Updated
December 22, 2022
In this episode, we’re exploring uncertainty, transitions, and moving forward in ambiguity – something most of us probably feel like we’re getting pretty used to having lived the past several years amid a global pandemic.
We’ll be exploring how these things show up in organizations, and in one organization in particular – San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. And we’ll discuss how they’re approaching this in their evolving work.
To learn more about their Head of External Relations search, visit: https://www.workshouldntsuck.co/ybca-er.
Host: Tim Cynova
Guests
SARA FENSKE BAHAT is a connector, most at-home when bridging the creative arts, economics, and equitable design to shape our social and political landscape. As Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) CEO, Sara works collaboratively with the YBCA team to advance the organization as a dynamic home for artists, arts and culture, and social justice movement building. Prior to becoming interim CEO, Sara served as YBCA’s Board Chair. Under her leadership, YBCA navigated COVID-19 pandemic challenges (which resulted in the longest mass closure of cultural venues since World War II), received support from leading innovators for groundbreaking work at the intersection of arts and movement building, and launched the nation’s first dedicated guaranteed income program for artists.
Most recently, Sara served as chair of the California College of the Arts (CCA) MBA in Design Strategy, a groundbreaking, multidisciplinary degree rooted in systems theory, foresight, and innovation.
Sara has a community finance and economic development background. Before becoming an educator, she worked for New York City’s economic development agency and in banking, where she championed local government support for community banks, improved banking and savings products for immigrant households, and multi-state consumer protection settlements.
Raised in a Milwaukee family steeped in advocacy for human, civil, and LGBTQ+ rights, Sara quickly developed a commitment to activism and social justice. A dedicated political fundraiser and mobilizer, she is passionate about driving civic engagement and hosted the Democratic National Committee’s first-ever Zoom fundraiser at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sara is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the London School of Economics. She is a 2022 Presidential Leadership Scholar, exploring the meaning of culture and cohesion in a country increasingly divided across wealth, ideology, and acknowledgment of historic and present inequity.
Sara lives in San Francisco and loves a good dance party.
RENUKA KHER has supported entrepreneurial efforts in under-resourced communities for her entire career. She has spent 16 years in various roles in philanthropy and managed and directed over $150M. Her professional experience spans the public, private, philanthropic and non-profit sectors. She has served on the board of and as an advisor to many of the nation’s leading social change organizations including, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Beyond 12, Year Up, Global Citizen Year and Revolution Foods.
Most recently, she served on the executive team of Tipping Point Community a nonprofit grant-making organization that fights poverty in the Bay Area. During her six year tenure at Tipping Point she helped lead the growth of the organization as its Chief Operating Officer and also founded T Lab, Tipping Point's R+D engine.
Before joining Tipping Point, Renuka served as a Principal at NewSchools Venture Fund whose work is focused on education and prior to that she was a Senior Program Officer at the Robin Hood Foundation where her work included developing and implementing a strategy for a $65 million relief fund, one of the nation's largest, created to respond to the terrorist attacks of September 11th.
Her work has been featured in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, OZY, and Social Startup Success. Renuka received her bachelor's degree in Biology from the University of Michigan, and completed her graduate work at Emory University, where she received a master's in public health from the Rollins School of Public Health. She is an alumnus of the Coro Leadership Program and also holds a certificate in Innovation Leadership from California College of the Arts. She currently lives in Oakland with her husband and two young children.
Host
TIM CYNOVA (he/him) is the Principal of Work. Shouldn’t. Suck., an HR and org design consultancy helping to reimagine workplaces where everyone can thrive. He is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) and a trained mediator, and has served on the faculty of Minneapolis College of Art & Design, the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity (Banff, Canada) and The New School (New York City) teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design and Strategic HR. In 2021, he concluded a 12-year tenure leading Fractured Atlas, a $30M, entirely virtual non-profit technology company and the largest association of independent artists in the U.S., where he served in both the Chief Operating Officer and Co-CEO roles (part of a four-person, shared, non-hierarchical leadership team), and was deeply involved in its work to become an anti-racist, anti-oppressive organization since they made that commitment in 2013. Earlier in his career, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts in New York City, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville, Indiana Courier-Press.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck, a podcast about, well, that. In this episode we're exploring, uncertainty, transitions and moving forward in ambiguity. Something I imagine most of us feel like we're getting pretty used to having lived the past several years amid a global pandemic. Maybe to put a finer point on the topic though, we'll be exploring how these things show up in organizations and in one organization in particular, San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and we'll discuss how they're approaching this in their evolving work. For the conversation, I'm joined by YBCA's board chair Renuka Kher, and it's CEO, Sara Fenske Bahat. Both of their bios are linked in the episode description, so let's get going. Renuka and Sara, welcome to the podcast.
