Trudy Schroeder, O.M.

Bio

She/Her

Trudy describes herself as a community development activist with arts and culture as the means to build stronger, healthier, more vibrant places for us all to live. Since returning to her hometown of Winnipeg in 1995, Trudy has been involved in building community vitality and connecting people and ideas with the arts. Trudy is currently a senior consultant with Arts & Heritage Solutions.

She was the Executive Director of the WSO from 2008 to 2021. Trudy held a similar position with the Winnipeg Folk Festival for ten years prior to that. Earlier in her career she worked for the City of Ottawa in the field of cultural policy development, arts facility development, heritage preservation and business communications. She came to the business of arts management through a love of music and performance.

Trudy has a special interest in the creation of cultural spaces and the rehabilitation of heritage buildings to serve artistic purposes. In Ottawa, she worked with the community to transform the 1874 Provincial Courthouse into Arts Court, and she later became its General Manager. In Winnipeg, she was active in saving the old Ashdown store on Main Street from demolition, and later the Winnipeg Folk Festival had its administrative offices in that space. Recently she has been working on having the City of Winnipeg transfer ownership of Pantages Theatre to the WSO.

Trudy has served on many community boards and project committees including the City of Winnipeg’s Millennium Council, the Government of Canada’s Voluntary Sector Initiative, the Canadian Conference for the Arts, the board of the Winnipeg Executives Association, and on the advisory committee for the Jim Burns Leadership Program at the University of Manitoba. She has also served as president of the board of Orchestras Canada, president of Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra, and on the boards of Concordia Hospital and Concordia Foundation. She was a member the Premier’s Economic Advisory Council Task Force on Arts and Culture too. Trudy has been recognized as a Woman of Distinction by the YM/YWCA, received several awards for community service from the Mayor of Winnipeg, was the recipient of a Blazers’ Distinguished Alumni Award and in 2013 was the recipient of a Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. In the summer of 2014, she received the Winnipeg Folk Festival’s Glass Banjo award for Distinguished Service and was recognized as Leader of the Year by Tourism Winnipeg in 2016. In 2019, Trudy was honoured to be inducted into the Order of Manitoba.

Trudy holds an MBA from the Asper School of Business, a Performance Singing Degree from the Royal Conservatory in Toronto, an Arts Management degree from the University of Ottawa, and a B.A. (Political Science) from the University of Winnipeg