Robert L. Lynch
Robert L. Lynch is the former president and CEO of Americans for the Arts, an organization that seeks to make connections between individuals, leaders, organizations, communities, and businesses in order to advance and cultivate the arts in America. Lynch’s unwavering commitment “to ensure that every American has access to the transformative power of the arts” has seen the organization grow to more than 50 times its original size in services and membership, all during his more than 35 years of leadership. He had been the director of the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies for 12 years when, in 1996, he oversaw the merging of that organization with the American Council for the Arts to form Americans for the Arts. That same year he also created the Americans for the Arts Action Fund, a national advocacy group that fights for arts funding and education. Lynch is on the board of the American Craft Council and the Commission on the Arts of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has also been a board member of the Independent Sector and the US Travel and Tourism Advisory Board. The NonProfit Times Power & Influence Top 50 recognized his passionate and highly effective leadership by selecting him on five occasions as one of the 50 most influential executives in the nonprofit sector for five years.
