Things You Were Never Taught About Your Career in Arts Management: Part 3 of 3
A Series on Arts Professionals Breaking Through and Getting Ahead
Everywhere I go, I get a version of some similar questions. When the conversation is around revenue, the questions inevitably are “How do I get my board to embrace new strategies?” or “How do I get my team members at my traditional institution to do things differently?”
When the conversation is around career frustrations, someone almost always asks if they should quit their job or leave the industry altogether because they’re at the end of their rope or just feel hopeless. Others ask about how to pivot to another role that’s different than what they’re used to doing in the industry, how to not be pigeon-holed into a box others have put them in, and how to develop their own personal brand and tell their own stories so they stand out job applications.
All of these questions are so pervasive, and all ones I’ve asked myself as well at different points of my own journey, that over the years I’ve compiled a big body of research around each of these topics. And it turns out, the research has a lot of guidance for us. I share this knowledge every year in my Uplevel leadership development program, from which we now have over 100 alumni across the U.S. and abroad.
In this three-part series (see parts one and two), I’ve been sharing stories of arts professionals who applied the research and leveled-up their leadership, no matter their role, department, or where they stood on the org chart — and in doing so, overcame career barriers they were facing. And now, in part three of this series, we get to meet three more arts managers at different organizations, different departments, different locales, different artistic disciplines, and different budget sizes. This time they faced career pivots, leveraged geographic moves, and learned that advancing your career is a team sport.
I’m so grateful to these folks for generously sharing parts of their story with you, so that you can know that 1) you are definitely not alone in navigating this industry, and 2) that being seen as a leader regardless of where you’re at and reaching your goals is absolutely possible.
Katrina F., Associate Director of Individual Giving, Detroit Opera
The setup:
In the spring of 2023, Katrina was at the end of her rope, feeling completely burned out. At the time, she was a development team of one tasked with overseeing all the fundraising for her organization, and felt like she was constantly facing the age-old rhetoric of “this is how it’s always been done.”
Katrina knew she had the knowledge at hand on how to make strategic shifts within the organization to achieve things like raising more money and expanding the audience base and donor prospect pool, but she felt like she was hitting a brick wall. She struggled with how to build consensus and get buy-in, or otherwise “manage up” to lead the change she sought.
As Katrina’s energy became more depleted, her patience was running out too. “I felt like I was in a space where I needed to pivot into a different organization or a different niche.” She became frustrated with the entire industry and wondered if staying in the field was even worth it.
What happened:
Katrina had some additional assets under her belt she knew she could harness: several years in arts management with solid experience at multiple well-known institutions, and she was already accepted into and participating in the OPERA America Mentorship Program for Women Administrators.
In other words, Katrina knew she had leadership chops but wanted some fine tuning. She decided to add to her arsenal the Uplevel coaching program, a proud repeat attendee as she had also participated in an earlier iteration of the program a few years prior. “I knew a transition was on the horizon for me, and that I needed to refresh my skills on how to get the green light I need from others, position myself in the marketplace, and bring others along with my ideas so together we could really drive growth.”
Last, Katrina wasn’t convinced she wanted to only do fundraising work going forward. She also had a passion for producing opera, working on strategic planning, and operations — things outside the typical development scope that were interesting and fulfilling to her.
Coincidentally, Katrina also had a potential geographic move on the horizon in support of her husband’s job in the military. She decided she could leverage the opportunity to look for roles in a new market, and/or keep herself open to remote work opportunities as well. With a renewed focus on what she wanted — as well as clarity on what she didn’t want from future roles and organizations — she started selectively looking at new jobs.
How it played out:
Fast forward a few months, and Katrina successfully navigated an out of state move, started a new role with Detroit Opera working on major gifts, and along the way landed some freelance consulting and independent contractor work for other performing arts organizations — including an Interim Executive Director role and projects that allowed her to take on strategic planning, copyediting, and workflow management to round out her skill set just as she had wanted.
Katrina made all this happen because, as she shared, “I became more confident in the ways in which I advocate for myself and for projects and procedures that I am involved in.” She continued, “I have a clearer roadmap for how to articulate key information, build consensus, and trust my authority as a leader and professional.”
Katrina has now been at Detroit Opera about a year at the time of this writing, and at six months in, she was already promoted to Associate Director of Individual Giving, a key role for the organization’s fundraising efforts. “I’m so proud to support the contributed revenue objectives of one of the foremost opera companies in America, and just as proud I’ve opened up new opportunities for myself beyond fundraising as well.”
“I was drawn to the concise, data-driven approach that seemed so intuitive yet so many arts organizations struggle to embrace.” — Katrina F.
Alana L., Business & Financial Analyst, Changing the Narrative
The setup:
Back in 2021, Alana was Director of Education at a mid-size orchestra, a role she had held for several years. At first, the job was a dream come true for her arts admin career, but several years in, she had become disillusioned. The silos ran deep in the organization, and Alana constantly felt a lack of support from other departments, which left her needing to do her own marketing, produce her own reports for education grants the organization had received, and even manage her own fundraisers. “My department shrank from three people to just me shortly after I was hired, and I needed to cancel two of the nine education programs I ran because I couldn’t do it all,” she shared. “I felt overworked and drained.”
