BEL CANTO INSTITUTE: SAN MIGUEL
A US non-profit corporation under
IRS section 501(c)(3). All donations
are tax deductible from US income tax.
Excellence in the Arts Award
The Award for Excellence in the Arts honors individuals who have distinguished themselves
through their contributions to the arts in San Miguel.
Honorees of the Bel Canto Institute Award for Excellence in the Arts should be recognized leaders in one or more artistic areas who have made a difference in their art in San Miguel. Influencing or assisting in art forms beyond their own and making connections within the native Mexican culture would be additional positives. Honorees can be artists themselves or influential people
who have supported the arts or a specific art form significantly.
Susan Page
The 2026 recipient of the
Bel Canto Institute
Award for Excellent in the Arts
Susan has made a career of creating programs where she identifies a need.
She began her career as a Methodist campus minister, where where she interviewed students and designed programs to meet the needs they expressed. Next, when she volunteered at Planned Parenthood in Oakland and saw that many of their clients were students at the University of California, she and a colleague prepared a proposal for the Student Health Service and were hired to establish the Contraception Counseling and Education Clinic there. While at the university, she also pioneered one of the first ever Human Sexuality Counseling Services on a college campus.
When she became the Executive Director of a nonprofit for Child Abuse Prevention, she saw a major need and founded a badly needed shelter for battered women in the Bay Area, called Battered Women’s Alternatives.
As a single person seeking a relationship and finding no books useful to her, she was inspired to write one herself. The book is entitled, If I’m So Wonderful, Why Am I Still Single? and turned out to be a bestseller landing her three appearances on Oprah Winfrey plus workshops for singles that took her to eight States and five foreign countries with her message. When she followed her own advice and married the man of her dreams, she began innovative marriage enrichment workshops for couples and wrote three more books about that work.
Then, when she and her husband moved to San Miguel de Allende in 2003, she found there was nothing going on for writers. So once again, she filled the vacuum by founding the San Miguel Writers’ Conference and Literary Festival, now in it 23rd year, which, as we know, has become one of the premier literary events on this continent and has put San Miguel on the literary map of the world.
Susan has also founded two other San Miguel organizations: The Brian Exchange and the crowd funding organization, 100 Plus Who Care.
Previous Honorees
2025 - Sylvia Bussey
Born and raised near Innsbruck, in the heart of Austria’s majestic Alps, Sylvia grew up in a home where music and the arts were as natural as the mountain air—an integral part of daily life and family tradition. With a strong foundation in languages and education, she pursued academic studies across Europe and Latin America, earning multiple degrees. After completing her studies
in Paris, France, she moved to Mexico City, where she graduated from UNAM in 1989. Her professional path has been marked by a rich international career in education and leadership, with roles across Europe, the United States, and Latin America. A lifelong advocate for cross-cultural understanding and the transformative power of learning, she continues to foster global
dialogue through her work.
Married to Mark Bussey since 1988, she is the proud mother of three and a devoted grandmother to three young Austrians. She sees family as one of nature’s greatest masterpieces and cherishes it as life’s most profound blessing. Sylvia has been a part of the San Miguel community for over 30 years.
Since 2016, she has served on the board of directors of Casa Europa México and was honored to assume the role of president in December 2023.
2024 - Joan Mitchell
Joan Mitchell retired to San Miguel de Allende, GTO, seven years ago after a distinguished professional career as a language professor, higher education administrator and fundraising executive. She holds a B.A. degree in French from Wilson College, Chambersburg, PA and graduate degrees in French, education, and information science from Harvard University and the University of Pittsburgh.
Her teaching career ranged from positions at Duquesne and Carnegie-Mellon Universities to an assignment at St. Edmund’s Academy in Pittsburgh, PA, where her French students ranged from 5-13 years of age, and which, she says, was by far the most challenging work.
After 17 years as a university library administrator she began her fund-raising career at Georgetown University, where she held the position of Director of Development Midwest USA Region, and then Director of Development for Student Affairs. After 7 years at Georgetown she was made VP for University Advancement at Marymount University of Virginia, a post that she also held later at her alma mater, Wilson College.
After retiring from higher education, Ms. Mitchell focused her fund-raising and management skills on the not-for-profit sector and the arts, serving for eight years as a board member, four of those as board chair, of the historic Capitol Theatre in Pennsylvania, then as fund-raising consultant to Jovenes Adelante, Feed the Hungry, and the San Miguel Instituto de Bel Canto, all NGO’s based in San Miguel de Allende, GTO.
A music student since childhood, Ms. Mitchell has been an opera lover since the age of 10, when a doting uncle began to teach her and then took her to the Metropolitan Opera for the first time when she was 14. In September 2017, she accepted the responsibility of bringing the MetOpera National Council (MONC) auditions to Mexico for the very first time. This required that she lead a fund-raising campaign which exceeded its goals and provide leadership for the planning and execution of the auditions, which brought 34 singers from all parts of Mexico to San Miguel de Allende on November 8, 2018. In June, 2019 she became president of the San Miguel MetOpera Trust, A.C., formed to ensure the future of the MetOpera auditions as an annual event in Mexico and to celebrate them as a milestone in the history of opera in Mexico.