The Steel Yard welcomes Lang as new executive director

HELEN LANG started as the new executive director of The Steel Yard earlier this month, the industrial arts nonprofit announced Friday. / COURTESY THE STEEL YARD/KAREN PHILIPPI
HELEN LANG started as the new executive director of The Steel Yard earlier this month, the industrial arts nonprofit announced Friday. / COURTESY THE STEEL YARD/KAREN PHILIPPI

PROVIDENCE – Industrial arts nonprofit The Steel Yard welcomed its new executive director, nonprofit arts management veteran Helen Lang, who started in early April, the organization announced Friday.

“Helen is an accomplished professional and thrives at the crossroads of arts and community – we are fortunate to have her with us to guide the Steel Yard in the next stage of our growth,” Peter Gill Case, president of the nonprofit’s board of directors, said in a statement.

Lang, a native of Panama, is a recent transplant from New York, where she held numerous high-profile positions in the city’s arts community, according to a release.

Lang most recently was finance manager of the Trisha Brown Dance Co., but also has served as director of finance at the Tribeca Film Institute and executive director of the Cummington Community for the Arts. She also has held positions at the Legal Aid Society, Children’s Rights and the Astaea Foudnation for Social Justice.

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“I’m ecstatic to have the opportunity to help forge (no pun intended) the Steel Yard’s ongoing contributions to the vibrant and creative life of Providence,” Laid said in a statement. “I look forward to working to promote the Yard’s unique industrial-arts and community-based mission, and to continue to engage the broader population through expanded programming.”

Lang succeeds The Steel Yard’s long-time Executive Director Drake Patten, who left the organization in March to start Cluck!, an urban farm supply business.

“Helen comes to The Steel Yard at an exciting, and significant, time,” said a release from the nonprofit. “In 2013, the Yard will celebrate its 10th anniversary and embark on a strategic planning process that will propel its community education, business and workforce development, and public projects programs into the next decade.”

According to The Steel Yard release, Lang said that among her “key priorities” would be to “pay tribute to all of the Yard’s accomplishments in light of the organization’s upcoming 10th anniversary, as well as setting a course for the future and thanking the community that has sustained us all these years.”

Lang holds an MBA from Columbia University, a Master of Fine Arts from New York University and a Bachelor of Arts from Vassar College.

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