Celia Smith is the CEO of Luminato Festival Toronto, Canada’s leading multi-disciplinary, international festival of arts, culture and creativity that takes over the GTA region with big, bold, contemporary work every June. She is also chair of the Toronto Arts Council; faculty at Schulich School of Business, co-founder of the League of Toronto Festivals, along with the leaders of Pride Toronto, Salsa on St. Clair and Toronto Caribbean Carnival; co-founder of LEAN (Leadership Emergency Arts Network), a national pro-bono response to help arts organizations across the country during COVID. In former lives, she was the COO of TAS, a community-focused mixed-use private developer; President of Artscape, a non-profit housing and community hub creator; and General Manager of the Canadian Stage Company. 

Born in Toronto, Naomi grew up in Sackville, New Brunswick and Ottawa, and has called Toronto home for the last 35 years. She has a degree in Political Science from the University of Toronto and over 30 years of programming, touring, and producing experience both nationally and internationally. She has worked with a range of performing arts companies including Nightswimming, Mammalian Diving Reflex, DVxT Theatre, the late Paul Bettis’ Civilized Theatre, VideoCabaret and numerous independent artists. She’s also worked at festivals throughout her career including Bread and Butter (Guelph, 1989), World Stage (1994 -2000), and as curator for Buddies in Bad Times’ Rhubarb! (2003) and Magnetic North Theatre Festival’s Industry Series (2008-10).

Naomi joined Luminato as Company Manager in 2011 and subsequently produced large-scale productions for the festival including The Life and Death of Marina Abramović and Apocalypsis. In 2013 she was appointed Luminato’s first-ever Director of Artistic Development, commissioning, developing and producing works for the festival. She was appointed Deputy Artistic Director in 2017 and Artistic Director in 2018.

Naomi Campbell served as Luminato’s Artistic Director from 2018-2023.

Douglas Knight is a member of the Order of Canada and serves as chair & CEO of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards, and as a senior fellow at Massey College. A graduate of the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics, he was a senior media executive and a leading digital media strategist in Canada and the United States for 40 years. He served as president of St. Joseph Media, publisher & CEO of The Financial Post and the founding chair & CEO of ImpreMedia LLC in New York. 

He has served on corporate, industry, community and cultural boards for many years, including serving as chair of the Business and the Arts Awards and of Opera Atelier, vice-chair of the Toronto Symphony and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, a trustee of the Arts Foundation of Greater Toronto and a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council at the Faculty of Music of the University of Toronto.

maxine bailey (she/her) is a dynamic member of Toronto’s arts community, her passion for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility for all runs deeply in everything she does. She currently serves as Executive Director of the Canadian Film Centre (CFC). Previously, maxine served as the Vice-President of Advancement at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) where she founded Share Her Journey, a five-year fundraising commitment to achieving gender parity both on and off-screen.

She also co-founded the Black Artists Network in Dialogue (BAND), which showcases Black cultural contributions nationally and internationally, and currently participates on the advisory boards and steering committees for the Toronto Arts Council/Foundation Advocacy Committee, the Canadian Academy, Luminato Festival Toronto and the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund. maxine was named one of NOW Toronto’s Local Heroes and as a voracious reader, she sat on the juries of the Scotiabank Giller Prize as well as the Trillium Book Award.