Last Updated
April 11, 2020
Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest Mara Walker, Chief Operating Officer, Americans for the Arts. [Live show recorded: April 10, 2020.]
Guest: Mara Walker
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin
Guest
MARA WALKER is the chief operating officer for Americans for the Arts and is responsible for the overall performance of the organization, working to ensure its resources are used effectively to accomplish the organization’s complex strategic plan. Prior to that role, Mara developed targeted programming to meet the needs of a growing constituency of organizations and individuals committed to using the arts to impact communities and lives. She was instrumental in the merger of the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies and American Council for the Arts that led to the formation of Americans for the Arts and has played an active role in other partnerships and mergers that have grown the organization’s reach. When she first came to the organization there were 5 staff members and a budget of $300,000. Today there are 65 people in multiple offices and a budget of over $19 million.
Mara, a native New Yorker, has worked in arts administration for more than 25 years at a variety of theater companies and arts organizations nationwide. She is currently Vice Chair of theatreWashington and serves on the International Advisory Board of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. She holds a B.A. in theatre from George Washington University and an MFA in theatre management from the University of Maryland.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I'm Tim Cynova, and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show. On today's episode, Lauren Ruffin and I are joined by Mara Walker. Mara is currently serving as the Chief Operating Officer of Americans for the Arts. She was instrumental in the merger of the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies and the American Council for the Arts that led to the formation of Americans for the Arts, and has played an active role in other partnerships and mergers that have grown the organization's reach. Mara has seen Americans for the Arts grow from five staff members with a budget of $300,000, to 65 people with a budget of over $19 million. She is currently Vice Chair of Theater Washington, and serves on the International Advisory Board of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. And we are very excited for her to be joining us today. Without further ado, Mara, welcome to the show.
Mara Walker:
Good morning-ish. It's good to see you both.
Lauren Ruffin:
It is good to see everybody this morning. I'm feeling really grateful.
Mara Walker:
Yes. Yes.
Tim Cynova:
Me, too.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. I was wondering, this is Champions Week. Jeopardy also does University Week. Is next week University Week, no matter who we have on?
Tim Cynova:
It could be. We'll have to work on it over the weekend.
Lauren Ruffin:
We'll have to figure it out over the weekend, yeah.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
That's how we'll spend our weekend. So Mara, thank you so much for being here. How are you? How are you doing and how's your community doing?
Mara Walker:
Yeah, that's a tough question for me to answer. We're starting with a hard one. I am an emotionally conflicted human being to begin with. And right now, I think I am probably in a heightened sense of that. I am very happy that I and my family, my friends, my colleagues, are healthy and we're fortunate in that regard. But I know a lot of them have had experiences with family members or friends who have been sick or even in the worst case, passed away. So I am sad for them. I am both happy and sad.
Mara Walker:
I am appreciative of the people who are working so hard on our behalf. The medical workers, the people who are stocking our grocery stores, the people who are delivering our mail and our packages, and are doing so many things on our behalf. But I am sad, because I go for a walk every night and I still see people in groups. And I get all this conflicted information from our nation's leadership. I am both appreciative, but also a little bit confused about what's going on. I would say one word right now I think would be conflicted, as to how I'm doing.
Lauren Ruffin:
That makes sense. There haven't been too many folks in groups in my neighborhood. But I would be pretty, "What the ef are you guys doing?" You know?
Mara Walker:
What are you doing? Yes. I walk around them. I try to illustrate how I would hope people would be behaving, but it still exists. People are still blind to what's going on. It's amazing to me. You asked about community. I think you also asked about how our community was doing.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Mara Walker:
Americans for the Arts is a national organization working to help advance all the arts in this country. I can explain that much further if you'd like. But what we're seeing through the great research of our research team, is that we're looking at over a $10 billion problem here. A direct hit of about $4.5 billion to our nation's arts organizations, plus an additional over $6 billion hit from our audience spending. So the economic impact on our communities with this devastation that's happening with the arts has been unbelievable.
