Victoria Steele

Contract Instructor

• Bachelor of Commerce, Honours (Queen’s University); Executive Program, Smith School of Business (Queen’s University); Management Development for Arts Administrators (Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity); Certified Management Consultant, Canadian Association of Management Consultants
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Victoria Steele, CMC is a bilingual, certified management consultant with decades of experience in arts presenting, community engagement and advocacy. She is passionate about the power of the arts to connect communities and works with clients and stakeholders to develop strategies, realize innovative projects, and mentor careers. She has worked with arts organizations and festivals of all sizes across Canada from mainstream, independent, indigenous, culturally diverse and francophone. 

Victoria is a graduate of Queen’s School of Business and is best known as a former Managing Director of Theatre at the National Arts Centre for 19 years and general manager of several Ontario theatre companies. With a passion for new Canadian work, she partnered with artistic directors to program over 50 world premieres. She also served as Executive Director of Arts Network Ottawa where she facilitated twenty community arts projects for Canada 150 and chaired the Ottawa Cultural Alliance as it developed the 2019-2022 Ottawa Cultural Roadmap. 

She is committed to supporting the next generation of arts leaders. Over the past decade, she has created the new Contemporary Management for Arts and Culture program at University of New Brunswick in both official languages, taught Marketing part-time with Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business, the Master’s in Arts Leadership program at Queen’s University and the University of Ottawa Theatre Department. She mentored in the CHRC Talent2Lead programme and the LEAN initiative assisting arts leaders with financial management issues through the pandemic and is a mentor with ArtsBuild Ontario and Business/Arts ArtsVest. 

Active on the boards of national arts service organizations for decades, Victoria is currently Chair of Arts Consultants Canada and Treasurer of Cultural Human Resources Council.

Recent arts and culture clients include FUSION, Culture Outaouais, Ottawa Festival Network, Somerset West Arts Hub, Vanier Culture Study, Gladstone Theatre, Théâtre français de Toronto, Creative City Network of Canada, PAL Ottawa, CHRC Respectful Workplaces in the Arts, Skeleton Key Theatre and Youth Infringement.