Longtime Town of Parker employee and former PACE Center director Jeannene Bragg is back on home turf.
Bragg has joined the staff at Lone Tree Arts Center in the newly created position of operations director, where she will help her former co-worker, LTAC executive director Lisa Rigsby Peterson, manage the increasingly popular facility.
“The growth we’ve experienced since we opened at the tail end of 2011 has been huge — not just in terms of attendance, but the programs that we have now,” Peterson said.
Along with that growth, “There’s just that much more work to do,” she said. “We’re a fairly small team that accomplishes a lot.”
Bragg will focus on negotiating and issuing the 60 to 75 contracts for the upcoming season.
“I’ll be free to work more on fundraising, some strategic planning and helping develop and nurture our programs,” Peterson said. “It’ll mean a few less late nights.”
Peterson and Bragg have a long and successful working relationship.
“I’m really excited to be here,” Bragg said. “Lisa and I both worked at the Colorado Children’s Chorale in the early ’90s. She hired me there, so this is the second time she’s hired me.”
They also had frequent contact during Bragg’s employment with the PACE Center; both centers opened in fall 2011.
“There are lot of similarities in the facilities and how they’re run,” Bragg said. “Each is really working to fulfil the vision for their community, and they are different communities. Parker had a lot of more community-based programs. Lisa has a real vision here to be a very professional, regional arts center.”
Bragg, who was Parker’s town administrator from 2005 to 2010 and its cultural director from 1994 to 2012, most recently worked as the Colorado Symphony’s director of artistic partnerships.
“They often performed here at Lone Tree, so I had the experience of being here as part of a performing group,” she said. “I was so impressed with the customer service here, the hospitality they showed the artists and really the whole way they ran their programs. Customer service and working as a team are really important to me.”
The LTAC didn’t add a position, but reallocated existing responsibilities and created the operations director position when former education coordinator Kirstin Fletcher resigned to take a position with the Town of Parker.
Bragg lives in Parker with her husband, Highlands Ranch attorney Dane Torbenson, and two daughters.