Mara Walker:
And then we're seeing through also great research we've been doing, the hit to individual artists has just been unbelievable. I mean, two-thirds right now are out of work. We are seeing more than half of them just don't have a safety net or any kind of backup. I would say right now, our community is pretty devastated. And yet, there's such resiliency. What are nation's local arts agencies are doing to support the artists and arts organizations in their communities and engaging them in thinking about new ways to rebuild our communities. So again, there's that conflict of the pain that people are feeling right now with this incredible amount of work that's happening to engage artists and arts organizations, has really been incredible.
Tim Cynova:
What are the conversations like inside of Americans for the Arts about this? How to respond, what role to play at this time?
Mara Walker:
Well, we've been gathering up people. One of the primary things we do is really to convene people. We've been holding webinars and online conversations, and allowing people to share their strategies or just share their emotions. Our incredible legislative team has been providing information on how to access the Care Act resources or other kinds of relief programs that are going on through a resource center that we created. I guess, I think our team has been so innovative in trying to figure out what's going on, creating case-making research. Just really actively engaging with our members and our partners in how we can get information out and share information that will be valuable to them, and how to get through all of this.
Tim Cynova:
What does it look like practically, working at Americans for the Arts right now? I mean, we in the past have had conversations about my prior skepticism about working remote, virtual workplaces, and my own journey to get to a place where I'm like, "Actually, this does other things that being in person can't." But I think my default is maybe similar to yours, where I like going to the office and seeing people in 3D. What does it look like at Americans for the Arts? What has your journey been like now that we're all distributed from each other?
Mara Walker:
Well, yeah. I have a reputation on staff that regardless of what's happening in the universe, I would be on my hands and knees just trying to get into the office no matter what. Just under clouds of smoke, and I'd still be crawling to the office. I want to be there and I want to be in human contact with the people that we work with every single day.
Mara Walker:
What happened a few weeks before this crisis hit, our incredible operations team got together and made sure everybody, all 65 of us, had the equipment that they needed to be able to work from home. And so we've all been online and prepared to do this. We've been on Zoom calls, or I have been on Zoom calls, literally from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm at night. And that's tough. On the other hand, it's the best way to make sure that everybody's voices are getting heard in the variety of conversations we've been having about how to serve the field, how to do business continuity. And so we're constantly brainstorming and looking at new ways to do that.
Mara Walker:
It's not my favorite way of working. I was not a huge proponent of working from home. I like human to human contact, and the brainstorming and creativity that comes with that. But in the absence of that, we've been making it work. The team is phenomenal. They've been sharing food strategies and balancing life and work strategies and how to exercise, and how to engage and incorporate the arts into our lives every single day. We share poems. We share lots and lots of stories. We have happy hours. We have lots of ways to connect outside of the intensity of the work that's happening right now. I feel like that balance has helped me see everybody's face. Not just a subset of people that I'm working with on a regular basis about Covid work, but the operational continuity too. The creativity has been really wonderful to see.
Tim Cynova:
Have you had a chance to think yet about what might make it to the other side now that you're forced to be entirely virtual, when it goes back to maybe being in person in offices? What maybe surprised you? Like actually, that's a really great thing, we should try and hold onto that as we iterate into what's next.
Mara Walker:
I think a lot of that takes the form is, we're looking... We, just like every other organization out there, has been hit with a revenue challenge. Whether that's contributed dollars or earned income dollars, we've really been hit.
Mara Walker:
We're trying to do budget scenarios, rethink all of our programs, just creatively reinvent the organization as we're going through. And so what does that mean 6, 12, 18, 24 months? That's what I am really thinking about from now. What's the field going to need? What are our communities going to need? And as an organization, I think people are going to kind of like it. I like my commute down the hallway and being able to wear jeans every day, and my slippers to the office.
Lauren Ruffin:
Wow, you're wearing the hard pants.
Mara Walker:
Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
Come over to the soft pants side, come on.
