Raised in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood in a home filled with music and dancing helped shape Luis Ruiz’s desire to pursue a singing career.
Now he’s shaping far more as Mesa’s director of arts and culture.
“Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, when I was growing up, the family I grew up with had just come from Cuba,” he explained. “So they were still celebrating like they were in Cuba, which is full of music. …Weekends were full of music, full of dancing. That’s just part of the culture.”
As the city’s recently hired arts and culture director, Luis F. Ruiz Jr. has big plans for Mesa.
He sang in choirs and decided he wanted to major in music.
Ruiz attended Dade Community College, where he received an associate’s in music. He then went to the University of Miami and earned a music business degree.
“I thought I wanted to be a singer,” he recalled recently. “I eventually trained as a classical tenor in college. But when I went in for the auditions, I realized I was not meant for Broadway or for the stages of The Met.”
So he set his sights on a career as a record producer in Los Angeles.
“I was applying to all the major record labels out in LA at the time – all of them and even in New York,” Ruiz said. “It was like, that was my next move. The competition was stiff and it didn’t work.”
Then he applied and got hired by the Greater Miami Youth Symphony, which “was my first entree into arts administration.”
That job led to a 30-plus career in municipal and university cultural programming for Ruiz.
He pretty much hit the ground running when he came on board in October. That’s because he’s no stranger to Mesa or to how its government functions.
Ruiz was the city’s deputy director for Parks and Recreation from 2019-24, which included overseeing the commercial operations for iconic venues, including the Mesa Convention Center, The Post, Mesa Amphitheatre and the Office of Special Events.
“The learning curve is a different speed,” Ruiz said, noting that Parks and Recreation and Arts and Culture are cousin departments. “We serve many of the community’s needs in similar ways, and we provide enrichment and we contribute to a thriving community together.
“So the learning curve is about knowing what makes this department tick and what will keep it ticking.”
It was serendipitous that Ruiz found the job opening.
The position was left vacant – filled by an interim, after the previous director Richard Parison was let go after five months in July 2024 following his arrest on suspicion of disorderly conduct and assault at a pool in the community he lived at.
Ruiz noted that he had wanted the director’s job, but it went to Parison instead. So Ruiz left to become director of Parks, Recreation, Arts and Culture with the City of Lawrence in Kansas.
“I thought that I was going to be there for the rest of my career, for another 10 years,” the 58-year-old said.
But fate had other plans.
While at the airport on a social trip back to Phoenix, where Ruiz still owned a house in the Arcadia neighborhood that he rented out, a job ad popped up on his phone.
“I look at it and it’s this position,” he said. “It’s the job I wanted but Richard got that job.”
Without hesitation, he applied, went through the selection process and landed back in Mesa. Over 100 applicants applied for the job, according to the city.
“I’m absolutely thrilled to be back,” said Ruiz. “I’ve known many of the people that I work with now for many years, and I respect them very much.”
Ruiz heads a department with a roughly $23-million budget this fiscal year and a staff of 200 full-time and part-time employees and volunteers.
He’s in charge of some of the region’s most celebrated cultural institutions, including Mesa Arts Center—one of the largest comprehensive arts facilities in the country — the innovative idea Museum and the renowned Arizona Museum of Natural History.
Projects that’ll happen under his watch include Phase 2 upgrades for the idea Museum and possibly a major redo of the Museum of Natural History. Council in June gave the go-ahead for the history museum to begin concept and program designs.
“We need to continue that growth and that excitement, so that people do want to come in,” Ruiz said. “But we also have to get out to them. It’s not one or nothing.”
Ruiz is looking into how arts and culture can be even more accessible for the community. Foot traffic at all three venues dropped in Fiscal Year 2024-25 from Fiscal Year 21-22 numbers, according to the city.
“This is a two-way relationship,” Ruiz said. “They come to us, and we want to make sure that we’re going to them and meeting where they are as well.
