Jill Dineen

Executive Director
Leap Arts in Education

Jill is an accomplished, visionary leader with 20 years of community engagement, executive management and fund development experience serving diverse communities. With a collaborative, strategic approach, and a bias toward social impact, Jill adeptly leads teams and organizations through growth and change, measurably improving outcomes.

Jill leads the Bay Area’s largest arts education provider, Leap Arts in Education, serving 10,000 public school students throughout the region with top quality visual arts, performing arts and architecture education programs. Annually, Leap also produces the iconic Sandcastle Classic on Ocean Beach, drawing 5,000 people to the sand, including more than 100 architecture, engineering, construction, design and tech companies who work in partnership with students to build sky scraping sandcastles—all to support arts education.

For her previous work as Executive Director at Classroom Central, a nonprofit serving students in poverty in Charlotte, NC, Jill was honored as one of Mecklenburg Times 50 Most Influential Women, a National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) Non-Profit Leader of the Year, and one of Charlotte Business Journal’s Top Women in Business.

A Bay Area native, Jill was transformed by her early exposure to the arts, and believes that all children should have the opportunity to be inspired by, and engaged in the arts, to build academic skills and cultivate individual creativity, to be introduced to diverse cultures and perspectives, and ultimately, to achieve their fullest potential. Jill is also an accomplished blues/jazz singer, songwriter and performer, winning the Golden Gate Blues Society’s International Blues Challenge, and is releasing a new album of original work in May 2025.