Mara Walker:
I like having crazy curly hair Monday through Friday, and not having to worry about any of that. People have been very kind and generous about that. But I still will probably want to be back with everybody. But that might mean office sharing, and we might be able to save on space.
Mara Walker:
We may be able to have a lot more flexibility with people who do want to work from home or are working from home, in a variety of ways. So I don't know yet how it's all going to play out for a group as intense as ours and a group that's used to traveling and being out there, that's been curtailed and been in the office. I think it's going to take a long time for all of this to come back into a very different normal. And I want us to be open and creative as to what that will be, and not challenge myself to have a vision of it right now. But to learn from every day, as we're getting together and brainstorming the tense moments that come with some people feeling like they're not being heard or seen in a Zoom call with the ability to get people into a room together. I think it'll be different, but I'm not quite sure how yet.
Tim Cynova:
One of the ways you bring people together is through the annual convening in late June. I imagine there are conversations that are going on, challenging conversations, deep conversations about bringing people together and what that means at this time. Can you give us any insight into what might be going on behind the scenes with the annual convention?
Mara Walker:
Yeah. Well, I'll take it even broader than the annual convention. We have about 12 national gatherings that we do every year, from the National Arts Action Summit to the annual convention, to the National Arts Awards, arts and business partnership awards, our arts and business round table that we do up at Sundance. We are taking every single one of those programs and re-imagining what they could be in this scenario where you can't bring 1,000 people together or 500 people together.
Mara Walker:
So for example, the National Arts Action Summit, which was poised to happen at the end of March right as everything was happening, the creative team there really got together to reimagine what an online program could look like that has over 85 national partners that all come together. At the end of April, we'll be releasing very soon actually... that at the end of April, we'll be taking that whole program online and giving people an opportunity to engage in advocacy strategies in an online program.
Mara Walker:
We are thinking about the convention, we are thinking about in lieu of taking a number of leaders up to Sundance and up to the mountain which we would normally do in September, how can we have an online dialogue about what does this mean for mental health? What have we been learning about taking care of one another and having conversations like that? We do, as I said, the National Arts Awards Gala in New York in October. That's not going to be a very smart choice for us this year. So what are we looking at in terms of how you do fundraisers and how you do other kinds of activities?
Mara Walker:
We're re-imagining every single program that we do, whether it's a small group of 12 to a group of 1200 at the convention. And thinking about ways that people can be together. There's going to be a limitation I feel like, for how many virtual things people are going to want to do, but they're going to want to see each other. I see that now when we bring together groups like our United States Urban Arts Federation. They're just like, "It's so good to see everybody's faces." And, "It's so good to hear from our colleagues across the country." I think we'll be continuing in the virtual model for the rest of this year, and understanding and researching how people want to be together in that way considering that there are no limitations to how many of those opportunities exist for all of us right now.
Tim Cynova:
You were integral and involved in the merger that created Americans for the Arts. I'm curious, I can imagine as we go through this, organizations will think about mergers and acquisitions. Sadly, organizations will go out of business. What advice do you have for organizations where... Let's explore a merger. Let's explore an acquisition. From the things that you've learned that are really important, what would you have to offer?
Mara Walker:
I'll say a couple of things about this. First, we've always been a huge proponent, particularly of small organizations or medium-sized organizations, for them to share backend services, for them to think about how they could be looking at shared administration and finance kind of services. I'm hopeful that more organizations will consider partnership opportunities like that. That their art will continue, but they might continue in different kind of models. That's something that we have always been encouraging arts organizations to think about.
Mara Walker:
On a national scale, there are a lot of organizations that have resources so that they'll be able to continue, whether they have endowments or other kinds of things. But I do think there will be a number of organizations that say, "Hey, let's consider where there are mutual goals and mutual objectives in the work we do, and how can we accomplish those by being together?" Whether our staff has become unified or there are new kind of partnership models, or new programming that we could do together. Now, that only works successfully when people are very clear up front about what they want to accomplish, what their goals are. So that no one feels a loss through a merger or an acquisition, but they feel like they are able to continue in the incredible and impressive goals that they had.
