Future Leadership™

Future Leadership is aimed at cultivating the next wave of arts and cultural executives, and equipping them with the expertise they will need to excel in top management positions within the next five to seven years. The approaching retirement of long-standing executives across the entire nonprofit sector presents a momentous challenge for the cultural field as well. With smart investment today, together we can transform this looming change into a creative opportunity.

A unique approach

Future Leadership is a partnership between NAS and you – a chance for us to collectively develop exactly the professional development experiences needed for our next wave of top executives. We will use online tools, such as the Future Leadership Program Design Blog, to "co-author" new services and events with you and your colleagues. NAS will maintain this "public square" throughout the life of the program, and we’ll contribute our resources and expertise to help design and deliver the highest quality professional development events and services. It is a novel community experiment but one we believe can pay great rewards.

A role for current and prospective leaders

We hope you’ll join us in this experiment. Investment in future leadership not only benefits today's emerging and heir apparent leaders, it amplifies new, creative voices within all of our arts and cultural organizations. We will guide the Future Leadership program to engage leaders throughout our sector:

• Prospective leaders looking to build the skills they need to support the next chapter in their careers
• Current executives working to move their vision forward by building the expertise and loyalty of their most talented staff
• Board members focused on the long-term stewardship of their organizations by ensuring a deep pool of talent for their future executive teams

This combined expertise and experience creates a vibrant ecology for arts and cultural leadership and leadership development.