Festival at Sandpoint announces Executive Director Ali Baranski’s departure

By Reader Staff

The Festival at Sandpoint Board of Directors announced Nov. 7 that Executive Director Ali Baranski will step down from her role to focus on personal and family health. 

“We would like to sincerely thank Ali Baranski for her immense dedication and transformative leadership of the Festival at Sandpoint,” the board stated. “Her six-year tenure represents one of the most challenging and critical chapters in the organization’s history.”

Baranski stepped in as interim executive director in 2019, coinciding with the onset of the yearslong lawsuit over whether the nonprofit organization could prohibit weapons on publicly owned War Memorial Field, which it leases from the city of Sandpoint for the annual summer concert series.

The suit was eventually settled in favor of the city and Festival; though, in the meantime, Memorial Field underwent a sweeping redesign that replaced the longtime grass surface with artificial turf. That change further complicated the Festival’s operations and added substantial costs to putting on the event — made even more difficult by the COVID-19 pandemic, which the Festival also weathered under Baranski’s leadership. 

Finally, in more recent years, the organization instituted a number of new policies such as no-reentry, banning outside liquids and hard-sided coolers, and other measures that rankled many concertgoers. Still, the Festival persisted under Baranski’s tenure.

Upon becoming executive