Renuka Kher:
Thanks, Tim, for having us.
Tim Cynova:
Why don't we get started with how you typically introduce yourselves and the work you do, and Renuka, would you like to get this thing rolling for us?
Renuka Kher:
So my name is Renuka Kher, and I am a South Asian woman. I have black hair. I am here in Oakland and I have a mural in the background that is my happy place, which is the mountains with the fogs in the midst, or the fog in the midst, I should say, and I am wearing a teal green shirt and a black vest today. I come from background in the nonprofit sector. I've spent over 17 years in philanthropy and been lucky enough to work on all of the issues that kind of cut across poverty alleviation, touch upon social justice, and the thing that makes me tick is all of the ways in which we can use all the tools in our toolbox to live well with one another and to contribute in ways that leave things better than we have found it.
Tim Cynova:
Sara, how about you?
Sara Fenske Bahat:
I am a white woman with blonde hair, glasses. I am sitting in front of a painting that has a woman holding an empty vessel and a bunch of checkerboard print on her dress. I'm wearing a very loud shirt next to that print, which is maroon with light blue and a bunch of ruching. There's a plant grounding the background and I'm sitting in light from my window. I introduce myself and my work as being grounded in community and it's typically been at the intersection of economics and policy. And so I began my career working in New York City government in the years post 9/11, I worked on the recovery of Lower Manhattan and saving jobs for New York. I then went to go work as a financial regulator. I've been a banker. I moved to San Francisco 15 years ago and decided I wanted to try to have some fun again. I found economics as sort of a typical first generation in my family, going to college, needing to study something that would pay off my student loans.
By the time I had done that, I was moving here and decided to go to design school, and so I added a layer of creative practice to the work that I had done. Ultimately, ending up teaching and then running the program that I had learned in. Apropos actually for this conversation, it's called the Design MBA, which we call the Masters in Business Ambiguity, actually. I joined the YBCA fold first as a fellow when I was teaching in that program, looking at economic wellbeing of families and how to talk about that creatively. I ended up joining the board, becoming the board chair, and then stepping into this seat over the last year as we've begun this transition. So I'd like to think of my practice as one that marries creative practice and a deep background in community work, specifically focused on economic wellbeing.
Tim Cynova:
Before we get to much more into the varying levels of ambiguity and uncertainty and transition, I want to spend a little bit of time on the two of you because you both have a close and supportive working relationship, and that's something that can't be said for every board chair and CEO. I'm curious, what do you attribute that to and what do you do to continue to invest in that working relationship?
Renuka Kher:
So Sara and I have known each other since 2004. We met in a public leadership program that was oriented around service called Coro. Over the years have just developed such a deep friendship and a deep admiration and respect for one another both personally and professionally. I think that that is really served as the foundation for us coming together to work with one another in this way. So I would say it's a really huge foundation of trust, but then also steeped in a couple values that we care a lot about, which is I think both of us are drawn to service and to think of ourselves as contributors, again, small contributors to kind of the big thing that we're all swimming in, whatever that might be at the moment, and also that we care a lot about our efficacy in terms of getting things right.
And I think this is important because she and I in our space with one another, whether it's public or private, what we aim to do is to be as authentic sort of behind the scenes as we are in any other space that we occupy, but also make sure that we are providing 100% kind of transparency and candor in what's happening. And so what's interesting is as I'm reflecting on just even the year of work that we've done in this context, it's really fluid the way in which we kind of can critique the work, we can offer feedback to one another. There really isn't even a mode that we go into. Sometimes relationships are structured, we're like, "Okay, let's give each other feedback." It's not like that. It's kind of whatever the day is presenting or whatever we're talking about, there's this really deep comfort in interrogating how we can be our best selves in service of the work and to make sure that we are holding ourselves to a pretty high standard and also the work as well.
