Blue Ribbon President Works Toward Happy Endings

It isn’t that Joanne Kozberg enjoys problems; she loves to solve them. It’s not that she likes controversy; she likes to make it result in consensus.

“I like things to work out,” said the 44-year-old brunette, leaning against “Dance Doors,” the Robert Graham sculpture at the Music Center Plaza. “My husband says I like happy endings, but I have grown to realize there is going to be controversy, and controversy is not unhealthy if you can learn from it--you have to take risks in order to grow.”

Efforts Disappointed

Those were Kozberg wisdoms in December as she got into the full swing of the first year of her three-year term as president of the Blue Ribbon. Little did she know that teachers of Los Angeles Unified School District would strike May 15 and that would cause cancellation of three of the 10 Blue Ribbon Children’s Festival performances at the Music Center. Rather than 32,000 fifth-graders attending the 19th Festival, only 24,000 will have attended by the final performance Friday, most of them from Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside and Ventura counties, others from private and parochial schools.

Disappointed Blue Ribbon members had scheduled live performances of “Billy the Kid” for five days with the Joffrey Ballet, spent months and $75,000 producing a video that was screened in fifth-grade classrooms to show Joffrey New York rehearsals and scenes from Joffrey costume and scene shops, and to prepare the children for the movements and the theme of the ballet.

Because of the strike, the difficulty in getting certified assistants to accompany children on buses to the festival, and insurance complications, about 10,000 L.A. city students were deprived of the outing. Nevertheless, all is not gloom. The Blue Ribbon has 1,000 video cassettes and study manuals which go into a permanent cultural library aimed at the fifth-grade level and available to schools. (Next year the Blue Ribbon will focus its festival on theater and make another video.)

Kozberg’s sense of integrity, judgment and forging of solutions have elevated her not only to the Blue Ribbon presidency, but also to a gubernatorial appointment on the California Arts Council, which dispenses $15.5 million annually. In January, the council elected her chairman. She also is one of two vice chairs on the Walt Disney Concert Hall committee to oversee construction of that $50-million edifice downtown.

Necessary Confrontation

She’s the daughter of the prominent cardiologist, Dr. Eliot Corday; wife of Roger Kozberg, a Johnson & Higgins vice president; mother of two, and a graduate of UC Berkeley. She also holds a master’s degree in public policy from Occidental College.

Her husband calls her tenacious. Said Joanne: “I guess I believe that out of a turn, there is a flowering; I guess I feel time is not an enemy . . . that situations that appear to be a problem can be solved. And, I am not afraid of interceding. I realize that a problem won’t go away without dealing with it.”

Wednesday she flew to Sacramento to testify before the Assembly Ways and Means Committee. “My purpose is not to lobby, but to testify on behalf of the commission and its programs,” she said. Of initial state budgeting that would cut $3 million from the arts council, she says only, “We are very hopeful that with the May revised financial figures that there will be enough resources so that the arts budget can be modified.”

Forging friendships between the private and public sectors is her specialty. But, no, she doesn’t desire public office: “I like to be part of a team. . . . I am much happier outside the spotlight.”

In the future, she’d like to move into a full-time profession (though, “I’ll always be a volunteer, too”) in the public-affairs arena. She’d like to be a part of the solutions Los Angeles craves--rapid transit, affordable housing, an answer to AIDS.

“We cannot continue to grow without thoughtful planning and accepting responsibility for the decisions. That means responsibility for financing them also. As a city, we don’t even realize the potential we have. We all have to come together. If you collaborate, a better idea can always come, because ideas build upon one another, people ignite one another.”