Recognized as one of the top CEOs you need to know in 2009 by The Gazette of Politics and Business, featured in Women Business Leaders of Maryland 2010, and a 2011 recipient of the Friend of Glen Echo Park Award Suzan Jenkins is a visionary CEO with a knack for leading cultural initiatives. She has spearheaded organizational and programmatic development in the nonprofit arts and culture sector from world-renowned organizations such as the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Recording Industry Association of America. She is a strategic thinker and team-builder who develops innovative projects that respond to and cultivate communities and is ingenious at crafting policy and forging partnerships and collaborations in the global marketplace. Jenkins is the co-founder of the Nonprofit Energy Alliance, an alliance of like-minded nonprofits who have joined together to use their collective purchasing power to not only secure competitive electricity supply at lower cost, but to protect the environment, free up resources for programming, and build a greener economy.

Jenkins has an M.B.A. from the University of Maryland, a B.S. in management/psychology from the University of Maryland, and an associates degree in psychology from the University of Texas, Brownsville (formerly Texas Southmost College).

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Private-Sector Funding in the New Normal

Laura Adlers is the National Program Manager of artsVest™, a flagship program of Business for the Arts in Toronto, Canada. artsVest is an innovative matching incentive and sponsorship training program designed to stimulate business investment in the arts. As Canada's national association of business leaders who support the arts for more than 35 years, Business for the Arts is dedicated to strengthening arts and culture across the country by connecting arts organizations to business patrons and volunteers through programs, advocacy and research, forums and surveys, and national awards.

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Private-Sector Funding in the New Normal

Kevin Cunningham is an award-winning, New York-based interdisciplinary artist and entrepreneur. He is the founder and Executive Artistic Director of 3-Legged Dog Media and Theater Group and 3LD Art & Technology Center, 3-Legged Dog’s multi venue high tech development studio in Lower Manhattan. He is also an adjunct professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at Columbia University and is building a new Interdisciplinary Arts graduate program there. He also focuses on arts policy, disaster recovery for the arts, and business innovation for the nonprofit arts.

His artistic focus over the last 30 years has been on the creation of his own large-scale interdisciplinary artwork and on the creation of artists’ tools and methods that enable intuitive manipulation of time and sensory elements and that allow artists to do much more with less. He is currently focused on a collaboration with NHK Cosmomedia America in the development of fully immersive 3D environments and in the use of sterescopic 3D in live performance and in documenting live performance.

Cunningham holds a B.F.A. in sculpture and installation art and a M.A. in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston.

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Private-Sector Funding in the New Normal

Maud Lyon leads the Cultural Alliance, a regional professional association of nonprofit arts and culture organizations covering seven counties in southeastern Michigan. The Cultural Alliance helps more than 120 member organizations to thrive and to be sustainable community assets--providing professional development opportunities for staff, connecting the arts sector to funding opportunities and regional initiatives, marketing arts and culture to diverse audiences, and fostering innovative collaborations to increase capacity. Maud has been a leader in the Detroit region since 1990, as Director of the Detroit Historical Museum, Executive Director of The City of Detroit's 300th anniversary, Senior Vice President of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and as a private consultant, serving the Arab American National Museum, Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, The Kresge Foundation, and other clients. She holds a bachelor's degree in history from Cornell University and a masters in historical museum administration from the State University of New York.

Session(s):
Private-Sector Funding in the New Normal