MA Top 30 Professional: Katherine Powers

Executive Director
Pacific Opera Project

Last year, Pacific Opera Project’s Artistic Director Josh Shaw was recognized as an MA Top 30 Professional. It speaks to the small LA-based company’s creativity and moxie that this year’s list honors its Executive Director Katherine Powers.

Powers’s first encounters with POP were onstage. A soprano, she was cast as Fiordiligi in its 2012 Così fan tutte—the company’s third production ever. She enjoyed the experience so much she’s returned many times since.

“[Josh] has this way of taking a piece of pretty standard repertoire and superimposing upon it some immediately accessible cultural reference that most people in contemporary society are going to get… There’s an instant understanding and enjoyment of the story,” Powers says.

After honing her management skills as director of vocal arts at the California School of the Arts high school, Powers became the POP’s executive director in early 2023, at what her colleagues have described as “a challenging stage in [the company’s] evolution.” Because of POP’s size, Powers does much more than the average executive director; as finance director, head grant writer, and development director, she has managed to secure two of the organization’s largest-ever grants. On the individual donor side, she has increased individual giving by 67 percent and the company’s donor pool by 47 percent.

“We’re maturing as a company,” Powers says. “I think people don’t realize that making cheap opera is expensive.”

Powers’s hard work isn’t going unrecognized. She was just invited to the Opera America leadership intensive, convening in New York in February.

“Having this recognition from Musical America and Opera America in the same year feels very affirming that I’m on the right track,” she says.