Director of Education
Wintergrass
Seattle, WA
Elizabeth Fortune is a change-agent in music education. She is the Director of Education for the Wintergrass Festival, a nonprofit organization that hosts a nationally acclaimed acoustic music festival with award-nominated educational programming every February in Bellevue, WA; and the chairperson for the National Association for Music Education Council for Orchestral Education. She is also the co-host of a popular forward-thinking music education podcast/ Facebook Live show called “The Beth and Kelly Show.” She is a veteran classroom instrumental music educator. From 2018-2022, she was the Director of Orchestras at Seattle’s Ballard High School. From 2002-2018, she was the Director of Orchestras and Jazz Strings at Seattle’s Washington Middle School.
Fortune is driven by the desire to transform music education by helping students and colleagues acquire an intrinsic ownership of the Artistic Process through Courageous Collaboration. No stone is left unturned in the work she is doing in all areas of music education to empower students and educators to see themselves as artists, musical decision makers, and lovers of music.
Fortune is a curriculum writer for the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Project, a collaboration between the Library and the National Association for Music Education. In 2019-2021, Fortune was a member of the American String Teachers Association Board of Directors. In 2018, she was a recipient of the Country Music Association’s Music Teachers of Excellence distinction. In 2015, Fortune was one of 25 semi-finalists out of 7,000 nominations for the Grammy Music Educator Award. Fortune received her Bachelors and Masters of Music degrees with an emphasis on music education and violin performance from the University of Montana. She is also an active contributor to the Washington Music Educators’ Association, and the International Bluegrass Music Association.
Saturday, January 7, 2023
11:00 AM – 11:50 AM US EST