Bio + Work History
In 1995, Gina Montana started her career in festival production at the iconic New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Over the years, she worked her way up from the entry level administrative assistant position to a full time, seasonal job as the Crafts Department Administrator. In the Crafts Dept. Administrator position, Montana provided overall management and team coordination to all areas of Jazz Fest Crafts, The Grandstand and Heritage Stage presentations. Subsequently, she was promoted to manage and coordinate the Congo Square African Marketplace. For 10 years, Montana worked concurrently at two (2) major events in New Orleans, the Jazz Fest and Essence Music Festival.
Montana was a charter member of the original Essence Music Festival production team and worked at Essence Fest since its inception in 1995. In 2008, Montana Productions LLC was chartered in the State of Louisiana. As a small business owner, Montana worked in collaboration within the auspices of amazing teamwork and the original leadership team at Essence. Montana Productions was a featured small business stakeholder and Independent Contractor at Essence Festival. Professional growth, development and progress from an employee to Independent Contractor and business owner was a life changing event.
For over 29 years, Montana provided creative direction, professional excellence and team leadership as the producer director of the Essence Marketplace experience. The Essence Marketplace was the premier consumer shopping experience at the Festival. Montana and team managed over 300+ (10'x10') vendor booths including fine art, fine craft, small business retail shops, African art, beauty product vendors, non-profit community booths, celebrity meet and greets and celeb merch booths. The Montana Productions team also managed onsite ops and logistics at the Essence Marketplace, Beauty, Celeb Zone + Community exhibits.
Management of vendor load-in, load-out, Convention Center show floor supervision, art curation, vendor contracts, liability insurance, City and State sales tax collection, vendor licenses are just a sampling of Montana Productions diverse scope of management.
Essence Celeb Zone, Essence Community Outreach, Essence Beauty Marketplace were featured venues managed directly by Montana Productions at the Morial Convention Center daytime events.
With a unique and diverse professional career, Montana also worked as a full time employee at Ochsner Medical Center, Main Campus. In 2008, a temp job at Ochsner led to the creation of a permanent position as Special Services Coordinator. In this professional role, Montana managed and curated the Healing Arts Program, Rotating Art Exhibit at Ochsner. She also provided administrative support and management to Ochsner's Volunteer Department and the Patient Experience Team. The time working at Ochsner is in addition to her festival production work which occurred concurrently.
Montana worked for three (3) years at the Voodoo Experience + Art Music Festival. With amazing teamwork and collaboration with Voodoo Fest executive leadership, she helped to establish the festival's Artist Marketplace. Montana was the creator and founding director of the Artist Marketplace at Voodoo Fest located in New Orleans City Park.
Montana is currently working as an Independent Contractor as the Creative Project Director with JAMNOLA 2.0. Montana's areas of responsibility includes project management, development of administrative infrastructure and admin processes. She is working with a team of lead artists, local New Orleans creatives and company leadership to create and develop the JAMNOLA experiential museum and contribute creatively to JAMNOLA 2.0 art installations.
Gina Montana is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana and she started masking in the Black Masking Indians, Mardi Gras Indian tradition in 1995. She is the historic Big Queen Yellow Pocahontas and learned how to sew the beadwork from her cousin and mentor, the legendary Big Chief Allison "Tootie" Montana.
She is also an Actor appearing in featured supporting roles in local movie productions. A highlight of Montana's acting career is a supporting role in the award winning, Oscar nominated film "Beasts of the Southern Wild" in the role of Miss Bathsheba.
Montana was educated in Orleans Parish Public Schools. She attended Ben Franklin Sr. High and John McDonogh Sr. High. She also attended Columbia University in the City of New York.
Montana is a long time resident in New Orleans' Mid City neighborhood. She enjoys spending time with her beautiful daughter Jahia, who also helps manage the family owned business.