Sara Fenske Bahat:
The only things that I want to add to this are that we didn't go into relationship in 2004 when we first met aspiring to do this kind of thing. We were both very grounded in being willing to tackle difficult questions and looking to build our toolboxes, and to Renuka's point, how effective we were in the work that we were doing, aspiring to leadership, aspiring to be of service, and I think what I would just offer is that when you've known someone for this length of time, literally decades almost at this point, you not only see the ways they show up as the world changes, as circumstance change, but personally as they grow, and from my point of view, when I think about us as women in our late twenties, I see a hunger in us and a desire to do work that's really aligned with what we think matters.
When I look at us now, I just see us continuing to grow in ourselves while doing the same. We started in Coro and then Renuka actually joined me in the design program that I just mentioned. I was like, "Hey, I think we need to go learn this thing over here," And then the same was true at YBCA like, "Hey, I think there's this really interesting thing going on over here. Can we do that thing together?" I would say we're not very outcome-oriented. In some ways I think we're discovery-oriented and collaborative and that shows up differently than I think some professional collaborations do in that I think we are very, very fortunate.
Tim Cynova:
In my own work, people ask me about what nonprofits or what arts organizations are doing really great people operations work and I often say I grew up in arts organizations, and so I'm looking outside of this sector for things that are examples that can be then maybe applied or retrofitted. Both of you are coming from outside, quote, unquote, the traditional art spaces and I'm wondering how that framing informs the way you work. Both if that is an accurate statement that you both consider yourself coming from outside the traditional art spaces, but how does that show up in the work that you're doing and inform the work that you're doing in ways that are helpful and then maybe ways that might be more challenging?
Sara Fenske Bahat:
For me, it's a question of whether you consider an MBA program at an art school an art space, and that is totally debatable. I don't think it falls into the category of other MBA programs and we're definitely the strangest thing that CCA did, California College of the Arts. I think of the missing piece, like the rolling Pac-Man trying to find his missing piece. The MBA program does not fit in necessarily to our school either. And so for me, I can't really speak to traditional art environments. That feels very true. Those feel inaccessible even to me. I have a whole set of judgments that I think about when I imagine what those might look like and I think some of the ways that shows up for me are the ways that the American Association of Museums talks about decolonizing collections and things like that.
When I think about the purpose of the work that we do at YBCA, I am here because our purpose feels like it's a community purpose sitting in a different place than just being a traditional arts organization. We don't collect, we are intentionally trying to share with this community a bounty of creative practice that really is about engagement. When I think about my practice over the last 20 or whatever years, having a grounding in community work I think is critical to the work that we do at YBCA. It gives me a much wider variety of tools to pull from, whether those be financial, whether those be design, whether those be collaborative. It's a different bias in terms of how we manage the work that we do here than one of a traditional institution, and I hope that that means in a similar way to I think an MBA program at an art school is really interesting, I hope that that becomes something here that offers an interesting lens and take on the ways that an arts organization can show up for a community.
Renuka Kher:
I've spent the majority of my career in philanthropy supporting social entrepreneurs who really are artists that are in service of change through using their creative practices and capital have created solutions to some of the most pressing challenges that we're faced with as a society, and in order for them to become efficacious, they've had to build organizations and scale organizations and be steeped in a few of the tools that Sara named, right? So you have to design your program, you have to make sure that you are proximate with the community that you seek to serve, that you have representation and lived experiences at all sort of levels in your organization and that you are able to measure your impact, you are able to tell your story, and you're able to raise incredible amounts of capital in order to ensure that the work is sustainable and outlives its genesis, if you will.
When I think of that spine, I think it absolutely marries or mirrors what YBCA is about in terms of our mission, our vision, and the community piece that Sara talked about, and it's in service of using art in all of its different forms to allow all of us, again, to kind of have an experience that leaves us potentially changed, but also has much wider impact in society.
Tim Cynova:
You both have worked in a lot of different places and with a lot of different people, and I'm thinking about this from the perspective of where we are right now in just history, where a lot of people have been questioning, "How do I want my life to be?" when it might not be the way it was in January 2020, where people are questioning their connection to work, their connection to place, their connection to meaning and purpose. I'm wondering for both of you, how do you answer that question for yourself and for people who might be like, "This isn't the work that I want to do. I want to be doing something else, maybe it's a different sector, maybe it's a different role."? What advice would you have for people who are wrestling with that question right now?
