On Leadership
What I’m Learning
This page brings together two interconnected parts of my work: the ideas I am developing in public and the leadership engagements that continue to shape me as a leader.
Through writing, fellowships, collaborations, and institutional participation across philanthropy, arts and culture, and social impact, I explore leadership as both a practice of participation and a process of inquiry.
Together, these experiences inform my thinking about leadership, organizational growth, and the systems that support lasting impact and change.
Past Leadership Engagements
Boards, fellowships, and advisory work
2025 Women inPower Fellowship
92nd Street Y
Belfer Center for Innovation & Social Impact
January 2025 - January 2026
New York City, New York
Announcing: 2025 Women inPower Fellows
As a recent Women inPower Fellow at the Belfer Center for Innovation & Social Impact at 92nd Street Y, a cross-sector leadership initiative supporting women advancing toward senior leadership across philanthropy, government, business, media, healthcare, technology, and the arts, I thought of how leadership can contribute to a more equitable and connected society.
What stayed with me the most during the fellowship was the introduction to leadership as a core infrastructure pillar that creates the conditions for individuals, ideas, and organizations to thrive over time. Read more here.
Mentor and Advisor
Wyoming University
Wyoming Innovation Partnership
Investing in Wyoming’s Creative Economy
July 19, 2024
Laramie, WY
Strengthening the Creative Economy Through Infrastructure, Not Just Capital
In my role as a mentor and topic advisor for the Wyoming Innovation Partnership’s Investing in Wyoming’s Creative Economy program, I worked with a cohort of artists and creative entrepreneurs developing ventures in film, literature, design, and community-based creative practice. This experience reinforced a broader pattern I continue to see across my work in philanthropy and fiscal sponsorship: strengthening the creative economy requires more than capital deployment. It requires aligned support systems, accessible strategic expertise, and intentional design of the intermediaries that sit between creative practice and sustainable organizational infrastructure. Read more here.
Boards & Commissions Leadership Institute
Nexus Community Partners
October 2020 - April 2021
Saint Paul, MN
APAP Leadership Fellows Program
Association of Performing Arts Professionals June 2017 - January 2019
New York City, New York
Leadership as Public Practice
Participating in the Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute shifted the way I think about public leadership and civic power. The program was grounded in a simple but transformative idea: many of the decisions that shape daily life—housing, transit, economic development, public investment—are influenced by boards and commissions that most people never hear about.
What struck me most was not just the mechanics of governance, but the question underneath it: who gets prepared, encouraged, and positioned to participate in decision-making spaces in the first place?
Unlike other leadership programs I’ve joined that focus on visibility, this program asked me to think of leadership less as visibility and more as a tool for navigating institutions while remaining accountable to the community and collective outcomes. The experience reinforced my belief that leadership is not only about occupying positions of influence, but also about widening access to influence itself. Read more here.
Leadership as Infrastructure in the Arts Ecosystem
Being selected as a Leadership Fellow with the Association of Performing Arts Professionals broadened my understanding of the potential of arts leadership beyond mere institutional management. The fellowship allowed me to view the cultural sector not as a collection of separate organizations, but as an interconnected ecosystem influenced by access, relationships, economics, and public trust.
The program was particularly impactful for me as it prompted a reevaluation of long-held assumptions within the field. This included discussions on how funding is distributed, who receives resources, how presenting and touring networks are structured, and where decision-making authority resides among institutions, funders, and intermediaries.
Today's leaders are navigating a more fragmented landscape characterized by shifting audience behaviors, limited resources, changing labor expectations, and increased pressure to demonstrate relevance.
The fellowship refined my interest in leadership that acts less like a hierarchy and more like connective tissue, linking artists to opportunities, institutions to their communities, and vision to sustainable infrastructure. Read more here.
Writing & Ideas
My published essays, frameworks, and public reflections showcase my work in the field. These writings have emerged from my experiences in philanthropy, arts and culture organizations, academic studies, internships, and leadership practices.
Bush Foundation
Leadership Programs
August 17, 2020
What is Large-Scale Change?
If you have looked at the Bush Fellowship application questions, you may have seen the words large-scale change. But what do those words mean in terms of the Bush Fellowship?
The Bush Fellowship invests in your leadership development based on your leadership track record and vision for transformational change in your community. If you become a Fellow, we are investing in you because you think of making vast changes in your community and have partnered with people to identify problems. You are considering extensive shifts in systems, processes, or patterns of outcomes. Read more here.
Bush Foundation
Leadership Programs
August 27, 2019
What is a Strong Track Record?
I will never forget it. Looking me square in the eyes, visionary artist and choreographer Liz Lerman said to me, "Resist the urge to give counsel because multiple truths exist. Questions are the product — investigative inquiry."
Her simple yet powerful words moved me. Liz is right. Questions do open the mind to think bigger and differently.
As a Bush Fellow, you must be grounded in why you show up to lead and get comfortable interrogating your values, identity, culture, and experiences, all of which profoundly and perpetually shape your vision. Read more here.
Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture
Public Affairs
October 10, 2014
A Celebration of Geoffrey Holder’s Life & Legacy
“I create for that innocent little boy in the balcony who has come to the theatre for the first time,” Geoffrey Holder told Dance magazine in 2010. “He wants to see magic, so I want to give him magic. He sees things that his father couldn’t see.”
When I think of Geoffrey Holder, a Trini dancer, choreographer, actor, composer, designer, sculptor, and painter, I cannot help but think of how this native of Trinidad and Tobago created magic in the African American experience. But unfortunately, this past Sunday, we lost Geoffrey to complications from pneumonia. He was 84. Read more here.
Syracuse University
Public Relations Writing
Arts Leadership
October 8, 2012
Thinking Beyond the Boundaries of Labels
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — There is no denying it. He is evocative, engaging, and delightfully charming. But perhaps most captivating is his infectious smile, which is so disarming. Talk to him for five minutes or talk to him for an hour; regardless, Mark Nerenhausen will leave a considerable impression on the most cynical. Few leaders can truly match Mark's achievements. His accomplishments are not in scholarly publications like Congress Considered or the Journal of Conflict Resolution. However, the underpinning drives of his life's accomplishments are all around us: art and culture. Read more here.
Interested in collaborating?
I collaborate with funders, cultural leaders, and organizations, and welcome opportunities to write, speak, and contribute to strategic conversations on culture, philanthropy, leadership, and systems change.