Amy Van-Baaren (GB)

Amy Van-Baaren has been appointed as the inaugural Chief Impact and Culture Officer at electronic music platform Resident Advisor.

Amy’s career has progressed through the ranks of RA, having started as an intern in RA’s Berlin office in 2012.

Born in 1984 to Welsh-Dutch parents and raised in the South Wales valleys, Amy’s career in music began in 2009 when she opened a club in a bank vault in Cardiff, promoting parties under the name ‘backroom’. She joined RA’s London HQ as Festival Coordinator, later stepping up to Head of Festival Partnerships before more recently moving into the Head of Community role. In May 2022, RA established a new governance board with community representation at its core. Amy joined the inaugural Board as a staff representative.

In 2014, Amy created the first Cycle2ADE, raising over £100,000 for Bridges for Music who built a music and entrepreneurship school in a township in South Africa with the funds and have continued the cycle to this day. Amy has been leading RA’s philanthropic efforts ever since, which since 2014, have raised over £500,o00 for good causes and initiatives around the world including several fundraising events with RA's long-term charity partner Choose Love. This work led to her being nominated and added to the She Said So Alternative Power 100 Music list in 2021.

The Chief Impact and Culture Officer will be responsible for the delivery of one of RA’s core objectives; giving back to the communities we serve, as well as overseeing the internal company culture, community partnerships and RA’s non-profit jobs board Doors Open.

In addition to her RA responsibility, Amy sits on the Board of New Pathways, a Welsh charity which provides support to those affected by sexual violence; is an Advisory member for In Place of War, a charity which uses creativity in places of conflict as a tool for positive change and a founding member of the amateur women’s football team, The Hackey Parrots.

On the appointment, Amy said: “I’m first and foremost a raver and having worked at RA for over a decade, I am as excited to be here today as I was when I joined in 2012. I’m delighted to step into this new role which further demonstrates that RA is proactive in putting the community and its users first and having a positive impact beyond the dancefloor.”

Resident Advisor CEO, David Selby said;

“Amy has as an impressive track record of delivering great work from RA with projects like the inaugural cycle to ADE in 2014, our first exhibition Respect the Architects and Access All Areas. I’m delighted to be announcing her step up into this newly created role, which further cements our commitment to our community impact work and wider mission to create a more sustainable ecosystem for the electronic music community. One of the things I’m most excited about is Amy developing new RA foundation, which we hope will increase the scale and scope of our community impact work. We’ll be announcing further details on this in the coming months.”