The nail in the coffin came when the organization hired its sixth CEO in five years. As a result of the incredibly high turnover in leadership, Alana constantly felt the need to prove herself and was often seen as “just” the education person even though she was contributing to all departments. “I felt I was having to nickel-and-dime for every program, every budget, generating increased grant and donation income, but seeing no boost in my department’s budget,” Alana reflected. “I loved the music and the student programs, plus really enjoyed all the educational responsibilities, but knew I could offer more than just that one piece.”
What happened:
That year Alana enrolled in a then-new pilot program I offered, the Leadership Development Course for Young Professionals, where she learned concepts like how to manage up to your boss, how to get buy-in for your ideas, how to negotiate, and how to do a pre-project when pitching a new initiative. “All those concepts were revolutionary to me at the time! And I still use them to this day,” Alana said. “I learned that leadership is not a thing you have or not, but rather a set of skills you can build — this blew my mind. ‘I know how to build skills!’ I thought, ‘I can do this!’”
This was the beginning of Alana feeling a sense of agency and control in her destiny instead of resignation. She decided to go all-in on the visioning exercises in the program: “Those got me out of my panicked, burnt-out mode and into thinking ‘what do I actually want’.” Alana realized that she still had more to offer the arts as a whole, and that she wanted to stay in the industry, but that she definitely wanted to expand her scope outside of her current education work.
Her background of education-meets-fundraising-meets-marketing led her to join the Institute for Composer Diversity (ICD) as Associate Director. There she “got really excited about the analysis and advocacy work,” Alana reflected. “I saw how using data and interpreting it in a digestible way can really help enact change in our field. In combination with all of Aubrey’s course being so data-driven, the fact that I was loving seeing the impact of ICD’s analysis and reporting led me to want to take on more data analysis work.”
Alana continued building her analysis skills on the job while simultaneously taking additional courses in this area. “I finally had a direction — I knew that the arts could use more data driven decisions, not biased gut feelings or ‘it’s always been done this way’, and that if I got really good at using data and reporting, I could get my colleagues, managers, and board members on board with change.”
Fast forward to 2022, Alana enrolled in my leadership development curriculum again, by then known as the Uplevel program. This time, Alana was navigating the next phase of her career: keeping her foot in the arts while fully and completely developing her analyst chops.
How it played out:
Alana made a planned pivot outside the arts to become a full-time financial analyst, working with primarily female small business owners, helping them make sense of their data and grow their businesses. She plans to ultimately go back to a full-time role in the arts as a data and analysis expert.
“That clarity has helped ease my mind SO much,” Alana reflected. “Before it was so murky and it felt like a failure to ‘leave the arts’ when it was my dream job. Now I know I’ve made a decision not out of fear or burnout, but as an important step towards where I want to be and how I want to contribute to the field.”
As Alana continued working with female small business owners, one day a certain female small business owner trying to change the narrative for arts and culture contacted her about a part-time business analyst role. “Aubrey contacting me to become the CTN business analyst was SUCH a welcome surprise! It helps me apply my new skills to the sector I’m meant to be in, and lets me level up to engage with the business as a whole, not just be siloed into education or finance.”
“I now work 100% remote, have more time and flexibility (so I could finally get my pup Lula!), and I plan work around my travel instead of the other way around. And I get to perform again (I am a bassist in the Austin Civic Orchestra). I am learning every day, and doing work that I know is important.”
“When I transition back into a full-time arts role, I will have a whole toolkit of skills and strategies to apply every step of the way — from vetting organizations I want to work with, negotiating a salary, to getting buy-in for my ideas using financial reporting (like showing that turnover and hiring cost the company more than giving that excellent staff member a raise, or how programming more diverse works may cost rental fees, but can help bring in and retain larger audiences).”
For the nearly six years I’ve known Alana now, I have never seen her so clear on her direction as she is today. “I know that my career path will be in the arts, and this hop outside the industry is helping me develop more skills that I know will help create a healthy arts org,” she concluded. Until that day comes, I’m so grateful to get to work with her as an analyst in my own business.
“Leadership is not a thing you have or not, but a set of skills you can build.” — Alana L.
Erik S., Director of Artistic Operations, The Florida Orchestra
The setup:
A lot of times when people come to me, they’re looking for clarity. What do I want to do? How can I best serve the field while doing something fulfilling to me personally? What’s the best use of my skills and background in this industry? But Erik was at the opposite end of the spectrum — he had built his career in operations and knew he wanted to continue on that path. The trouble instead was twofold: not getting interviews for jobs he was going for, and in his then-current role, not seeing success working in groups with colleagues.
