Kate Preston Keeney is a doctoral candidate with the Center for Public Administration and Policy and a graduate assistant in the Office of the Senior Fellow for Resource Development and the Arts Initiative at Virginia Tech. Her research interests bridge arts management and public affairs scholarship and her preliminary dissertation work on state-level arts policy has been published in the Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society. Kate holds a master’s degree in Arts Management from American University and was a summer 2012 graduate assistant for Animating Democracy, a program of American's for the Arts. Before pursuing doctoral work, Kate worked in orchestra operations for the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.