June 24, 2012 | Read Time: 1 minute
New job: Virginia Hepner, 55, will begin her new position as president of the Robert W. Woodruff Arts Center on July 1. She succeeds Joe Bankoff, who is retiring after leading the Atlanta center since 2006. The institution is home to the Alliance Theatre, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the High Museum of Art, and Young Audiences, Woodruff’s arts-education division.
Career path: A business consultant, Ms. Hepner spent 25 years at Wachovia Bank (now Wells Fargo), rising to executive vice president of its U.S. corporate-finance department. She served as interim director of the Atlanta Ballet in 2009, and then became interim director of Young Audiences, overseeing operations and helping to expand arts-education programs at the other organizations housed at Woodruff.
Her goals: To increase the endowment, which now totals $274.9-million, and strengthen the center’s overall financial stability, plus do more to share resources with other arts groups in the metropolitan area. She also hopes to demonstrate that the arts improve the economy and education.
Education: She earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and a master’s in business administration from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
Salary: She declined to reveal it.
What she’s reading: La Place de la Concorde Suisse, by John McPhee, and Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, by Anna Quindlen.
