Linda Shelton has been the Executive Director of The Joyce Theater Foundation since 1993. She was highlighted as one of “The Most Influential People in Dance Today” by Dance Magazine in 2017. She also sits on the boards of Dance/NYC, Dance/USA, and has served as a Tony Awards nominator. Under her leadership, The Joyce received the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Liberty Award in 2011 and the William Dawson Award for Programmatic Excellence and Sustained Achievement in Programming in 2019. In this episode, Linda and Erik talk about developing the appropriate purview for a board of directors and the Joyce Theater’s community in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood. They also discuss the joint effort between Eliot Feld and Cora Cahan to transform the former movie house into a renowned home for dance.

Cameron Herold is an executive coach, best-selling author, and Founder of the COO Alliance. Cameron coaches leaders primarily in the commercial space but has valuable lessons to share with nonprofit arts managers about leadership, recruiting, and managing teams. In this episode, Erik and Cameron talk about the importance of hiring the right people to drive an organization’s success, the value of keeping employees happy, how to spend your hours at work efficiently, and establishing a company culture that is reflected externally as much as it is internally.

Ben Cameron is the President of the Jerome Foundation and former Program Director for the Arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which received the National Medal for the Arts from President Barack Obama. Ben also has extensive expertise in grantmaking for the arts. In this episode, Erik and Ben talk about the ideal role of the Board of Directors, the importance of defining the values that underlie an organization’s mission, and how the arts can help create unity in our divisive political climate.

Since CI to Eye’s launch in 2017, Erik Gensler asks guests an important question at the end of each episode. He asks, “If you could broadcast to executive directors, leadership teams, staff, and board of 1,000 arts organizations, what advice would you provide to help them improve their business? This is called their CI to Eye moment, and we’ve compiled last year’s moments in this special episode.

Chris Boneau is the co-founder of Boneau/Bryan-Brown. Since founding his theatrical press agency with partner Adrian Bryan-Brown in 1991, Chris has represented over 400 plays and musicals which have won 222 Tony Awards and 11 Pulitzer Prizes. In this episode, Erik and Chris talk about his experience doing press for notable Broadway productions like Angels in America with director George C. Wolfe. They also discuss the challenges of pitching institutional stories, what it’s like to work with A-list celebrities, and how theater criticism has evolved.

Jessica Schmidt is the Principal Consultant at Orchestrate Inclusion. Before her work as a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant to arts organizations, she led education and community engagement work at Boston, Pittsburgh, and Dallas Symphony Orchestras. In this episode, Erik and Jessica talk about her experience implementing DEI initiatives in orchestras and processing change in a world that is often steeped in tradition. They also discuss how to broach difficult conversations, and define “privilege,” “microaggressions,” and other important DEI terms.

Eduardo Vilaro is the Artistic Director and CEO of Ballet Hispánico. He’s led the organization since 2009 but first joined the company as a dancer in 1985. Eduardo oversees both the artistic and administration of the company. In this episode, Erik and Eduardo talk about how the company’s emphasis on Latinx culture manifests throughout the organization, from what’s on stage, to the staff and board. They also discuss the politics of being a Latinx dance company in America today.

Dr. Andrew Simnick is the Senior Vice President for Finance, Strategy, and Operations at The Art Institute of Chicago. He and his team have applied data and analytics to decision-making across many areas of their organization, including building a fantastic model that can accurately predict weekly attendance at the museum. In this episode, Erik and Andrew talk about this model and other tools he and his team have built, the importance of starting not with data, but with the right questions, and ensuring your organizational culture is ready to put insights into action.

At Capacity Interactive, we get asked a lot of questions about digital marketing for arts organizations. In this episode, we have compiled some of the most frequently asked questions from our teams and asked our Vice President of Client Strategy, Ashley Dunn Gatterdam, to answer them with Erik. In this episode, Erik and Ashley talk about how you should approach benchmarking your results to your peers, why you should not be buying ads on your local newspaper’s website, how frequently to post on social media, and much more!

Karen Brooks Hopkins is the President Emerita of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), where she worked from 1979 until her retirement in June 2015. Crain’s NY named her one of the “50 Most Powerful Women in New York.” Karen recently completed a term as a Senior Fellow in Residence at the Mellon Foundation, where she researched anchor institutions. She is also the author of the book, Successful Fundraising for Arts & Cultural Organizations. In this episode, Erik and Karen talk about how arts organizations should adopt an anchor mission to better serve their communities, and what an anchor institution is. They also discuss how chain stores are a threat to the future of cultural districts, and how running a successful fundraising campaign is very much like mounting a military operation.