Russell Willis Taylor was President and CEO of National Arts Strategies in the United States from January 2001 to January 2015, before coming to Banff Centre.  She has extensive senior experience in strategic business planning, financial analysis and planning, and all areas of operational management. Educated in England and America, she served as director of development for the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art before returning to England in 1984 at the invitation of the English National Opera (ENO) to establish the Company's first fund-raising department. During this time, she also lectured extensively at graduate programs of nonprofit management and arts and business management throughout Britain. From 1997 to 2001, she rejoined the ENO as executive director.

Mrs. Willis Taylor has held a wide range of managerial and Board posts in the commercial and nonprofit sectors including the advertising agency DMBB; head of corporate relations at Stoll Moss; director of The Arts Foundation; special advisor to the Heritage Board, Singapore; chief executive of Year of Opera and Music Theatre (1997); judge for Creative Britons and lecturer on business issues and arts administration. She received the Garrett Award for an outstanding contribution to the arts in Britain, the only American to be recognized in this way. She was part of the founding team with Diana, Princess of Wales, for the National Aids Trust in the UK, and a member of the 1998 Parliamentary Review Committee on Nonprofit Management. 

Mrs. Willis Taylor currently serves on the advisory boards of the Salzburg Global Seminar, the British Council's Arts & Creative Economy Advisory Group,  The Charlottesville Community Foundation, Fractured Atlas. and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2013, Mrs. Willis Taylor was honored with the International Citation of Merit by the International Society for the Performing Arts, presented in recognition of her lifetime achievement and her distinguished service to the performing arts.  She has written a number of articles on nonprofits and cultural management and on policy issues in arts and culture.