Updated
September 2, 2023
How do we support leaders in the cultural sector?
In this episode, host Tim Cynova has a fun and fascinating conversation with Gail Crider (President & CEO) and Kristina Newman-Scott (Board Chair) of National Arts Strategies (NAS), an organization dedicated to building and supporting a community of arts and culture leaders who drive inspiring change for the future. We dive into the transformative work they've been doing to create more inclusive and innovative spaces and approaches within the sector through their programs and offerings.
Episode Highlights:
Introduction to our guests from National Arts Strategies and their roles within and outside of NAS.
The history and mission of NAS, and how they are working to strengthen the arts and culture sector.
The importance of embracing change and adapting to the ever-evolving landscape of the arts industry.
The role of technology in creating new opportunities and challenges for arts organizations.
NAS's commitment to its values, and how they're working to create more inclusive spaces within the arts sector.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the arts industry and how NAS has adapted its programs to support leaders during these challenging times.
The future of NAS and their vision for the arts and culture sector and what exciting things are in store.
Guests: Gail Crider & Kristina Newman-Scott
Host: Tim Cynova
Guests
Gail Crider is the granddaughter of Bob and Carrie, farmers who figured things out as they went and nurtured both plants and neighbors; she is the daughter of Carolyn, an educator who built spaces for people of all ages to understand and learn tools to turn learning disabilities into different abilities; she is the sister of Catherine, a psychiatrist who is as dedicated to truth finding as she is to planet nurturing; she is mother to Alex, a recent graduate who plans to run for public office, dismantle harmful and oppressive systems, and link arms with others to heal the world.
Gail is part of a collaborative management team of creative and resourceful individuals at NAS who sit inside a larger and greatly gifted staff and board of agitators and change agents. She facilitates strategy, program design and partnerships, and values alignment. Gail was instrumental in the organization’s transition from the National Arts Stabilization Fund to National Arts Strategies and providing the range of services offered today that support a diverse community of leaders driving inspiring change for the future.
Over the course of her career, Gail has been an entrepreneur, worked with a variety of nonprofit organizations and spent a decade in public and private philanthropy. Prior to NAS, she was as a program officer for a foundation where she worked on inner-city redevelopment and community building in Washington, D.C. Gail has also worked for the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Arena Stage, Shakespeare Theatre, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Key Bank. She co-chaired the Community Development Support Collaborative in Washington, D.C., and has served as a senior fellow for the Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania, on the audit committee for the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies and on grant panels for the Corporation for National Service (AmeriCorps), the National Endowment for the Arts and the Department of Treasury, CDFI Fund. She holds a B.S. in theater from Lewis and Clark College and continues to learn formally and informally through her work at NAS, including continuing education at Stanford University, Harvard Business School, and University of Michigan – Ross School of Business. She is an ICF trained leadership coach.
Kristina Newman-Scott is an award-winning, purpose-driven leader with over 20 years of experience in contemporary visual and performing arts, entertainment, and media. She is the inaugural Executive Director for The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space at New York Public Radio/WNYC, the company’s multi-platform and live studio space.
Newman-Scott's awards and recognitions include being named one of the City and State New York’s, Telecommunications Power 50 individuals shaping New York’s digital future, an Observer’s NYC Arts Power 50, and a Next City Urban Vanguard. She is a recipient of the Selina Roberts Ottum award from Americans for the Arts and was conferred an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts by the University of New Haven, Lyme Academy of Fine Arts in 2018.
Her past leadership positions include serving as President of BRIC, an art, and media organization in Brooklyn; the Director of Culture for the State of Connecticut; Director of Programs at the Boston Center for the Arts; and Director of Visual Arts at Real Art Ways.
Kristina was appointed to the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission in 2020 and currently serves on the Boards of Americans for the Arts, the Brooklyn Arts Council, National Arts Strategies, New Yorkers for Culture and Arts and the New York Arts Education Roundtable.
Kristina was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica and worked as a practicing artist and TV/radio host and producer in her home country before moving to the US in 2005. She currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.
Host
Tim Cynova, SPHR (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. Learn more on LinkedIn.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I'm Tim Cynova, and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck, a podcast about, well, that. In this episode I have the honor of chatting with two of the amazing leaders at National Arts Strategies, president and CEO, Gail Crider, and board chair, Kristina Newman-Scott.
If NAS is new to you, it's a terrific organization helping to build and support a diverse community of arts and culture leaders who drive inspiring change for the future. Frequent listeners of this podcast know that we spend a lot of time exploring various aspects of the how of creating anti-racist, inclusive, and equitable workplaces. NAS is one organization that's in the mix as their approach and offerings aim to help leaders thrive as they work to shift unjust systems.
Some of the things I'm particularly interested in learning more about today are their value centered coaching program, their four-day workweek experiment, and how on a scale of awesome to totally awesome, where do you need to land in order to be a part of the NAS team.
