Mena Mark Hanna
Mena Mark Hanna currently serves as the General Director & CEO of Spoleto Festival USA, based in Charleston, South Carolina. Hanna was appointed to lead the Festival in October 2021, relocating from Berlin where he previously served as the Founding Dean and Professor of Musicology and Composition at the Barenboim-Said Akademie. Prior to this position, he worked as the assistant artistic director and dramaturg at Houston Grand Opera.
Hanna received a bachelor of music in music composition from the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University and was the recipient of Temple University’s inaugural Honors Distinguished Alumni Award. He earned his master’s in musicology and a doctor of philosophy in music composition and critical writing at Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar, and continued executive studies at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He was also formerly the creator and curator of the Edward W. Said Days in Berlin and served as trustee of the Gingko Library in London. Hanna currently sits on the board of the Mahler Foundation and on the advisory board of The Time in Children’s Arts Initiative in New York.