353 - Madam Director!

From Jacksonville.com ....
http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-07-18/story/riverside-arts-market-has-new-director

Riverside Arts Market has New Director
She’ll head the popular Riverside shopping site starting Aug. 16.
 
By Charlie Patton


Since she was a child, Teri Coutu has had a recurring dream. She starts to fly but then she begins to question herself. And she falls back to Earth.

She even wrote a book, “Don’t Think So Hard and You Can Fly.”

So when Coutu heard there was an opening for a new director for the Riverside Arts Market, she reread her own book. It helped inspire her to go for it.

Market officials have announced that Coutu, who spent the last two decades working in health administration, got the job.

She’ll start Aug. 16, replacing interim director Wayne Wood. Wood, who is on the market’s steering committee, took over after Tony Allegretti, who had run the market since it launched in the spring of 2009, stepped down at the end of May.

Wood called Coutu the perfect person to lead the Riverside Arts Market. “She’s wonderfully articulate and knowledgeable,” he said.

Coutu, 43, who grew up in Michigan, moved to Jacksonville in the early 1990s to complete her bachelor’s degree in community health at the University of North Florida.

She earned a master’s in health administration from the University of Florida. Most recently, she has been working as associate director of the Area Health Education Center, a nonprofit.

Coutu, a singer, guitarist and songwriter, said that while she’s enjoyed working in the health field, her first love has always been music.

She said when the Riverside Arts Market job became open, it seemed like an opportunity to take her administrative and organizational skills and “funnel them into something that’s my passion — music and the arts.”

Until this weekend, her involvement with the arts market was as a performer. She played there twice last year, once as the headliner, and her band is scheduled to play again Nov. 6. By then Coutu, who plans to spend Saturday volunteering at the market until she becomes director, hopes she has the market running well enough to spend a couple of hours on stage.

The Riverside Arts Market, which is scheduled to be open each Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through December underneath the Fuller Warren Bridge, is operated under the auspices of Riverside Avondale Preservation.
 
 
We had a celebratory dinner tonight with about a dozen or so in attendance.  It was good to see some folks I haven't seen in a while.  Then after leaving 5 Points and heading towards I-95, I see 3 friends that I hadn't seen since April.  More catching up was done.
 
This is most definately a positive!