Sara Fenske Bahat:
That's a really big question. I mean, I spent the pandemic as an educator, the closed parts of the pandemic primarily as an educator, and so the existence I have at YBCA is very different, which is a public resource-type institution that's very much open. I've gone from having my whole life on Zoom in a classroom to being a part of an organization that's being looked to reconnect people in this community, which it's pretty drastic shift in terms of my experience. For me, my favorite job was definitely working for New York City post 9/11. That's counterintuitive for a lot of people. I think a lot of people view that to be really hard and sad and draining. For me, it was in hindsight, really formative to be able to see that I individually could work on something that allowed a community to recover and that I could find myself playing a positive role in a very difficult time in a way that aligned with my values and my skillsets.
To me, the work that we're doing here now is a real echo of that work. I see a lot of similarities. For those of you who might be listening and not know, San Francisco was closed, especially cultural institutions much longer than many parts of the country during COVID. As you might also know, there are a lot of layoffs going on in the tech community which changes the composition of the downtown neighborhood that we find ourselves in, and so we... Sure, we're an art center, we work with artists, we're always looking to represent what feels like the current set of questions that we are grappling with and we are doing so in a community that is also trying to figure out how people come together again. What does downtown look like? What are the hours of service where we find the most people coming into our spaces? And so we have a very local set of questions in addition to these more interesting, what is the role of an arts institution in a community set of questions.
To me, I love the opportunity to find yourself in a position where the work you are doing every day feels connected to the things you value. That's the holy grail. I think there's a lot of really good work to be done if we can find ourselves in that sort of alignment. My values reside in what is the contribution I can make in this community? Can I make it better? Can I make it more stable? And do I find enjoyment in that, which I do.
Renuka Kher:
And I don't know that I have advice that I can necessarily offer, but I can sort of share that pre-pandemic the place I was in my career. Again, fortunate just like Sara to have had a series of experiences where I was steeped in values alignment with doing work that actually mattered and knowing that it had lasting kind of contribution and impact. I also, ironically before Sara and I met, was also part of a relief fund in the post 9/11 recovery efforts.
And that's where I started my career in philanthropy and it was incredibly impactful, very community-centered, sort of intense in a very palpable way because you're in the middle of this incredible city that literally now has this physical gaping hole and everything that went into kind of making sense of that, figuring out what needs to happen in the short-term, what needs to happen in the long-term, and that all of us to this day have a story and a very palpable sense of something changed that day for us as a country, I would say even probably us as a world, and figuring out how to navigate your way through that situation and doing it in community and with other people, that wayfinding and sense making I think is an incredibly powerful thing if you can also have that actually integrated as part of your professional journey.
So in a lot of ways what Sara is saying about YBCA and the moment we find ourselves in and the mission that we have, again this very beautiful place and platform to explore, like what does healing look like for us, what does the way forward look like for us. Even this question, Tim, that you're asking, I don't know that I have a point of view right now. I just think it's interesting that before the pandemic I had made a decision to really lean into family life and had decided to stop working and in the middle of me asking myself this question of, "What would I like to do going forward? What does my next chapter look like?"
The pandemic was in the middle of that question for me. My son had just started kindergarten in the middle of the pandemic and when he started kindergarten I said, "Look, I'm going to try and figure out what my next steps are," and now the labor market and just how work is structured is completely being changed as we speak and things like flex time, whereas a mom, you would think about that and you'd have to figure out how to negotiate that and you'd have to be like, "Okay, will these people give me what I need?" It's not even a question anymore. It's very much so now normed that you can demand, that we should demand that and that these tools, things like Zoom and other things, that were held skeptically, working remotely, not coming into the office all of the time, having asynchronous work and synchronous work, I mean, all of this, even in the vernacular, these were not the things that I was conversing with my friends about as I was thinking, "Okay, how do I explore what I might do next?"
I was actually very much tethered to the old structures because that's how I've been conditioned to navigate, and so actually what I'm most excited about is to embrace the fact that some of these rules are no longer going to stick. I don't know what's going to happen or emerge in their place, but I have a lot of faith in the fact that there's so many more people in this conversation together and that there's so many more, both employers and employees, trying to navigate the way forward. And it's a very uncertain time, but at the same time a very promising time because I think some of the solutions we end up playing with and coming up with, I do believe will serve our wellbeing more effectively in the long run.
Sara Fenske Bahat:
There's something that Renuka's saying that I really appreciate having moved to the West Coast from California. It's almost like there's a couple adaptations in her storyline. One, moving to California from the East Coast, which we both did within a couple years of each other. In New York and I think in many other places, your life is your work and here your work is more of a portfolio of activities. I think of this as sort of being a place that's much more forgiving for people doing projects or project-based work. I think about films, I think about startups. California is a very different work environment. I remember moving here, my friends from New York were like, "Aren't you worried that you don't know what you're going to do yet?" And I'm like, "No, that is not the vibe that is happening here."
