Leslie Hyde
Executive Director

Leslie Hyde is a co-founder of the Amalfi Coast Music & Arts Festival and the Center for Musical Studies (CMS) of Washington. As Executive Director of these organizations, she shares primary responsibility for planning and organizational development. Ms. Hyde is in charge of daily operations and logistics for festival participants. She also heads up the areas of marketing and publicity, manages the festival staff in Italy, and acts as a liaison with sponsoring organizations on the Amalfi Coast. As the originator of the guest program, Ms. Hyde plans and develops activities for festival guests and oversees the excursions and classes that are offered to festival participants and guests. For many years, Ms. Hyde managed the annual event in the nation's capitol, Ravello in America, produced in conjunction with CMS and the international Ravello Music Festival.

Ms. Hyde brings a wealth of experience in working overseas to her role in the festival. She lived and worked in Rome for seven years where she served as the program director of Artis International, a non-profit organization that produced international art exhibits and other cultural events. Prior to that, she was a partner in a small company in Rome that planned international conferences and provided translation services for meetings and academic journals. Ms. Hyde speaks fluent French and Italian. She has spent summers working in the area of the Amalfi Coast for almost two decades, and has also lived in Paris.

Ms. Hyde has worked as a free-lance writer and editor as well as a literary translator, in Washington, D.C., Boston, and the Denver area. She worked as a publications consultant for the Center for Applied Linguistics and the National Foreign Language Center and produced an educational series for the Network of Educators for the Americas. Before moving to Italy, Ms. Hyde also worked in Boston, Massachusetts as a staff writer in a civil rights office. During that time, Ms. Hyde was a member of the Scimitar Players, an amateur theater group that produced plays in foreign languages, and served as an editor for Alpha-Bête, a literary magazine based in Cambridge, Mass.

Ms. Hyde has been active for many years in various women’s organizations and has worked in many political campaigns. A native of the Washington area, she is an alumna of the Potomac and Madeira schools and holds a degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Colorado. Ms. Hyde is an officer on the board of Italian Muse, a Washington-based arts organization founded to promote Italian culture. She formerly served as co-chair of the board for the D.C. Children’s Chorus and was active in developing a community opera program in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Administration