Mara Walker:
When we created Americans for the Arts, it was a beautiful marriage between the National Assembly of Local Arts Agencies that had all of these on the ground workers who were building better communities, supporting the artists, supporting the arts organizations in their local communities with the American Council on the Arts. Which had a lot of patrons, it had higher level people who were thinking about the education system and that kind of thing. When we combined those, we had all levels of people who were thinking about the arts come together.
Mara Walker:
People say that Americans for the Arts is a very complex place. "Where's my point of entry? I don't understand the complexity and the depth of the organization." But that's because it represents private sector leadership and public sector leadership and local arts leadership, and state and national leaders of all kinds, who are really invested in making sure that we're building communities in which the arts can thrive.
Lauren Ruffin:
You mentioned backend services and operations. I'm curious, one of the things that we found with Fractured Atlas when we went a 100% remote, that there were these little things that we hadn't thought about that actually became really big things and were really time consuming for staff in terms of change management. Check processing, we had down. Mail was a little weird. Are you finding any nitty gritty obstacles that are kind of unexpected as you all quickly almost overnight, go to 100% remote?
Mara Walker:
That's really an interesting question. I think there is an expectation that we can, the organization, can make it all better very quickly. And what are you doing for me, how can you help me? We're trying as much as possible to engage our partners in that effort and engage lots of other people. That's why we built out this resource center, so that people know there are a lot of other people that they can turn to. It's not just about one person being able to do it all, but that it is a multi organization 10-tiered strategy on this.
Mara Walker:
I think the other thing is that you've got 65 people, and things are shifting. If a lot of work is going virtual, and we have this amazing meetings and events team that has been putting together all of these meetings... when things go virtual, they're shifting their roles. On our finance practices, moving business continuity into an online practice means people are shifting. They're thinking about standard operating practices and procedures in different ways. And our tech team is thinking about new phone systems and new applications so that it's easy to access your documents from home.
Mara Walker:
What I've been really proud about the Americans for the Arts staff is, in every challenge that's been presented, somebody has stepped up with an incredible solution. A creative solution that we may or may not have been thinking about when we were at the office, because we didn't need to. Or we didn't need to, yet. So aside from people saying, "Hey, hang on a second, I'd like to be included in that conversation." Finding a way to insert themselves into conversations that are going on where they want to make sure their voice is heard.
Mara Walker:
For the most part, challenges that have come up, we've been able to resolve. Whether it's through great uses of technology or somebody saying, "You know who'd be great for that conversation? Let's make sure so and so is invited into this." And that can be tricky sometimes. As program people are running to try and reinvent programs, you have to make sure your marketing communication is going along with that at the same time that your finance team is being able to make sure that members know how they can get the access to continued services that they are doing.
Tim Cynova:
Our colleague-
Lauren Ruffin:
You are speaking to Tim's heart.
Tim Cynova:
Yes.
Lauren Ruffin:
There was a lot of deep nods in there.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. Our colleague, Nicola... When we were as an organization, working on what you do with mail when you don't have a physical location to receive mail? We had these conversations and it started to get really complicated. She took a step back and just sketched out all the way mail comes into and leaves our office. It illustrated the complexity that we really never had to think about before, because it just comes through our office and it leaves our office. But they are 13 different ways mail can come into and leave our office. All of a sudden, we're like, "Right." This is why it's been so challenging to figure out that thing because checks come in three ways, and bills come in this way and packages.
Tim Cynova:
And then we did the same thing with our financial schematics. How does money come into and leave the organization? Which allowed us to take that step back to say, "How do we move money when we don't have a stack of checks that were sitting next to a printer and feeding it?" It really allowed us to figure that out. But it took just to put this all on paper. Because you hold some of it, Lauren holds some of it, I hold the others... For all of us to have the complete sketch. Nicola is actually going to be sharing that soon, or someone on the ops team will be sharing our mail schematic and how we adapted that with using a caging service for checks and a virtual office. We use Earth Class mail as a virtual for our mail.
