EFFE Awards Salon Speakers

Joanna Baker

Arts Administrator, Trustee - Edinburgh International Culture Summit Foundation

Joanna Baker has been the Managing Director of the Edinburgh International Festival since 2006 until this year. She joined the Festival in 1992 as Marketing and Public Affairs Director and since then has worked alongside three different Festival Directors to help to maintain and develop its status as the world’s leading multi genre arts festival. Joanna has a particular interest in facilitating collaborative and partnership working and over the past 20 years has played a major role in helping to establish collaborative partnerships in Edinburgh and further afield, including Festivals Edinburgh, an organisation which represents Edinburgh’s 11 major Festivals and which she chaired for its first three years. She also helped to establish the Edinburgh International Culture Summit, a biennial event in August which is a partnership between the British Council, the UK Government, the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament and the Edinburgh International Festival and which brings Culture Ministers from around the world to Edinburgh.  

Joanna studied French and European Studies at the University of Sussex before starting her career in the arts as a box office assistant at the National Theatre London.  Before joining the Festival she worked for Welsh National Opera and Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet. She is currently the Chair of NYCoS (National Youth Choir of Scotland), a Trustee of the Edinburgh International Culture Summit Foundation and on the Board of Festivals Edinburgh.

Joanna Baker