If you want to learn more about NAS, Gail, and Kristina, you can find information linked in the episode description. In the interest of time, let's get going. Gail and Kristina, welcome to the podcast.
Gail Crider:
Thanks, Tim.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Thank you.
Tim Cynova:
You both are no strangers to the Work Shouldn't Suck podcast, or I guess specifically the daily leadership live stream that Lauren Ruffin and I hosted at the very beginning of the pandemic. You both were guests when our lives were thrown into the uncertainty bucket. I'm excited for this opportunity really to dust off our microphones and get the band back together on this one.
So much to talk about, but before we really dive in, why don't we just start with how do you each typically introduce yourselves and the work that you do? Gail, why don't you get us started?
Gail Crider:
Thanks, Tim. My name is Gail Crider. I am a daughter, sister, mom, friend, meditator, baker, and I'm coming to you from my tiny home office that has this inviting purple chair behind me with a weighted blanket. I think that says a lot right there.
I've spent the better part of my life cultivating curiosity in myself and others and creating spaces where we can share, learn, and grow together, which has meant growing my own abilities to walk towards discomfort and even embrace ambiguity. And still, I love to organize people and ideas a little bit too much.
I want to just go a little bit deeper because this is my link to Kristina as well is I've worked in philanthropy and banking and regional theater, community development. I volunteered in schools as my son grew up and organized efforts in my community on sustainable infrastructure. I've had the great good fortune to work for NAS, and this is something that gave me pause for a quarter of a century at this point in different roles.
I have known Kristina for almost 10 years. We first met during our inaugural run of Creative Community Fellows. We sought her out to join the board in 2018, and she's been our close partner as board chair this year. I think Kristina and I are both really drawn to change at local and systemic levels and cultivating inclusive spaces where people can learn and be and test and try. Kristina is really there as a thought partner, a collaborator, a crisis counselor, and a friend.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Oh wow. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you for that, Gail. I'm Kristina Newman-Scott. I am also a mom and a sister and a daughter, missing my parents who live in Jamaica. I was born and raised in Jamaica, but I've lived in the United States since 2005. I've spent 20 odd years working in arts and culture first as an artist and then working as a curator and arts administrator.
Currently, I am the executive director of the Jerome L. Greene Performance Space at New York Public Radio. Some might know New York Public Radio is the home of WNYC and WQXR, which are the two popular radio stations. While the company curates for ears, we like to say that we curate onstage and onscreen. So I get to do that every day.
Listen, without NAS, I don't think I would even be in this role in this moment in New York City. I mean, my experience at NAS in 2014 when I was working for the mayor of the City of Hartford as the head of cultural affairs completely changed my career trajectory. I was always going to work in the arts, but it changed how I imagined my place in the arts. I will always be deeply grateful.
Tim Cynova:
I think that might be when we first met, Kristina, because I was invited to-
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Yes, you were a mentor.
Tim Cynova:
Is that when we went to Mass MoCA and sat in darkness for 45 minutes when we listened to that string quartet?
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Yes.
Tim Cynova:
Oh my gosh.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Oh my gosh. That was a moment. That was like a moment. Thank you, Gail, for that. It was an amazing musical experience, I will say.
Tim Cynova:
Incredible artistry, but also like 45 minutes in a studio that was completely dark.
Gail Crider:
These instructions where you can't move after a certain point.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Right. No, but it was the first time I could hear sound bounce across and in space. Do you remember that? My awareness of the sound's movement within that space was heightened. It's magical.
Gail Crider:
Which is, y'all, a metaphor or analogy to the work in a way that NAS does, creating those spaces where you have a different context and a different awareness than maybe you had before.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
That's true.
Tim Cynova:
Speaking of a different awareness, in the lead up I'd mentioned how you both were on the leadership live stream that Lauren and I hosted at the very start of the pandemic when we're like, "When's going on?" You're running arts organizations, there's so much uncertainty. So I'm really curious over the past three years, what's changed for each of you personally, professionally, and maybe even philosophically about the work you do, the work we do, and what that time has been like for NAS.
Gail Crider:
Gosh, y'all. Remember going into this, we didn't know what we were going into. Talk about a level of ambiguity and uncertainty, all the things that make humans just feel so comfortable and happy in spaces. As you triage those moments, we're so glad that we kept the salaries intact. We kept the team intact.
We became even closer to all of our friends and family in the NAS friends and family world to our board and decided things like we stepped out of the funding pool. We decided not to do any fundraising. We had assets that we could rely on while others did not. That felt like the right thing to do. With the entire team and the incredible board support, we went to four-day work weeks. We decided just to lop off a day, not to squish an entire 40-hour work week into four days, but just to push it back, push it down, and change it up.
