Karen Brooks Hopkins

Karen Brooks Hopkins was elected as Regent for the Second Judicial District in 2006, to serve the remaining four years of a five-year term, expiring in 2010.

Regent Brooks Hopkins is the president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), where she has worked since 1979.  As President, she oversees the Academy’s 300 full- and part-time employees and facilities, including the 2100-seat Howard Gilman Opera House and 874-seat BAM Harvey Theater, the four-theater BAM Rose Cinemas and the BAM café.  In May 2004, she concluded a two-year term as the Chair of The Cultural Institutions Group (CIG), which consists of 33 prominent New York City cultural institutions. In this capacity, she also served as a member of the Mayor’s Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission and is currently a member of the Board of NYC & Company, New York’s Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.

Regent Brooks Hopkins is an active member of the Performing Arts Center Consortium, a national association of performing arts centers, and served as its chair from 1994 to 1996. She was also a participant on the Advisory Committee of the Salzburg Seminar Project on Critical Issues for the Classical Performing Arts from 2000-2002 and a fellow of The Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation from 2001-2002. In 2005, Ms. Brooks Hopkins received the Encore Award in Arts Management Excellence from the Arts & Business Council of New York, and chaired the Hospitality and Tourism cluster of the Initiative for a Competitive Brooklyn.

In the spring of 1995, Regent Hopkins served as the executive producer of the Bergman Festival, which celebrated the life and work of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. Due to the success of the Bergman Festival, she was awarded a medal from the Royal Dramatic Theater of Sweden—the first time the honor was awarded to anyone outside of Sweden. Additionally, in recognition for her work on behalf of the Norwegian National Ballet, Norway awarded her its King Olav Medal.

Regent Brooks Hopkins was an adjunct professor for the Brooklyn College Program for Arts Administration for four years. Her widely read book, Successful Fundraising for Arts & Cultural Organizations, currently is available in a revised second edition through Greenwood Publishing.

A graduate of the University of Maryland, she received her MFA from George Washington University in Washington, DC. She resides in Park Slope, Brooklyn with her son Matthew. 

Last Updated **6/07**