And I think there's this additional adaptation of the last couple of years of the modes of work, the modes of how you structure the different types of activities that you might have in your portfolio, and what I really like about what Renuka is saying is this additional layer of noticing a person's full life and experience, not just your work activities but really all of the parts of your day-to-day, month-to-month life that are meaningful for you and how they add up together, the flexibility around that. And there's a tone thing in there which feels like a reluctance to feeling things are daunting, like a resistance to feeling controlled, and maybe an openness to figuring it out, an openness to feeling supported as you figure it out that I really just want to underscore. Those are not conversations we were having 20 years ago when we started on this journey together. Those are conversations that have matured in the course of our work lifetimes, if you will.
Tim Cynova:
Also as someone who lived in New York for quite a while, one of the very first times I went to California someone asked me what I did for recreation as a way of introduction, and it was like that moment where, "Oh, my God. I know I do stuff, but what do I answer for this question?" Because usually in New York he's like, "Yeah, what do you do?" Meaning what do you do for work, and that recreation really threw me for a loop where I'm like, "I do things. I'm sure I do things. I own a bike. I'll say I have a bike." That probably was 20 years ago, and to your point, people are talking about work and life in different ways now, especially, Renuka, to your point, some of the things that seemed very rare have been baked into the way a number of people are able to work.
And there's that site where you can track words as they show up in literature and I imagine you'd see a massive spike if you search for asynchronous over the past three years because how many times do we talk about asynchronous work before the pandemic? I'm curious, you both have touched on this a little bit, but thinking more specifically to the work at YBCA that you do in this place that has a physical location, a mandate that's baked into the charter to do work that's located in space, having come through the pandemic when you mentioned that San Francisco was closed for cultural institutions for the most part, and this past year in particular as San Francisco, the world has started to open up, things have been presented in maybe new but also familiar ways. What's that been like for both of you and for the organization?
Sara Fenske Bahat:
YBCA is a really interesting case of... I think of the work we did before the pandemic as being grounded in our building, in our physical presence, and really being a special place where I witnessed and felt like I was a part of many different types of people and communities coming together. That's why I kept coming back. To me, it was the most interesting room of people I could find in this town. And then during the pandemic we learned how to do all these other things that did not require a physical presence, and when I look at those things now, I think about the ways we sort of built the depth of our practice. We built digital tools to connect artists to opportunities, we ran a guaranteed income pilot, we distributed grant money from the state. We did much deeper work than just what shows up in the building because what shows up in the building can be different day-to-day, depends on who's here, depending what's on the walls, who's on the stage.
This other what I think of as more ecosystem-level work, it's invisible in terms of showing up in the building, but it's not invisible about what is showing up in terms of goodwill in our community and the ways in which we're taken seriously by the creative community in particular. So for me, the last year of reopening has been really about how do we find the best parts of our practice when we are open and in what is invisible. And truly, I mean, we have a team that's also very different than before the pandemic because we've added all of these areas. How do we create a culture that allows for both, both the important work that goes on in the building that is visible and the work that is less visible to perhaps visitors coming from the convention center across the street, and how do we balance the resources of an institution and the storytelling around how we make our choices to reflect that combined practice?
It's been a lot, but I can't think that it ever is going to hurt us to have done work that is valuable to the artists in this community, that broadened our practice and the depth of our practice. And so I would say it's still a work in progress. Like many organizations, we are thinking about technology and the use to make us more efficient. We are talking about the ways we invest in our team and composition of our team, but fundamentally, I feel very good about the things that this organization decided to resource during the pandemic and how they then can come together with a reopened environment.
Renuka Kher:
This period has really positioned us to be in a both and moment. In a lot of ways, the same answer to the question that you asked about just making sense of work and how you navigate that, in the same vein now as an organization are trying to reconcile the bets that we made during the pandemic, reconcile that with our deep purpose and mission and who we're obligated to serve and try and figure out, just like a lot of arts and culture organizations, the brass tacks of it is how to keep the lights on and how to keep the doors open and how to make sure that we are a place that more and more people are gravitating towards at a time when people are sort of limited in what they're choosing to do.
