José Ochoa is the founding Executive Director of The Chicago High School for the Arts which opened fall 2009. Most recently he was the Superintendent of Cultural Arts for the Metro Parks and Recreation Department in Nashville, Tennessee, where he supervised the dance, music, theatre, and visual arts departments, two museums and the special events department.
As an educator, he has served as a private teacher and instructor in music, dance, and theatre and also taught in traditional school settings both in academic and arts areas. As a classroom teacher, he taught English at a charter school for at-risk high school students in Amarillo, Texas, English at a bilingual private school in Honduras, and music for underserved elementary and middle school students at a charter school, Sallie B. Howard School for the Arts and Education, in Eastern North Carolina.
Besides his work in arts administration and in education, Ochoa has had a diverse career in the performing arts. As a musician he has performed solo flute recitals including the Festival Internacional de Arte e Cultura de Suchitoto in Central America. In dance, he danced with several regional ballet companies and he was the choreographer for the outdoor drama Texas Legacies, the official state play of Texas for three seasons. Ochoa also produced an arts festival Steinbeck on Stage…of words and dance which premiered his ballet La Perla based on the novel by John Steinbeck at West Texas A&M University. He has directed/choreographed for Oklahoma Shakespearean Festival, Ballet Nacional, WTAMU, Burning Coal Theatre Company, Lone Star Ballet, Street Theatre Company, several community theatres throughout the Southeast and for several productions in Central America.
Ochoa is a graduate of the North Carolina School for the Arts in music performance and has a master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies--Dance, Music, Theatre, from West Texas A&M University. He is a board of trustee for the National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts and an honorary trustee for the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.