Alexandra Skoczylas

Alexandra Skoczylas is the Executive Director of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. She is a cultural sector leader, having held senior positions in the performing arts for nearly two decades. Most recently she was the Executive Director of Opera Atelier in Toronto.   

With Opera Atelier, she led six successful, operating-surplus performance seasons while supporting the creation of four original artistic commissions, overseeing seven-figure major gift and endowment programs, managing global tour productions in Versailles and Chicago, and steering the company’s pandemic-era shift to film and digital delivery. In prior work, she led Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra to landmark annual earned revenue results while developing a new digital sales platform, participating in the execution of a multi-million dollar venue renovation project and supporting touring performances across Canada, the U.S., U.K., Europe and Asia.

She is passionate about literary, performance and visual arts, and is committed to diversity and inclusion and accessibility. Her work encompasses multiple educational, outreach and artistic engagement programs spanning traditional and underserved communities, ranging from the country’s first ASL-interpreted performance of fully-staged opera to the active pursuit of DEI learning and programs both within and beyond her own organization. She has served the City of Toronto on the St. Lawrence Market Precinct Advisory Committee, and was a Board Director at the Association for Opera in Canada.