- June 18, 2026
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Two years had passed since Tania Castroverde Moskalenko was uprooted from her native Cuba when her family immigrated to Miami as political refugees and her parents bought their first home in their adopted country.
As the truck filled with new furniture for the three-bedroom, one-bathroom ranch pulled up to the driveway on a Saturday morning, her excitement built as she anticipated what the first item off the truck might be.
Would it be a new bed? A dining room table? Perhaps a sofa?
“Instead, it was a piano,” Castroverde Moskalenko said.
“I hadn't even remembered that my mother was a pianist. All the furniture was put in its place, and that evening my mom sat down to play at the piano. As she started playing, she started crying. I was so taken aback by this, and I understood the power of music and the power that moment had for my mother. Through that art form it captured everything she had been through — leaving her family behind, leaving her country behind. I was just really touched by that moment.”
It was that experience — that moment — when the CEO of the Sarasota Performing Arts Foundation recognized the power of the arts and the impact it can have on all walks of life. It was also the foundation on which she built a lifetime first as a performer and later an executive, all with an eye toward bridging socio-economic divides by bringing art and culture to the masses.
Accessibility to the arts is at the foundation of Castroverde Moskalenko’s administrative career, for her refugee family lacked the means to attend live performances of theater, music and dance. Inspired by her mother’s piano playing, she gravitated toward classical music. Her youthful exposure to the genre was primarily via a radio program hosted by Carl Haas that she would listen to on her nightstand clock radio.
“That's how I used to get my fix of classical music, orchestra and chamber music because I did not have the means to attend the theater,” she said. “That has been the impetus for me going to different communities when I have been invited to build on their arts programs, or just build the community through arts and culture.”
Beginning in 2005, such invitations led Castroverde Moskalenko to Germantown, Tennessee; Carmel, Indiana; and Chicago before returning to Miami. In February 2024, she was invited to Sarasota by the SPAF board to lead its quest to build an inclusive, accessible venue in the envisioned Sarasota Performing Arts Center.
Two years after experiencing the musical epiphany she wouldn’t fully realize at the time, Castroverde Moskalenko was introduced by a friend to ballet at age 10, attending one of her recitals.
“I was just mesmerized by all of it coming together — the music, the movement, the costumes, the lighting — and that's how I fell in love with ballet and ended up training as a ballet dancer.”
By age 12, she was fully immersed in the performing arts. She graduated from University of Memphis with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with an emphasis on theater and dance with a minor in music, combining all of her favorite disciplines. A career as a ballet dancer, however, can be fleeting, and lacking a formal education in arts administration, “I really just stumbled into it,” she said.
As her career advanced, she would later earn certifications at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School as well as a Master of Arts at Indiana University School of Philanthropy. Along the way, she found her passion on the administrative side.
“What I learned was that I really loved it, because it gave me the opportunity to reach out into communities that normally did not have access to the arts, did not have the means to attend the arts,” Castroverde Moskalenko said. “I realized that I could make a much more powerful difference in that position versus continuing to dance. And our bodies give out at some point.”
During her first administrative job in 2005 as executive director of Germantown Performing Arts Centre near Memphis, Castroverde Moskalenko said she recognized the lack of arts exposure opportunity for youngsters in the inner city. Taking the company into the schools for performances, she learned many children had never even seen the nearby Mississippi River.
"I've heard the same thing here in Sarasota, that there are kids who really don't partake of the bay or of the water," she said. "It's a driver to ensure that this next iteration of infrastructure for the city of Sarasota is accessible to everyone in Sarasota."
By the time Castroverde Moskalenko arrived here in late 2023, Renzo Piano Building workshop had already been selected to design the Sarasota Performing Arts Center. Not only tasked with leading the development effort from the conceptual stage, she also had to build a staff.
“When I started, we had six full-time positions and two temps, and today we have 17 full-time employees,” he said. “We have built our fundraising team and our marketing team. We have new executive team members, so we've strengthened our team to be ready for this campaign.”
The capital campaign, though, cannot begin until there is a building to sell. The foundation and the city have yet to sign a years-delayed implementation agreement, which will advance the project from concept to the design stage.
That next step now appears on hold at least until after the November election when the statewide referendum on property taxes is on the ballot.
If approved, its impact on the tax increment financing district surrounding The Bay park — which produces the revenue for the public half of building the park and everything within its 53-acre boundary — will likely be significant.
“I think that that will have an impact on what happens, but the reality, I believe, is that we do need a new performing arts center,” Castroverde Moskalenko said.
Moving toward the implementation agreement has taken longer than expected, but the project has been revised, relocated within the park and, with needed public funding estimate at upwards of $88 million, funding it remains the final obstacle.
With the total project cost estimated at $260 million to $290 million, Castroverde Moskalenko's team is responsible for raising the balance after public funding's contribution.
“I really have been fortunate in my career that I've always been called the places where I was needed,” she said. “I haven't necessarily taken over the easiest jobs. There have always been challenges.”
Challenges, she said, she is ready to face.
“I come from a family that got on a plane with nothing and came to a new country without even knowing the language, so I would say that also informs the work that I do,” Castroverde Moskalenko said. “It's just the tenacity and resiliency of that experience.”