“It’s difficult for somebody in Southeast Mesa to come up here on a regular basis. So the need is for us to be out in the community more than we are. We need to enhance that – how close can we get to their front door, to their park, to their library?”
Currently Mesa Arts Center has a Mobile Art Based Engagement Lab dubbed Mabel that goes out into the community and the natural history museum has the Mobile Exploration and Discovery Machine or MEAD machine, which travels to schools bringing interactive science and history.
“We’re mobile right now, we’re hoping to get more mobile,” Ruiz said. “So really, I think the biggest need is an awareness of what we do and that it doesn’t have to happen within the four walls of these buildings.”
Important to Ruiz is growing a patron base with the Latino community, which comprises about 28% of the city’s population. (He’s been meeting with Latino organizations).
“We haven’t had a stable Latino leader of the Mesa Art Center and the department for many, many years, if ever,” he said. “The Latino populations are the ones that are growing. I’m not saying that I am so focused on that but it has to be part of the conversation.”
Although the Mesa Arts Center hosts the annual Día de los Muertos Festival, a celebration of Latin American art and culture, Ruiz wants to do a better job with the programming.
“There is a big faction of the community that wants to see themselves in events,” he said. “We may be offering something but when somebody looks like you, it may feel a little different.
“And again, it’s not that I’m hyper-focusing on that but I do bring that kind of that perspective and that needs to be seen and understood and included and considered and represented.
“We can do a better job of some of those. Whether it’s performing arts or it’s within the museums- what kind of exhibits are they bringing in, what kind of artists.
“So it’s not just about the audience but it’s about the many tentacles that we touch as a department, as institutions.”
And that includes hiring practices, ensuring that the people who are hired, regardless of the color of their skin, understand the greater community “and how we need to reach out to all of our residents,” according to Ruiz.
That goes for visitors, as well.
“They bring taxes in, they bring bed taxes when they stay in our hotels,” Ruiz said. “They bring money from outside and they spend money at restaurants. So you know, we’re trying to reach out to the entire community, so we need to program for that.
“It’s more about inclusivity than segregation or focus, it’s more how do you bring all audiences together at one time? How can we have that span of engagement, where you have the spectrum of residents that make up Mesa and the region.”
He’s also honed in on continuing to build and strengthen partnerships with the community, foundations and corporations and “integrate into the economic development fabric of the city” – which will help sustain art and cultural amenities especially as the city will be looking at a second year of across-the-board spending cuts in the budget.
“It is expensive to run these buildings,” Ruiz said. “How in a shrinking economy do you continue to maintain these buildings in which we do our arts and our research and our science and our classes and our performances. How do you maintain those on a shrinking budget?
“So the opportunities here are greater partnerships. We need to work greater with our foundations. We need to seek new revenue streams, new funders, new sponsors, working outside of the dependency on the city itself.”
Although his busy schedule leaves Ruiz with virtually no social life he still finds time to play the piano almost every night at his home
“I sing to my piano,” he said. “One of my great desires and every city I’ve worked in is to join the Gay Men’s Chorus. But I work evenings and I work odd hours. I can never commit to a Tuesday evening rehearsal, ever.”
Ruiz, who is divorced, has three adult daughters. He said he didn’t realize that he was gay until he was 50 years old.
“It is a life change for me that is part of my life story,” he said. “That is part of my life experience, how people evolve. You think you’re one thing and in the end, you’re not. And it makes you even more complete when you are.”
The evolution also came with his career aspiration.
Ruiz said it wasn’t his intention to work for city government, which he’s done now for over 20 years.
“So life took me in a different direction,” Ruiz said. “And I am so happy that that happened.
“I’m thrilled to be in a position where I get to have conversations every day with people who think like me, who are community minded and artistically minded and intelligent and creative.
“We are above all City of Mesa employees who deliver a service that we feel is critical for the enrichment of our community, young and old.”
But in the end, he pointed out, “I am a musician at heart and an arts administrator by profession.”