Adrienne Arsht is a community-minded power broker, respected national business leader and hands-on philanthropist. She has taken a leading role promoting artistic, business and civic growth and development nationally and in the three cities among which she divides her time: Washington, D.C., New York and Miami.
Arsht is known for “doing what needs to be done.” She made a $30 million contribution to Miami’s Performing Arts Center in order to secure its financial footing and ensure quality cultural programming. In her honor, the Center was renamed the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County. In February 2009, Arsht co-funded The Kennedy Center’s “Arts in Crisis: A Kennedy Center Initiative,” which provides free, confidential advice to struggling non-profit groups in the U.S. Then, in October 2009, Arsht donated $5 million in support of musical theater programming at the Kennedy Center. Over the next 10 years, The Adrienne Arsht Musical Theater Fund will provide support to produce and present a wide variety of musical theater productions at the Kennedy Center.
Commencing in 1996, Arsht served as Chairman of the Board of TotalBank of Miami. Under her leadership, TotalBank grew from four locations to 14 with more than $1.4 billion in assets. In November 2007, she sold the bank to Banco Popular Español, the third largest banking group in Spain. Arsht was named Chairman Emerita of TotalBank in January 2008.
Arsht began her career in law in Delaware in 1966. In 1969, she joined the legal department of Trans World Airlines (TWA) in New York and later became the first woman in the property, cargo and government relations departments, respectively. After TWA, Arsht moved to Washington, DC in 1979 where she initially worked with a law firm, then started her own title company there before moving to Miami in 1996.
Arsht is the Treasurer of the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and serves on various national boards. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the Metropolitan Opera,
Best Buddies International, Friends of the Budapest Festival Orchestra and The Global Advisory Board of the Washington National Opera. She is a member of the Fine Arts Committee of the U.S. State Department and the Council on Foreign Relations and is also a fellow of The Aspen Institute. In South Florida, she is Chairman of the Adrienne Arsht Center Foundation, sits on the board of the University of Miami and Amigos For Kids and is a lifetime trustee of Vizcaya Museum and Gardens.
Over the years, Arsht has generously donated funds and resources to numerous organizations. In 2004, Arsht became the first woman to join the Million Dollar Roundtable of United Way of Miami-Dade. In 2005, she announced a $2 million gift to Goucher College, creating the Roxana Cannon Arsht Center for Ethics and Leadership, in honor of her late mother, a Goucher graduate. In October 2008, Arsht committed more than $6 million to the University of Miami. $3 million to support the university-wide Arsht Ethics Programs, $1 million to assist the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute of the University of Miami and $2 million to support other University of Miami priorities. In February 2009, Arsht announced a $750,000 contribution to Best Buddies International for the development of a Delaware chapter, specifically serving Hispanics and African-Americans with mental disabilities. In January 2009, The Chronicle of Philanthropy ranked her number 39 on its 2008 America’s 50 biggest donors list.
She is the daughter of the Honorable Roxana Cannon Arsht, the first female judge in the State of Delaware, and Samuel Arsht, a prominent Wilmington attorney. Upon graduation from Villanova Law School, Arsht was the 11th woman admitted to the Delaware bar –her mother having been the fifth. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College and Villanova Law School, she is a member of the Delaware Bar. She was married to the late Myer Feldman, former counsel to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
