Katherine Powers, newly appointed Executive Director of Pacific Opera Project, most recently served as the founding Director of Vocal Arts at California School of the Arts – San Gabriel Valley, a non-profit charter school for the arts dedicated to providing a creative, challenging and nurturing environment to a diverse student body passionate about the arts. In her capacity as Vocal Arts Director, Katherine was responsible for overseeing all conservatory operations, including strategic planning, curriculum design, oversight of faculty and staff, event production, and fiscal management. In her six years as director, she forged a number of community partnerships with premier musical organizations including LA Opera, The Music Center, LA Master Chorale, Muse/ique, Descanso Gardens, The Huntington Library, Seraphic Fire, Citrus Singers, UCLA Chamber Singers, and Pacific Opera Project. She also created an annual master artist series, engaging such notable artists as Angel Blue, Susan Graham, Nathan Gunn, Eric Whitacre, Moira Smiley, and Grant Gershon.

In addition to her arts leadership, Katherine was a seven-year member of the Voice Faculty at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy and has also taught voice at Occidental College, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, California State University Los Angeles, and for the YoungArts Foundation.

An operatic soprano, she made her LA Opera debut in 2015 in the Grammy Award-winning production of The Ghosts of Versailles. Notable roles include Frasquita in Carmen at the Ford Amphitheater with Pacific Opera Project, Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire with Union Avenue Opera, Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, Musetta in La Bohème, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte (all with Pacific Opera Project), Alice in Falstaff, Tytania in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, and the title role in The Merry Widow. Committed to opera outreach, she has been a teaching artist for Long Beach Opera and with LA Opera Connects since 2011, for whom she created and hosted the eight-part Shakespeare Sings web series.

She received her Associate’s Degree in Theater from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, her B.A. in Music from UCLA, and her M.M. in Vocal Performance from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, conductor Michael Christ Powers, and their twin boys.