LEADERSHIP
Shaping Communities Through Culture, Systems, and Place
Executive Director
Shavon Annette is a cultural architect and nonprofit executive leading initiatives at the intersection of place, people, and systems.
Under her leadership, the Bartlesville Cultural Center is evolving into a city-wide cultural hub focused on cultural preservation, community activation, place-based revitalization, and long-term development.
Her work today focuses on applying these skills to building cultural infrastructure, strengthening community activation, and advancing civic engagement initiatives.
Strategic Focus Areas
These focus areas guide the programming, partnerships, and long-term development of the Bartlesville Cultural Center.
Cultural Infrastructure
Community Revitalization
Civic and Cultural Engagement
Narrative and Memory Preservation
Systems that preserve history, strengthen identity, and connect communities across generations.
Place-based strategies that align vision, partnerships, and investment to move communities forward.
Creating pathways for residents to engage in culture, leadership, and community stewardship.
Programs and initiatives that ensure community stories are documented, preserved, and carried forward.
Background and Experience
Shavon Annette brings a cross-sector background in business, strategy, and organizational leadership to her role as Executive Director.
As a citizen of the Cherokee Nation with heritage rooted in African American, Malagasy, and Muscogee Creek lineage, her commitment to cultural preservation is both professional and personal. Her perspective is shaped by a deep belief that identity, history, and place are essential to how communities thrive across generations.
Her experience includes work in business development, organizational strategy, and operational leadership across both corporate and nonprofit environments. She has managed multi-year budgets, supported organizational restructuring, and contributed to large-scale branding and positioning efforts, including work connected to AT&T Business and AARP. This experience informs her ability to align vision, structure, and execution in ways that support long-term organizational growth.
Her work today focuses on applying these skills to the development of cultural infrastructure, community activation, and civic engagement initiatives.
A Global Perspective on Culture and Place
That work was further shaped while living overseas on the Samaná Peninsula, where she experienced firsthand what it looks like for a community to preserve its identity across generations.
Within the broader Dominican culture, she encountered a distinct community within a community, descendants of free Black Americans who emigrated from Philadelphia in 1824. For over 200 years, they have maintained their culture, Protestant faith, and a unique English Spanish Creole language. This experience deepened her understanding of cultural continuity, belonging, and the role place plays in preserving identity.
In parallel, her day-to-day life placed her in an international environment, engaging with individuals from France, Dominica, Haiti, Germany, Russia, Poland, Brazil, and several African nations. These relationships created space for conversations around culture, international real estate, import and export, and economic systems across different regions.
Equally important was the rhythm of daily life. Shared meals, gatherings, and conversations brought together people from different backgrounds in a way that made cultural exchange natural and consistent. That rhythm of shared meals and informal gatherings became more than a moment, it became a model. What began as a simple evening of cooking together, led by an aspiring chef from the Dominican Republic with others contributing side dishes and desserts, reflected the kind of organic cultural exchange that would later shape what is now known as Taste of Community.
This experience directly informs her leadership at the Bartlesville Cultural Center, where cultural preservation is not treated as a standalone effort, but integrated into community activation, civic engagement, and long term development.
Moments from everyday community life and international cultural exchange.
The inspiration for Taste of Community, a shared meal and community gathering.
Exposure to global investors and development leaders broadened her perspective
on opportunity, investment, and the role vision plays in shaping communities.
Approach
Her work is grounded in the belief that culture is not separate from development. It is foundational to it.
Communities do not grow sustainably without understanding their history, aligning their systems, and creating space for people to see themselves within that future.
Her focus is on moving ideas into coordinated action through structure, partnerships, and long term vision.