We're open, and I say the world, we're open, but now we're also dealing with the fact that people are very selective because of the pandemic in terms of what they do at their time, where they go, who they interact with, and at the same time we have this tremendous opportunity, again, to be a cultural resource for the entire community as they're making sense of what has gone on for the past few years and trying to figure out where do they want to spend time that really gives them a rich, deep experience and one that we obviously have really started to pride ourselves on, which is that's one that's participatory, that you come through the doors of YBCA and there's something different that happens in your experience because you become a part of it. And for us to sustain those kinds of experiences for the future is both an incredibly exciting question for us to wrestle with and an opportunity for our community to sort of solidify that that is how people identify with YBCA.
Sara Fenske Bahat:
And just very practically, I mean, I think of it as I go to some institutions to go see a show, I want to go see something specific, whether it's theater, whether it's dance, whether it's art on the walls if you will, but I'm very purpose-driven in why I might go to see something. I have to book a ticket in advance, I have to think about it. I go on a whole journey to arrange to be there for a thing. I think about YBCA very differently actually in where I hope we get, and I hope that we get to a point where you can know that you reliably show up at YBCA whenever and something really interesting is going to be going on.
You don't actually have to plan or arrange as meticulously as you might to go to some other things. You can just know that there's going to be cool stuff happening here that's going to change the way you look at the world, the community, your role in it, et cetera, and I'll feel successful when we have arranged to get to that place, where that same feeling of showing up in a room and feeling like the most exciting people in town, we're all here together, can be something that happens without a lot of prearrangement. You don't have to necessarily jump through all the hoops, you can just roll in off the street and something here will be on offer, and ideally, something that feels engaging for you to Renuka's point.
Tim Cynova:
We talked about regional difference in how people might think about life and work. I'm curious more specifically about arts organizations or nonprofits maybe more in general. Do you notice any differences in how arts organizations and maybe nonprofits approach the work that they do in the Bay Area than maybe, say, New York City or from the Midwest where we all find some of our roots as well?
Renuka Kher:
I think with the Bay Area, what I'll say is first of all that the amount of capital required to operate in this ecosystem is just has to be underscored. The sheer real estate that we occupy, the city blocks that we are located amongst in San Francisco, it's a very well-trafficked area, and so just to situate ourselves in the physical and kind of economic context. Beyond that, I would say that one of the things in the Bay that I've appreciated so much and that has been very opening for me and I think a lot of other people in the social entrepreneurship space is this appetite for risk-taking and that it's very much baked into the kind of Silicon Valley innovation spine, if you will, that has again, sort of pluses and minuses just like everything else.
But I do think that in general, the propensity for people having an appetite for trying things differently, for consuming things differently, for interacting in different ways, it's very much so laid into the cultural fabric and ethos of this region, and I think that that again strengthens our position as a cultural institution because it allows us to also ensure that we are giving ourselves the maximum permission within that same context and frame to do things differently, to try new things, to support artists in different ways, which feels really true to what we've done during the pandemic and what we hope to invest in to align ourselves and position ourselves for the future.
Sara Fenske Bahat:
This is a different type of ecosystem in terms of who joins boards, how much people meet about what's going on in town. New York, when I look at what those years looked like for me, there was an endless stream of cranes, New York breakfasts, benefits with people who were on one board honoring somebody on another board. There's this heavily regimented institutional showing up thing that happens in terms of business leadership, nonprofit leadership, civic leadership. It's like every day of the week you could go do stuff like that. And this town is a little bit less like that. You have to work a little harder to find your alliances, to find common ground with people.
I don't think you can make the same set of assumptions about everyone's intentions to show up civically. I mean, Renuka's point is so right on in terms of rejecting convention, willingness to try new things, et cetera. Part of what we don't have, because we are that place, is this through line of participation, and so a lot of what we have to do on our own individually as institutions is develop those networks of participation, which I think some places can take for granted as institutions that are sort of passed generation to generation.
Tim Cynova:
Well, in the spirit of trying new things, trying different things, right now YBCA is in the process of hiring for a brand-new role, head of external relations, and I'll offer full disclosure here, I know this because YBCA has contracted Work Shouldn't Suck to be involved in a really exciting value centering process. The organization has had leadership roles focused on fundraising and focused on marketing and communication spaces in the past, but combining them into this head of external relations role is a new approach for YBCA. So I'm wondering why create this role and what opportunities does this new role signal for YBCA?
