data to make informed, strategic decisions so that the arts can remain affordable, accessible, and relevant for all.