Jeff Curtis is the Chief Executive Officer of the Portland Rose Festival Foundation, the nonprofit organization that produces one of the world’s top special events, the Portland Rose Festival. Originally hired as a sponsorship manager over 20 years ago, and later promoted to Director of Sales & Marketing, Jeff has served as the festival’s top exec since 2004.
His 15 years as CEO can be most accurately summarized as a period of growth and financial stabilization. The Rose Festival has re-built its reserves, pioneered sponsorship strategies and modified its programming to meet a changing and diverse community. Most recently, Jeff led his team as the Portland Rose Festival transitioned into a series of virtual events, Parading in Place, to continue meeting the needs of a changing community amidst the pandemic, while staying true to the time-honored traditions of the Portland Rose Festival. Jeff is a graduate of the inaugural class of Leadership Portland, and a past Chair of both the IFEA Foundation Board and the IFEA World Board.