Tim Cynova:
Once you start digging, it seems easy. Just find a different bill service. Then you start digging into it, and you're like, "Crap, this is really complex." And that's just one piece of all of the things we went down the list.
Lauren Ruffin:
That just us trying to understand it. That's not us trying to understand it and then communicating it to people so we can do behavior change outside of the organization, because you actually can't send stuff to this address anymore.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. I mean, mail. Mail.
Mara Walker:
Yeah. We've had a number of brave staff who go in. One person goes in once a week to go through, because you still have mail coming into a location. So we've had to do that and rethink all of our finance systems, which we were in the process of actually thank goodness, rethinking anyway. We are able now to just speed up that process a bit. I mean, we're about to go into a budgeting season over the course of the summer, and we are reinventing how we're doing everything. From budgeting to scenario building, to all of that. And really as I said, fortunately, we were in the midst of a lot of that anyway... of rethinking about where checks are going and how they're processed in a totally different way. So our finance systems are going to look very, very different in a few months than that than they were six months ago.
Lauren Ruffin:
Can you share a little bit about those scenarios? Just in terms of the optimistic thought that maybe we'll be back to normal, if you want normal, some of us don't... by the fall. Then there's, are you thinking about all of the potential for us being in this space of you doing Zoom from 9:00 to 6:00 for the next 18 to 24 months? Are you planning for worst case scenarios or best case scenarios, or is there some nuance in how you are thinking about that?
Mara Walker:
I think the answer is yes, which is always the answer at Americans for the Arts. Yes. We're going to be doing budgeting. Or financial analysis, I guess, if you could. But I think I want to step back from just thinking about operations, to what the world is going to be like. How are we making sure that artists and arts organizations are core to the rebuild of our economy and our community, and how they're going to play a critical role in that next step of getting everything back up. And not back up in the way it was.
Mara Walker:
I think we have an opportunity to rethink government structures, rethink how we are living our lives on a regular basis. I want to be sure that the arts are included in that rebuild process. It's not just a question of rethinking the operations of the organization, it's also rethinking the programs and services that we're doing. And from that, then what kind of new systems are we going to need in place in order to meet that new change and demand? In the scenario building that we're doing, I'm conscious of both sides of that equation to make sure that it isn't just how we do what we're doing, but it's why we're doing it, and a new vision for that also. I don't know if that entirely answers your question.
Mara Walker:
Our budgeting scenario, our financial scenario, will be best case all the way to worst-case. I'm going to look at probably about four different scenarios. But you can't really do that in our case until you understand the kind of delivery mechanisms of servicing that we have to do. And until we can make sure... and our legislative team is doing that all the time, that the arts are included in the next stimulus package, that we understand the impact of artists right now and what they're going to need in order to rebuild. I can't create a budget that doesn't look at the kind of programs and services that we're going to need to be delivering over the next three years. I'm just looking three years out. There's a five-year window and probably beyond too. Yes, we're going to be working on a best case all the way to a worst case. But I have to have a better understanding right now of several different visions of how we are going to engage with partners and members as we go forward.
Tim Cynova:
Spending all day in back-to-back Zoom calls is exhausting, to say the least, or at best. What are you doing for your resilience and self-care right now? We're human beings. We're in positions of leadership with people looking to us for answers that we probably don't have answers to everything. How are you approaching your own resilience and self-care in all of this?
Mara Walker:
I've never been one to think very much about my own self-care. I have always been much more interested in the care of others. That is not something that I am particularly good at. I think that I am doing my best to stay connected to my family, and that is the support system that I have... is the way that we make each other laugh. I mean, laughter is a huge part of our family. I am walking more. So at the end of the day when my shoulders have been like this for eight hours, then I go for a walk and I remind myself to put them down. I'm very concerned that I'm not going to be able to fit through the door of my office when I get back, so I am trying to think about food. I am the worst cook on the planet, and my husband's been very kind about what's been on the table. But I've been trying to think about making sure there are more vegetables than pasta on those plates and things like that.