Sara Fenske Bahat:
I'm excited about this search because what I see is the opportunity to really combine our storytelling and cultivation efforts. We have incredible stories to tell about the impact that this organization has had, not only on the lives of individual artists, but on this community. Great example: We currently have a show that features Brett Cook. Brett is a local artist. He also calls himself an educator and a healer. This is a culminating show that includes decades of his work. He's in this show with Liz Lerman, who is also showcasing decades of her work. Brett first showed his work at YBCA when it was under construction. He spray painted the outside perimeter of the building. There are pieces of that work here in this show.
When I think about the impact that YBCA, we turn 30 next year, has had on this community and the lives of individual artists, I'm not sure that we're telling that story or inviting people to be a part of it as effectively as we might, and so this role really is front and center in connecting those dots so that the public, artists that we work with and funders are all getting the benefit of the same story in terms of the impact that this organization has. And to me that's super exciting. It's like you hear about these donor tables where they separate out the people funding the work and the people receiving the funds. We're pulling it all together. We want to tell really, really strong stories about our work and equip somebody in this role to do so really consistently across the audiences that we serve so that our funders are really invited into the full story and really called to the table of the work that we're doing as a community institution.
And so for me, this is a boundary lowering role with a really delicious challenge of how to portray the work that we're doing in a city that I think would benefit from a little TLC and a little love in terms of the ways in which we can come together and the benefit that that can have for this community, and if I might, the ways in which San Franciscans in particular view that work in the context of a country. It is very much the case here that we are proud of our COVID response. It is very much the case here that we are proud of the former mayor, now governor, putting gay marriage into place. There is a thing about this town that is willing to lean in and be really progressive as a beacon for other places. And so to me, this role is a huge opportunity for the right person to do that with us.
Renuka Kher:
What this signals really for us as an institution is that we are integrating and sort of removing silos the way that we've sort of worked in the past and trying to really allow this person to assume that leadership mantle and become kind of a very strong voice inward and outward, I would say. And just as Sara said, there is a treasure trove of stories to share about YBCA's impact over the past 30 years, so it's just such an incredibly ripe moment for us to have somebody who comes in and really does what Sara and I have talked about. This is really foundational work for YBCA's next decade.
It's not even about just a short period of time, but it's sort of you get to have the opportunity to look back on 30 years of incredible work and weave that together to then form the foundation for what happens for the next decade and how YBCA is now sort of perceived and received externally, which we have not been in the position to do over the past few years because we've been responding to the pandemic, before the pandemic we were talking about and trying to position ourselves to try some new things, try things differently. And again, this moment is really for this person to help us synthesize a lot of what's happened, make sense of it, and showcase truly from one voice, one story for all of us to then be ambassadors of. So it's really groundbreaking and defining work for us.
Sara Fenske Bahat:
To me, the gauntlet to throw down is this job is made for somebody who wants to explore this delicious question of what is the role of an art center in a community, what is the fullest potential of a center-like YBCA in a community, in a community that is fractured in some ways, is progressive in other ways, in a country where the same is the case? We are a model for a lot of things. We are relied upon to experiment. So what is the full extent of that experimentation as it applies to our storytelling efforts and the ways in which that shows up in the engagement, in cohesion and exposure of a community.
Tim Cynova:
So recently, YBCA began in earnest it's work to understand how racism and oppression are woven into the DNA of the organization, and it's a frequent topic on the Work Shouldn't Suck podcast where we discuss how this shows up in systems, structures, policies, practices, programs, and workplaces, who's included, who's not, how do we shift power differentials and with this knowledge, how do we co-create workplaces where everyone can thrive. I'd love for both of you to share a bit about why YBCA has begun engaging in this learning and work and why this commitment to anti-racism is critical to it achieving its mission.
Sara Fenske Bahat:
I think one of the observations of having been closed and specifically having started guaranteed income work is that we've learned in some ways that are insides don't match our outside ambitions. We say that we're doing work in community and the ways that we've designed that work has not always been satisfactory to the communities that we're working with, if I'm going to be really honest. We have a big accountability statement on our website that can elaborate on that if you're interested, but I think that there's an observation born out of a lot of that for me and also just born out of switching from the board chair role to the internal role where I have a lot more information that we have a real ambition to show up in a way that does feel anti-racist and anti-oppression, and we do not have the systems to support that, and so we need to do this work internally ourselves in order to show up the way that we aspire to for ourselves, but also for our community, and until we do, we will keep finding things that don't work for us or for others.
