Youth media organization Reel Grrls has hired a new executive director to replace founder Malory Graham, who has lead the organization for a decade. New Director Robin Held comes from the Frye Art Museum, where she was a curator.

The past year has been far from usual for Reel Grrls, based at 21st and Union next to Central Cinema. Comcast threatened to pull their funding after the organization sent out a critical tweet. After getting national support, Reel Grrls told Comcast to keep their money and raised even more through private donations.

When the organization started the search, they said they were looking for someone with the following qualifications:

Our ideal candidate can: make a film, hire a new staff person, ask a donor for 10K, take out the trash, give a speech, help a teenage girl write a script, negotiate a lease, quote Maya Angelou, write a grant and bake a killer batch of chocolate chip cookies—all in the same week.

More on the new hire, from Reel Grrls:

Reel Grrls today announced the appointment of Robin Held as the new Executive Director. Held is currently the Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Collections, of the Frye Art Museum in Seattle. She will assume her post at Reel Grrls on March 1, 2012, succeeding Malory Graham, Reel Grrls’ founder, who is stepping down, after overseeing the growth of Reel Grrls during its first decade, in order to pursue her own work as a filmmaker and artist. 

 “We did a national search and were thrilled to find the new leader we were looking for right here in Seattle,” said Lucia Ramirez Levias, President of the Board of Directors of Reel Grrls. “Robin has been a key player on the transformation team at the Frye. As Reel Grrls just celebrated its tenth anniversary, she’s the right woman to build upon our success and extend the influence of the program through partnerships with cultural organizations and educational institutions in Seattle and beyond. Robin is unstoppable. She’s going to do a sensational job of inspiring more and more girls to make their voices heard.”

First as a member of the curatorial team at the Henry Art Museum, the University of Washington’s premier museum of modern and contemporary art, and since 2004, at the Frye Art Museum, Held has earned a reputation as one of Seattle’s most innovative curators of contemporary art.

In other Central District executive director news, CD Forum has launched their search for a director to replace Kumani Gantt.