Earlier in his career, Erik was essentially a one-man department, but then when he became Director of Operations with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra (his role when he and I first met), he suddenly had a team to rely on. “Sometimes I wanted to do things on my own so that they would be done exactly how I wanted them and wouldn’t feel like I was bothering anyone else,” Erik shared. But his get-things-done mentality was inadvertently alienating his team.
On the job front, he was struggling to get past the written materials phase. Even though he had multiple peers review his materials and had positive feedback from recruiters, he just wasn’t getting interviews. “Regarding both it was frustrating because they were results that I did not expect and didn’t follow the logic that I was accustomed to.”
What happened:
Erik was determined to not ignore his frustration, but to work through it, identify where he could grow and improve, and focus on his leadership skills in his current role rather than run away or jump ship. He joined Uplevel in the summer of 2022.
Early on, Erik realized that his lack of delegating to his team was hurting, not helping, their success. And with all sorts of post-covid operational pivots at that time, the work was mounting. “I learned that the job was too big to keep as much work on my plate as I had been, and that my teammates also didn’t view it as me keeping things off of their plate, but instead as me not trusting them to do the work.” He made his primary goal to work on delegating to his team and managing up to his executive director to establish realistic expectations for what the team could deliver, on what timelines, and all feel proud of.
Soon after, Erik completed searches and onboarding for two new fantastic team members and began to notice his direct reports overcoming new challenges in their rolls. In other words, Erik’s newfound practice of letting go and empowering his team was starting to pay off. Together, the team even produced an opera — “essentially a year’s worth of work in one concert,” he described.
As for the job search, he had begun applying for other positions, “mostly to test the water and prepare, as I wasn’t quite ready to leave at this point but wanted to be at the top of my interview game once I was ready,” Erik shared.
How it played out:
That fall, just a few months after completing the Uplevel program, Erik was promoted to Director of Operations & Artistic Planning, taking on more artistic administration work. He even had several of his own arrangements performed by the Kalamazoo Symphony.
Fast forward another year or so, and Erik was finally ready to take all he had learned and move on — this time better equipped to lead and demonstrate that in his applications. “I feel as though I’m a more effective leader and am more comfortable delegating and managing when things need to be done a specific way versus just getting them done,” he reflected.
“While all musicians are important,” he continued, “a goal of mine since I first started working full-time in orchestra administration was to work alongside full-time musicians in a salary/ICSOM orchestra.” Earlier this year in spring 2024, Erik accepted the role of Director of Operations with The Florida Orchestra, and officially started mid-May.
“I feel I have the ability to bring a lot of positive change through establishing processes and procedures that have been missing, which will help lower uncertainty for staff and conductors, and help musicians perform their best on stage,” Erik concluded, thinking about his new team and organization. Just listening to how he thinks about the needs of the whole department and beyond makes it clear: his days of operating like a one-man-show are definitely over.
“I was drawn to [the research] mostly because it just seemed to make sense. It was fact/data based and not on feelings. It didn’t assume things but tested them.” — Erik S.
This concludes the series on arts professionals breaking through and getting ahead, for this year at least. I’m so grateful to the nine individuals who have so generously shared their stories over the last several months (see the other six here and here).
There’s a lot we were all never taught in how to navigate a career in arts management, but as these folks — these leaders — demonstrate, all of the barriers they faced can be overcome, and leadership skills learned. What great news for all of us.
Once a year I open enrollment to my Uplevel leadership development program. Join the waitlist to be notified of future trainings and the next cohort.
And if you’re interested in more case studies and data-backed strategies to help grow yourself professionally and better lead your arts organization, order my book, Run It like a Business: Strategies to Increase Audiences, Remain Relevant, and Multiply Money — Without Losing the Art.
About the Author
Hailed as “the Steve Jobs of classical music” (Observer) and “Sheryl Sandberg of the symphony” (LA Review of Books), Aubrey Bergauer is known for her results-driven, customer-centric, data-obsessed pursuit of changing the narrative for the performing arts. A “dynamic administrator” with an “unquenchable drive for canny innovation” (San Francisco Chronicle), she’s held offstage roles managing millions in revenue at major institutions including the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Opera, Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival, and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. As chief executive of the California Symphony, Bergauer propelled the organization to double the size of its audience and nearly quadruple the donor base.
Bergauer helps organizations and individuals transform from scarcity to opportunity, make money, and grow their base of fans and supporters. Her ability to cast and communicate vision moves large teams forward and brings stakeholders together, earning “a reputation for coming up with great ideas and then realizing them” (San Francisco Classical Voice). With a track record for strategically increasing revenue and relevance, leveraging digital content and technology, and prioritizing diversity and inclusion on stage and off, Bergauer sees a better way forward for classical music and knows how to achieve it.
Aubrey’s first book, Run It Like A Business, published in February 2024.
A graduate of Rice University, her work and leadership have been covered in the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Thrive Global, and Southwest Airlines magazines, and she is a frequent speaker spanning TEDx, Adobe’s Magento, universities, and industry conferences in the U.S. and abroad.