And so really for our staff, for ourselves, for our partners, for the artists we work with, I have a strong opinion that we need to look in the mirror and make sure that the ways in which we're turning up every day honor the experiences of our team, of our partners, of the artists that we work with and we have work to do. I made a reference earlier to just using technology, to pick a simple example, and I would offer we're an arts organization that hasn't embraced systems or process.
And at first coming into this role, I found that really frustrating, it was hard to understand how things worked, if you will. I've now come around to the point of view that we can build systems that are equitable from the jump if we take this work very seriously, and to me, that's doing it right. To begin to peel that onion to know what systems we need to build we have to start asking ourselves the questions, and so for me, for this team to be successful, for this organization to be successful, that work starts from within each of us, each team and the whole organization and the ways in which we work.
Renuka Kher:
From the board's perspective, plus one to everything Sara said, and that we from a governance perspective, have a fiduciary responsibility, and I think that this is what I hope we can add value around in sort of the arts ecosystem is that boards start to hold themselves accountable to ensuring that systems and policies and procedures are continually assessed on an annual basis so that what we are offering, whatever we design, whatever the sort of internal examination is of making sure that we have equitable practices. So there's a phase of the work of understanding where we are, where we need to improve, and then once we're on that journey that we really want to make sure in order for this to have staying power, it's independent of any leadership team and independent of the board composition because it is baked into the set of responsibilities that on an annual basis, for example, we are examining pay parity and we are talking and in conversation with the management team about those kinds of policies and procedures at a systemic level so that no one individual has to endure or bear the brunt of a systemic issue.
And teasing that apart is the work that we're in right now, and calling the board into showing up for making sure that we have an eye on the systemic structure is how we hope to make it a practice that outlives any one of us and that allows any individual walking into YBCA, whether you're a new employee or a longtime employee, knowing that those systemic factors are taken care of and are addressed on an annual basis. Because as we all know, this work is dynamic and ongoing, and so there's first kind of taking that slice of what can we design intentionally, equitably, and then there's the maintenance of that and ensuring that any one individual does not have to navigate that on their own.
Tim Cynova:
No surprise here, our time has flown by. As we bring the conversation in for a landing today, where do you want to land it?
Sara Fenske Bahat:
I mean, Tim, I want to thank you. You've been such a huge part of our time here and I think it's important in these moments of challenge to find optimism. I don't know that any of us have gotten through our hardest moments without it. One of the things that I find a lot of optimism around is that I think our community wants us to succeed. I feel great that I have a partner like Renuka in the work that we're doing here. I feel really great about a team that's motivated by the work that we're doing, and if anything, I think we're just looking to recruit to the team. And if this kind of work, whether you're on the receiving end or the construction end, is appealing, I mean, join the party. There's plenty of room in this tent. God knows we have enough work to do. Please follow YBCA. We are grateful for all of the engagement.
Renuka Kher:
I would echo everything Sara said and just truly underscore the exciting moment that we're in. We are in a building moment, a build and design, and so it's really kind of a really beautiful opportunity for somebody, anybody actually, to join our team and to help us design things in a way that, again, you will look back 10 years from now and say, "Wow. I was a part of making that happen. I was a part of laying some of the groundwork for this to continually be a way in which YBCA continues to manifest itself," and I really can't think of a better opportunity to do that while also being fed truly by being able to interrogate and to excavate the best parts of our impact over the last 30 years as we turn 30.
It's just, I love reflection and introspection and what that offers and especially amidst a challenging time because it really is grounding, and that is where so much of the hope and optimism lives is in the art and in the impact, and this is an opportunity for somebody to come in, hit the ground running, really shape things, really become a voice for us as an institution, and allow all of us to show up as incredible ambassadors as a result.
Tim Cynova:
So awesome. Renuka, Sara, thank you so much for sharing your perspectives, for your vulnerability, for your openness, for your genuineness, and thanks so much for being on the podcast.
Renuka Kher:
Thank you, Tim, for having us.
Tim Cynova:
To learn more about Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, visit them online at YBCA.org or on the socials, @YBCA. If you or someone might be interested in applying for their new head of external relations role, find out more about the opportunity, including staff videos talking about why this role is an important addition to the YBCA team over on workshouldntsuck.co/ybca-er. If you've enjoyed the conversation or are just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up, or five stars, or a phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform choice offers. Until next time, thanks for listening.
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