Nancy Heaton is the Executive Director of BAYarts, an art campus on Cleveland’s west shore in Cleveland Metroparks. Heaton has been the director since 2006 when she started as a volunteer to save the organization founded in 1948. She is a graduate of Kent State University with degrees in Marketing and Art; later supplementing fine art skills at Boston Museum of Fine Art and SF Institute of Fine Art. After living in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Washington DC and England where she was engaged with various art groups, she returned to the Cleveland area finding a home with the arts community at BAYarts. She is a member of the Collective Arts Network (CAN) where she serves on the board of the CAN Journal, a quarterly publication for greater Cleveland’s visual arts. She is a member of Executive Directors Who Lunch, a collaborative exchange with visual arts leaders. She is an active participant in arts advocacy efforts in northeast Ohio.