40 Influential Leaders - Salvatore “Sal” Prizio

Salvatore “Sal” Prizio
Executive Director of the Capitol Center for the Arts

Salvatore Prizio built his career in New York, most recently serving as programming director and event producer at a theater collaborative in Schenectady. New Hampshire wasn’t on his radar screen until he learned about a position at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, where he just celebrated his two-year anniversary as executive director.

“I like the community-based [philosophy] of the organization,” he says. “It really feels like a part of the community.”

It is a diverse community, driven in part by the new Americans looking for opportunity in Concord. Prizio saw an opportunity for them using the two commercial kitchens at CCA. He launched a “culinary-artist-in-residence program,” which allows new Americans to access the kitchens as a springboard for their culinary enterprises. “When I went to downtown before, you couldn’t get something like Somali cuisine in downtown Concord, but now you can,” Prizio says.

“Any way we can figure out ways to use our strength to serve the downtown, we will do so,” Prizio says. CCA is also presenting a new concert series in the Heights neighborhood of Concord, where many new Americans find their first residence, and working with the residents to identify artists to perform. Prizio says he wants to change the perception of the Capitol Center of the Arts to be less of a performance venue and more of a service organization that focuses on the arts.