Testimonials

Since 1995, NAS has worked with over 2,000 arts and cultural leaders in the United States and abroad in all disciplines. These experienced leaders build on the frameworks and skills they learn in our programs, and use them to make significant improvements in their organizations and in their own leadership approaches. They tell the best story about the impact that participating in NAS executive education has had on them as leaders and on their organizations.

The Team Experience

"Attending an NAS seminar with six staff members was the key to our success. We emerged with a group of core strategies with a common vocabulary and process, and were able to form the 'critical mass' to share the information with the rest of the staff and artists who weren't able to attend."

David P. Saar
Artistic Director, Childsplay

"The teams that brought their executive, program, and their marketing leadership got it right. The ideas at the seminar and the team exercises affect the entire organization. With everyone involved it's so much easier to turn the ideas into actions when you return home."

Sara Billmann
Director Marketing / Promotions, University Musical Society

"I thought Managing People was a great experience. I brought three other management staff with me, and we all got so excited about the alignment model that we have followed up with a number of meetings to refine our model for use in our workplan next year."

Kathleen Crowther
Executive Director, Cleveland Restoration Society

"Bringing a team of at least three or four people is so important to the process, it should be a requirement. The experience would be so much less powerful without this dialogue."

Scott Rowitz, Executive Director;
Brit Withey, Program Director;
Britta Erickson, Media & Industry Relations Director
Denver Film Society

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The Seminar Experience

"What sets the NAS experience apart is that you get the staff and trustee leadership in one room, with very smart professional facilitation, addressing the same strategic issues. It hugely improves your direction, focus, and collective thinking, and perhaps most important, forges working and personal bonds in many directions. This was the priceless takeaway for us. It has changed the way the Walters thinks and does business."

Gary Vikan
Director, The Walters Art Museum

"The NAS strategic planning seminar was the best training for non-profits that I have ever experienced. On an absolute basis, it was the equivalent of any course that I had as a General Manager/VP in my 25-year career at Hewlett-Packard/Agilent Technologies and probably as good as any other global company would deliver. The teachers were top notch and the material was very relevant to what we do every day. My team used it to tune our plan."

George Sparks
President and CEO, Denver Museum of Nature & Science

"The opportunity to send a team, comprising both staff and board members, to a series of executive seminars is unique and greatly advantageous to us. The seminars get us out of our daily routine, immerse us in important issues, and are a great tool for orienting new board members and staff to the work of our non-profit."

Bob Taylor
Executive Director, Great Lakes Theater Festival

"It gave us a framework to discuss and develop solutions for current staffing and resource allocation problems. It brought us closer together as a management team, and also gave us a chance to meet and learn from our peers."

Tom Kaiden
Chief Operating Officer, Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance

"The seminar made us rethink our positioning. The work challenged one of our basic beliefs and at first I recoiled from the result, but by the end of the seminar I realized that we had captured a key new idea about who we are and who we serve. The framework we learned for defining a positioning statement will continue to be a very valuable tool for us."

Edward Walker
Executive Director, Oklahoma City Philharmonic

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The Faculty

"[Strategy] fully changed the way we viewed our mission. The enthusiasm and expertise of [the faculty] pushed us to question our reason for being, allowing us to see with fresh eyes the real core of what we do."

Stephanie Small
Former Executive Director, Free Arts of Arizona
Consultant, Young and Company

"By attending the Creative Alliances workshop as a team, we were challenged to think beyond the framework of community relationship building. The NAS faculty was absolutely fantastic! The Creative Alliances workshop was not your typical workshop. The faculty kept us engaged, inspired and energized throughout the two-day workshop."

Janet Barnett
Deputy Director - Arts, Marketing, Special Services
City of Alexandria - Recreation, Parks & Cultural Activities

"We're one of the largest performing arts presenters in the country, and I found the teaching cases, the discussions, and the exercises extremely relevant to our work. The faculty for the seminar do a great job of bringing out ideas from all the different types of participants at the seminar."

Sara Billmann
Director, Marketing/Promotions, University Musical Society

"This was a fantastic presentation/seminar that was detailed and specific. I feel the time I spent with the faculty and my peers will have long-reaching influence on the way I direct my organization."

David Ellenstein
Producing Artistic Director, North Coast Repertory Theatre

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How NAS is Different

"The NAS seminars gave me tools and techniques, but probably more important, they gave me a vocabulary and a frame of reference that I could share [with staff and trustees]. As a result, we could plan better together."

Sheila Grinell
Former President and CEO, Arizona Science Center
President and CEO, Grinell LLC

"I've attended many nonprofit management seminars which provided quick tips but failed to address the more complex strategic challenges that overwhelmed my organization. I felt chronically burned out; my organization was dysfunctional and fiscally insolvent. All our energies were consumed in day-to-day triage. I'd almost given up when I found NAS. After using the tools from the NAS seminars, I'm proud to say that we are financially stable, growing at a measured pace and able to devote significant time to long-range planning. NAS helped me foster invaluable change in my organization."

Nan Elsasser
Founder and Executive Director, Working Classroom

"I think differently about things now. I have a better toolbox to evaluate what we do and to plan. I am a better executive director and a better thinker now."

Edward Walker
Executive Director, Oklahoma City Philharmonic

"Because of the NAS seminars, I have a new appreciation for professionald evelopment, and I also have new standards. A lot of the training available is taught by my peers, who are very smart professionals, but I know what they know. The NAS seminars introduce me to new ideas."

Rosemary Walsh
Director of Marketing, Childsplay

"I've been in this business a long time, and the NAS experience really does open one's mind to new ideas."

Jessica L. Andrews
Managing Director, Arizona Theatre Company

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