Elena Schmitz is the British Council’s Head of Arts Wales, where she leads the implementation of complex, high-value, arts and creative industry programmes in Wales and provides strategic leadership for the British Council’s arts work in and for Wales. Before taking up this role in 2024, she was a member of the British Council’s UK Arts & Creative Economy Advisory Group and has more than 20 years’ experience of working in highly skilled roles in the Welsh arts sector. She held senior roles with leading UK contemporary circus company NoFit State Circus and Wales’ national company for literature development, Literature Wales. She is a British-German dual national, and an alumna of the Centre for British Studies at Humboldt University, Berlin.