Ilano Inaugurates New Role Overseeing BAMPFA’s Marketing and Visitor Experience Teams

BAMPFA announced today the appointment of Roseli Ilano as its inaugural Director of Marketing and Audience Development. In this new senior leadership role, Ilano will oversee an eight-person professional staff comprising BAMPFA’s Marketing and Visitor Experience teams, which have been restructured into a single department to advance the museum’s audience development goals and enhance visitor experience. Ilano brings to BAMPFA a fifteen-year track record of success as a marketing leader and community builder, most recently in her outgoing role as Head of Community Marketing at Eventbrite. She begins her new role at BAMPFA on August 25.

“We are thrilled to welcome Roseli Ilano to BAMPFA. Roseli brings a dynamic mix of creativity, strategic vision, data-focused decision-making, and community-centered experience in the nonprofit and corporate sectors that will be instrumental in expanding our reach, elevating our profile, and deepening our connections with art and film audiences across the Bay Area and beyond,” said BAMPFA’s Executive Director Julie Rodrigues Widholm. “Her leadership will help usher in an exciting new chapter for BAMPFA as we continue to grow our visibility and impact.”

During her four-year tenure at Eventbrite, Ilano led a data-driven campaign to drive brand awareness and community engagement for the global ticketing platform, which serves nearly ninety million monthly users worldwide. As Eventbrite’s inaugural Head of Community Marketing, Ilano organized multiple large-scale digital and in-person events to engage new and existing audiences with the platform, increasing customer acquisition by eight thousand and contributing to $2 million in sales. Under her leadership, a new in-house social media team was hired and developed to advance the platform’s marketing goals, resulting in significant growth in followers and engagement across multiple platforms.

Prior to Eventbrite, Ilano spent four years at Pop-Up Magazine Productions, where she led the community marketing programs for both the award-winning print publication The California Sunday Magazine, and for Pop-Up Magazine—a celebrated touring “live magazine” show, presented in partnership with KQED, the San Francisco Chronicle, and WNYC among other major media outlets. As Pop-Up Magazine’s Director of Community Marketing and Partnerships, Ilano developed innovative strategies to increase audience impact and brand loyalty, including the magazine’s first-ever paid membership program along with a licensing program for new markets. As a result of Ilano’s successful marketing initiatives, Pop-Up Magazine significantly increased its live event attendance and social media engagement during her tenure.

Ilano brings to these marketing leadership positions her past experience as a community engagement professional and film producer working in the social impact space, where she collaborated with clients such as Independent Television Service (ITVS), Impact Media Partners, and multiple award-winning films. She began her career as the National Community Engagement Manager at ITVS, where she expanded the nonprofit’s Community Cinema screening series from a small number of locations to more than 125 cities across the United States.

A lifelong arts advocate and enthusiast, Ilano is the founder of ILANO, a textile project exploring weaving and natural dyes in collaboration with women-led worker cooperatives in Mexico and the Philippines. Recently, she partnered with SFMOMA to lead intergenerational artmaking workshops in conjunction with the museum’s Pacita Abad retrospective. An Oakland resident and UC Berkeley alumna, Ilano has been a longstanding member of BAMPFA for the past two decades. 

“Joining BAMPFA is both a tremendous honor and an exciting opportunity,” said Ilano. “I’ve always believed in the power of art and film to spark connection and widen the public square. I look forward to helping shape how new audiences discover, experience, and engage with BAMPFA in meaningful ways, building lasting relationships that expand our reach and create a more inclusive, vibrant community for years to come.”

Image credit

Thomas Bollier