We were so hyper aware and so cognitively overloaded. And so having that extra day, the team had decided to have it a three-day kind of weekend, have that span of time to function differently and to be really present for families. A lot of folks had young kids or older parents, neighbors, a lot of things we were all dealing with.
So I look back on those times thinking, I'm just grateful. I'm so grateful for the group. And then that really blossomed into stepping more into these co-creation spaces. I think we really all co-created that. Kristina, you'll probably remember a lot of conversations around let's try this, let's do this with the team and with the field.
And so that really led us into really embracing that more and working with more and more people on how do we figure out how to continue to adapt and just step a little bit forward while being beside people as they're navigating through really challenging times and into a future that we'd like to create rather than one that may be dictated to us.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
As I hear you bring all those things up, it's interesting, Tim, you were like, "What are some of the shifts since COVID" and how either we've changed our roles or just in thinking. That heightened awareness of that pause that we were forced to take, we had no choice but to take.
The pause was different. It showed up differently for different people. Some people moved, some people slowed down and became aware of how much they were working. Some people actually sped up trying to prove their value. I saw a lot, especially in the BIPOC community, of folks actually working even harder, which had more of an emotional toll on them because their value is labor.
While the world was becoming aware of the ways that we had been moving through our lives in work and in other ways that were maybe not the healthiest, skies in India were clearing up, you saw sea creatures in canals. It was like, what is happening? It's like slow down. Me Too, Black Lives Matter, mental health support, need for co-leadership as Gail was talking about.
But simultaneously power structures within arts and cultural organizations, some of them unlike NAS, actually were reverting back to ways that were oppressive and connected to systems that were in conflict with the moment. So while people were saying, we need space, let's slow down, what are our values and how might we show up differently, there were these other pieces that were like, okay, great, but let's do these 55 things now.
I think in this moment today, we've actually lost a lot of the momentum that we've gained during COVID, and it's actually dizzying when you think about how fast the turnaround has been. I feel like in many ways we are in terms of work culture, not at NAS, but in general, not better off than we were pre-pandemic, where we're going in the wrong direction in many ways.
I say this to say that NAS and the team at NAS and the board supported the organization's unknowing and being like, okay, let's be paced and let's take a moment and let's trust in our leaders at National Arts Strategies. They're telling us this is what they need and let's give them the space to go through this.
And so we learned a lot as a board because most of us are running arts and cultural organizations or work in the arts and cultural sector, so we had a lot of good learning. But I feel like the work that NAS has done and continues to do is just the kind of model that we need to see more of in our nation.
Tim Cynova:
I think it's Liz Lerman who talks about the snapback. I've really been feeling that the past year. You got past the uncertainty and then into whatever that next phase was. And then it's the snapback because we're like, "Well, we need to be doing the same things we were doing before while everyone's still really exhausted and burned out." To your point, Gail, about trying to cram 100% into what used to be 80%, the five-day work week, we'll do five and four, and we're like, "Oh my gosh, we barely can show up for four, let alone try to do it at 100%."
As an organization that works with leaders, actively are working with how to hold onto the stuff that came out of a really challenging period into a new future, a different future, a co-created future, I'm curious what's resonating with you right now. As a lot of organizations are trying to get back to 2019, you all are an organization that's helping rethink what the future can be. What's in the mix for you all right now?
Gail Crider:
We had a sense, like Kristina was saying, of what we wanted to move away from, but not how to move what we wanted to move towards. What was the horizon? And that there's no single path to get there. We often talk about both structures and behaviors. People are people. We do like to sit in comfortable spaces. We don't like discomfort. We don't necessarily change. We want to change. We're not sure how to change.
And so it's how to support people both in their systems and structures and the behaviors. I would say when you mentioned coaching, that was a program that we initiated right before the pandemic started, training coaches. And then we finished it through the pandemic and then initiated it inside the pandemic, because we realized that I think from our own past history and our relearning and unlearning and learning, again, it's such a cycle that we can't just pull forward structures that we're familiar with.
We have to continue to imagine how things could look in the future. And then we also have to recognize there's many paths and that we're all people. So the coaching has really helped support people where they're at and find their power and potential and help them move into a future that they want to be in rather than something somebody else might dictate to them.
And then I think with the other programs that we've worked on, the programs that Kristina, you and I met on, the Creative Community Fellows, even how that's changed to support these amazing people who are working on positive community change, but typically outside of organizational structures, now there's a $10,000 fellowship attached to that. No strings attached. I mean, be in the program, do your work. We are here to support you no single way. Many different ways to a horizon that's a lot more fair and equitable and healthy for everyone.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
I have a core memory of being in that house, that strange big mansion, very strange big mansion in New England. There was an exercise that we had to do in my year. They blindfolded us and took us downstairs. We were holding onto each other's shoulders, and they brought us into a room that had cord or string around. It was like a maze and you had to figure your way out.
