James Burnett

James and his family have been Charlottesville residents since 2017, and he has been a Live Arts devotee since seeing Fun Home in the Gibson Theater the following spring. He was the founding editor and now serves as managing director of The Trace, a national nonprofit news organization dedicated to reporting on gun violence — which is another way of saying that after spending the first two decades of his career telling stories as a journalist, he is currently getting a lot of on-the-job training in executive management and fundraising. Since launching The Trace in 2015, he’s led the growth of the organization’s annual revenues from $2 million to $5 million while overseeing a diverse newsroom that has partnered with more than 300 media outlets, ranging from The New Yorker to the Philadelphia Tribune. Earlier in his career, he worked as story editor for The New Republic; news editor for New York Magazine; and editor in chief of Boston magazine. James and his wife, Rachel, are parents to four children, and in their blended family, no one has much free time, but he has enjoyed being a Virginia Basketball Academy volunteer coach the past six seasons.

Productions