In the summer of 2004, the Regional Oral History Office was commissioned by Camilla Smith to conduct a life history interview with Ruth A. Felt. The occasion for the interview was to commemorate the then upcoming 25th anniversary season of San Francisco Performances, the nonprofit performing arts presenting organization founded by Felt in 1979. In the intervening quarter century, San Francisco Performances under the leadership of Felt established itself as one of the premiere fine arts presenting organizations in the United States. Moreover, San Francisco Performances has charted new territory by commissioning innovative musical and dance compositions, by developing an educational program for high school students, and by reaching out to diverse audiences around the San Francisco Bay Area. The interviews were conducted from September through November 2004 during four separate interview sessions. Each session lasted roughly two hours. All interviews were conducted in the home of Ruth Felt in the Ashbury Heights section of San Francisco. Along with research into the history of San Francisco Performances, nonprofit arts organizations, and arts management, exploratory unrecorded interviews were conducted with Camilla Smith (San Francisco Performances board member), Marian Kohlstedt (Director of Public Relations and Publishing at San Francisco Performances), Melanie Smith (Director of Education at San Francisco Performances), as well as with Ruth Felt. As a side note, this interview only briefly covers Felts years working at the San Francisco Opera under the leadership of Kurt Herbert Adler; for more on her years with the opera, see the interview with Felt for the Adler series at ROHO.