Lisa Bury founded Lisa Bury Consulting LLC in May 2024. To date, she has partnered with leaders at Austin Opera, Kentucky Opera, New Orleans Opera, Opéra de Montréal, and Ravinia’s Steans Institute to advance strategic thinking and leadership skills, develop philanthropy team annual work plans, and manage capital campaigns.

Her career as a philanthropy leader in the performing arts began at Lyric Opera of Chicago, spanning fourteen opera seasons and five positions, and continued with leading the development teams of the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, Arizona Opera, Florida Grand Opera, and Seattle Opera. Following an eight month tenure as Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Interim Chief Development Officer, she joined The Dallas Opera as Chief Advancement and Strategy Officer overseeing development, marketing, communications, and technology. Ms. Bury joined Southern Methodist University as an adjunct professor for the Fall 2021 Meadows School for the Arts’ Fundraising and Advanced Fundraising classes attended by those enrolled in the joint M.A. in Arts Administration and M.B.A. program at the Cox School of Business.

At the height of the pandemic, she served as San Francisco Opera’s Chief Philanthropy Officer and on the board of the Tessitura Network. In May 2023, Ms. Bury and her husband moved to Chicago to live and work only a twelve-minute walk from their grandchildren. A retired violinist and violist, Ms. Bury earned both an M.B.A. and an M.A. in Arts Administration from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She holds a M.M. in Violin Performance with Suzuki Pedagogy Emphasis from Ithaca College in New York and Bachelor of Music Education from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. She became a Certified Fundraising Executive (CFRE) in 2018. A long-time member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) for which she served as a presenter, board member, and committee chair with the Seattle chapter, Ms. Bury has presented at the conferences of OPERA America, League of American Orchestras, Tessitura Network, and the Association of California Symphony Orchestras.