John Mangum

Executive Director and CEO, Margaret Alkek Williams Chair, Houston Symphony

Speaking at Opening Session and Gold Baton Award

An arts leader with over two decades of experience, John Mangum currently serves as the Executive Director/CEO and holder of the Margaret Alkek Williams Chair at the Houston Symphony. During his tenure, the Houston Symphony’s balance sheet has improved by $50 million through a combination of endowment fundraising and retirement of debt; the Symphony’s primary venue, Jones Hall for the Performing Arts, is nearing the end of a $60 million renovation; Juraj Valčuha was appointed the Symphony’s sixteenth Music Director; and the Symphony secured a five-year contract with its musicians, the longest in the orchestra’s history.

Under Mangum’s leadership, the Houston Symphony was one of the only performing arts organizations in the world to present a full 2020/21 season for in-person and at-home audiences. Its programming reached 1.1 million people in all 50 states and 40 countries and received the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Broadcast Media Award for concert music.

Mangum grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended his first concert at Davies Symphony Hall at the age of fifteen. He began his career at the Los Angeles Philharmonic and subsequently held senior artistic planning roles at several of the country’s leading orchestras — the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Before coming to Houston, Mangum served as President and Artistic Director of the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, a presenting organization based in Costa Mesa, California.

Mangum holds a Ph.D. in history with a concentration in musicology, in addition to master’s and bachelor’s degrees in history, from the University of California, Los Angeles. His scholarly work looks at the intersection of music and power in 18th-century German-speaking Central Europe. He is also an alumnus of the Impact Program for Arts Leaders at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.