David A. Dik, national executive director, Young Audiences Arts for Learning

Previous experience: Before accepting his new job at Young Audiences Arts for Learning, a New York group that sponsors arts performances and workshops for more than 7 million students annually, Mr. Dik, 49, served as managing director of the Metropolitan Opera Guild, in New York, where he spent 22 years. He also served as director of the Music-in-Education National Consortium.

Education: He holds a master of music degree from Westminster Choir College, in Princeton, N.J., and a bachelor’s degree in the same subject from the Crane School of Music at the State University of New York at Potsdam.

Duties: Mr. Dik will lead the organization, whose headquarters and affiliates run on about $40-million per year, as it organizes new programs, develops national partnerships, and seeks to expose more schoolchildren to the arts. He also, he says, hopes to “position the organization as a national policy voice.” He will replace Richard Bell, who is retiring in August after 37 years with the group.

Why he was hired: “David has a marvelous training and background in both music and education, but he also has wonderful management experience,” says Corinne Greenberg, the charity’s chairwoman. “For me, the most important thing is that he shares our passion for the mission, of making the arts part of every child’s life.”

Salary: Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Dik declined to reveal his compensation.

Favorite opera: Falstaff, by Giuseppe Verdi. The last opera written by the then 80-year-old composer, says Mr. Dik, “presents youthfulness, spirit, and of all things he ended the opera with a fugue, a style that was in effect 200 years earlier. I like the image of a composer who kept learning and kept listening and doing things different about his work. That’s also a great analogy for Young Audiences moving forward.”