Diana Parker will retire this year as director of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, a post she has held for the past twenty-five years. During that time, with talent, grace, and a wonderful team, she has brought more than twenty thousand tradition-bearers to the National Mall to demonstrate their knowledge, artistry, skill, and wisdom for roughly twenty-five million Festival visitors. These cultural exemplars have represented the full breadth of musical traditions, folk arts and crafts, occupations, culinary skills, and celebratory traditions from every region of the United States and from more than one hundred nations across the globe. No one has involved more artists and a larger, broader public in the appreciation of our diverse national and human living cultural heritage than Diana Parker and the Folklife Festival staff.

Diana's path to the Smithsonian and the Festival combined an interest in grassroots expression and a commitment to human rights. She was born in Kentucky