Professionals vs. Amateurs

Back when I was working for the American Music Center, one of the most common and maddening riddles that would come up with respect to our members was “what does it mean to be a professional composer?” The normal sense of “professional” implies earning one’s living from one’s work in that field; but only aRead More

Around the horn

And now for our semi-regular trip around the blogosphere: So this is what I’m up against in the philanthropy job market? How very, very sad. It’s hard to tell whether the writer of the column (who prefers to remain anonymous) is just feeling sour grapes or actually speaking truth to power, but I’m inclined toRead More

On the culture clash between business school and me

I should have known the very first weekend. We were all gathered in a huge hockey rink in late August. As part of orientation, the school had hired a team of consultants to come in and train us in the physical embodiment of leadership—in other words, how to act (and feel) the part of aRead More

Ding, dong

As of Monday, I have completed my first year of business school. I’m currently occupying my time trying to find a sublet in or around Palo Alto, CA, where I’ll be starting a summer internship at the Hewlett Foundation in the performing arts division. In the next few weeks, I’m going to try to kickRead More

Newspapers and Symphony Orchestras

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote up a Stanford case on the San Francisco Symphony for my Nonprofits class. The project was timely, given the recent release of the controversial Flanagan report (pdf) commissioned by the Mellon Foundation that studied the economic environment of symphony orchestras. The Flanagan report has gotten a lot ofRead More

late-April update

Some news and notes from Createquity land here. First, as I mentioned a few posts back, I gave a presentation at school on April 2 about economic development and the arts. I’m happy to email the slides to anyone who’s interested, but basically the takeaways are as follows: 1. Artists can be a driver forRead More

Liveblogging the Yale SOM Arts & Culture Conference, Part 2

Back here in A60 for the second Arts & Culture Club panel on intellectual property. The panelists include Gigi Sohn, President of Public Knowledge; Jeffrey Cunard, a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton, LLP; and Robin Batteau, an independent singer/songwriter/producer. The discussion is moderated by Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento, Esq., Director of Education for Volunteer Lawyers forRead More

Room for Creativity in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to attend Room for Creativity: A Community Roundtable on Real Estate Strategies in the Arts (pdf). The event was co-produced by the very smart people at Center for Performance Research (CPR) and Fractured Atlas, and took place at a new gallery space called Greenbelt. Greenbelt itself is something ofRead More

Another smorgasbord for today

Another smorgasbord for today: My classes for this term are as follows: the core Integrated Leadership Perspective, SOM’s flagship class that takes all of the previous perspectives and jumbles them up into a potent stew; Strategic Management of Nonprofit Organizations, continuing on from earlier in the semester; Managing Organizational Politics, an extremely popular elective focusingRead More