Mara Walker:
So I am desperately trying. And I'm desperately surrounding myself by people who really do know how to make me laugh, and that is the best medicine for me. On staff, we are very conscious of that too. We created something called the Learning Lab, the Americans for the Arts Learning Lab. What that is, is staff-driven training program for us where we're thinking about anywhere from understanding history of oppression, microaggressions, to self-care and self-esteem building and those kinds of issues. We do training all year round on how to help one another, which is really incredibly helpful for me. I've learned so much from folks. But I've also learned that it's a really important thing to remember how to breathe, because I am just rushing from thing to thing to thing. I don't necessarily stop and think, "Okay, just take a breath. Just calm down for a second and get into the next thing well prepared."
Tim Cynova:
I've been meditating for a while, and it never fails. As you're going into it, you feel yourself sitting. One of the prompts is, and you'll notice yourself breathing. And I'm like, "I am breathing." But it surprises me every time. It shouldn't be. But yes, I am breathing. That re-centers me in a helpful way. But yeah, you just go from one thing to the next. It feels like being present in the moment in life, and tapping into those things are really helpful.
Mara Walker:
Being present, I think is possibly the greatest gift I can give to anybody, and it's probably the hardest thing I do in this job. Because when you run from something to something, and someone's calling me and someone's texting me and someone's chatting me, and all of those things are happening at the same time and I really want to be there for the person on the other side, and to lend them the greatest support or brainstorming or ideas... that's a really hard thing for me. I do try and work on that.
Lauren Ruffin:
9:00 to 6:00 on Zoom is... I am skeptical about people, at best. Woo, that is a lot of talking to folks. I'll be thinking about you for a while.
Mara Walker:
I appreciate it.
Lauren Ruffin:
If you ever just want to sit in silence on Zoom with somebody, feel free to put a time on my calendar.
Mara Walker:
I'm not sure I'm capable of it, but I appreciate the offer.
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm just going to say, everything else you're doing is best practice, but 9:00 to 6:00 on Zoom is not. But no, this has been really lovely, Mara. As we are sort of closing out the episode, you've talked about so much meat. I feel like this is the episode where we actually got to work the most, which is awesome given the title of this live stream. What's still top of mind for you that we haven't spoken about? Is there anything you want to leave our audience with?
Mara Walker:
I'll say one thing. I have loved the way that the arts have been essential to everybody's survival of this crisis. You see people doing art, doing poetry doing... I just saw a video of Brian Stokes Mitchell, who's on our board and on our Artists Committee, singing Man of La Mancha out his window. The way that people are designing masks and getting things to the hospital. I mean, the art has been central to I think, the day-to-day survival for people who have been in their homes.
Mara Walker:
I want to make sure that the arts stay core to building better lives in communities and workplaces and our education system, as we move forward. And that is what Americans for the Arts will be doing, and that is hard work. It is advocacy work. It's data. It's research work. It's convening work. It's partnership work. It's all of those things wrapped in so that we get pro arts policy. It's core to the rebuild of America's communities and economy. So I'm thinking about that, and I'm thinking about our people, our board, our staff. And all of the people that we work with are incredible partners on how to make sure we come to the other side of this with a reminder to people that the arts are essential to how we move forward, and to our 65 people as well.
Tim Cynova:
Mara, thank you so much for being on this show. Thanks. We've got some great chat comments here. It's been really wonderful to spend the morning with you. Thanks for making time.
Mara Walker:
Thanks for having me. It's great to see you both.
Tim Cynova:
Continue the Work Shouldn't Suck Live adventure with us on our next episodes, when we're joined by Syrus Marcus Ware, Gail Crider, Kristina Newman-Scott, and Dave Archuletta. Miss us in the meantime? You can download more Work Shouldn't Suck episodes from your favorite podcasting platform of choice. And re-watch Work Shouldn't Suck Live episodes over on workshouldntsuck.co.
Tim Cynova:
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