Adrienne Arsht is a business leader and hands-on philanthropist.  She has taken a leading role promoting artistic, business and civic growth in the three cities she calls home: Washington, D.C., New York and Miami. 

In Miami, 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.  Arsht is Chairman of the Adrienne Arsht Center foundation and is a member of the board of the University of Miami and Amigos for Kids.

In Washington, she is the Treasurer of the Board of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.  Arsht co-funded a program called “Arts in Crisis: A Kennedy Center Initiative,” which provides free, confidential advice to struggling U.S. non-profit groups.  Most recently, she donated $5 million to establish the Adrienne Arsht Musical Theater Fund at the Kennedy Center to support a wide variety of musical theater productions.

Arsht is a member of the board of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, The Center for National Policy, the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, Friends of the Budapest Festival Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera, Best Buddies International 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 1966, Arsht began her Delaware law career with Morris, Nichols, Arsht & tunnel.  In 1969, she moved to New York City and joined the legal department of Trans World Airlines (TWA).  She then became the first woman in the company’s property, cargo and government relations departments.  After TWA, Arsht moved to Washington, DC in 1979 where she initially worked with a law firm, then started her own title company before moving to Miami in 1996 to run her family-owned bank, TotalBank.

 

From 1996 to 2007, Arsht served as Chairman of the Board of TotalBank. Under her leadership, TotalBank grew from four locations to 14 with over $1.4 billion in assets. In November 2007, she sold the bank to Banco Popular Español. Arsht was named Chairman Emerita of TotalBank in January 2008.

Over the years, Arsht has generously donated funds and resources to numerous organizations.  In 2004, she became, and still is to this day, the first woman to join the Million Dollar Roundtable of United Way of Miami-Dade. In 2005, Arsht 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 to support the university-wide Arsht Ethics Programs, assist the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute of the University of Miami and support other University of Miami priorities.  In February 2009, Arsht funded the creation of the Best Buddies Delaware chapter to specifically serve Hispanics and African-Americans with mental disabilities. In January 2009, The Chronicle of Philanthropy ranked Arsht 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, Arsht 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.