This exercise was a life moment. It was a moment for me. They said to you when you got in there, "Everybody get in. Find your way out. Once you get out, we'll let you know. And if you need help, just ask for help. But everybody get in." So we're all hitting into each other, feeling string, hell-bent on finding the way out. And I kept hearing, "This person's out, Becky's out, [inaudible] out." And I'm like, "Why am I not getting out of here?" I kept trying to figure out the God damn way.
Anyway, so at the end, I think it might've been three of us left. I don't remember what the thing was that made us just give up or something, but it dawned on us or somebody said it, "You have to ask for help. That's the way out." Asking for help was the way out. So when people lifted their hand up to say, "I need help," that is how they got out.
For me in the program, I realized that I didn't know how to ask for help. I wasn't raised in a way that made me feel safe enough to ask for help because I felt like that was already, as a biracial woman of color, asking for help means that I'm reinforcing a deficit mindset of myself and that I'm less than. But that moment changed it where I was like, "Oh my God, I got to ask for help. I got to be okay with being like, 'This is what I need help on.'" That was a tool. I mean, I've taken that tool to this day.
But the beauty of these programs that NAS does as well is that it's for sure about the tools that you'll get, the practical tools that will help you be a better leader, make more impact, create more meaning. But it's also about tools that have kind of self-realization, moments where you have awakenings about how you are showing up in the world and how you might need to take a moment with that to make whatever shifts or that you need to make to create more meaning in the work that you're doing.
That's the beauty too. It's not just going to a place where you're like, "I've done my design thinking coursework, yay, I'm going to go change the world." It's also about like, no, this is also going to allow you to have reflective moments and think about who you are as a human in the world.
Tim Cynova:
That's really the beauty of the NAS community and the deep thought in learning and curriculum that goes into setting up those moments, because the next day we did the lux circles.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
We did.
Tim Cynova:
As someone who's really skeptical about this. The concept was you break off into five or six people groups and you ask the group, "Here's something I need," and the group comes together like, how can we help with that? I was deeply skeptical going into this. At the time, we were redoing our employee handbook, and I was looking for the graphic novel employee handbook that Zappos did. And so I'm like, "Hey, I'm just looking for this. I'd like to see it." And someone in the circle is like, "Yeah, my nephew works there. Let me text him." I'm like, "Oh my God."
And then the next person was like, "I'm getting married. We want to go for a beach honeymoon and we're willing to go any place." And someone's like, "Would you go to whatever country?" And they're like, "Yeah, sure." They're like, "Yeah, my cousin has a place. Let me just contact them." I'm like, "Oh my gosh, what has just happened in this circle?"
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Yes, it's so true.
Tim Cynova:
But it takes that, well, you can ask for help. We have a community here. And took that into practice. For some things like no way someone's going to find a beach honeymoon for free. It was that magical moment. And every time I've done that with NAS, I'm like, "No way anyone's going to have anything to help with that one." It's kind of the more outrageous things, the more you're like, "Oh yeah, we can totally figure that thing out."
I think as we're living in this moment, no one has all the answers right now. We're living into a future that is being invented as we live it. And so how do you build that network? I mean, I know the two of you because I'm at NAS and other people that are like, "All right, so how do we actually create this thing?" It's such a beautiful moment and happened in that weird house in New England.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
That is true, that weird house in New England. I wonder what's come of that place. But yes.
Tim Cynova:
Gail, as you think about the work that NAS is doing, and we're talking about something that happened a decade ago that still resonates with both of us. Every single person who's been a part of NAS has these stories, I know. How does that inform how you approach the work that you've been doing for a quarter of a decade?
Gail Crider:
We're all so curious, curious about how things were curious about why people do things, curious about what the possibilities are for the future. We've talked about how every time we build something new, it's on the shoulders of those who've gone before you.
But there is this entire interconnected community, and it is because of that force in a way. It helps us move into the future. And every time now we build something new or we think, oh, now what? We go to our community and we try to find spaces that are, again, those walking into discomfort and walking with others because it makes so many things more possible because together we're so interdependent.
But we sometimes live in a society that falsely says, no, you're independent. You can pull yourself up by your bootstrap. You can do this. Yes, everybody has a level of power and authenticity and you want to be yourselves, but it's such a crushing pressure. And to take that pressure off to make these reflective spaces to try and test new ideas is really how we've moved into the future.
And so I think it's incredibly iterative. Over and over we've done this again and again. And now again with the projects we build, we now bring in the community as co-designers and we pay them for their time and we recognize them and we link arms to continue to build towards a future that we'd all like to see.
Tim Cynova:
It's a rarity to have a CEO and a board chair in a conversation that's public. It's a rarity to have the people in these roles know each other, like each other, want to talk about the work that they do. I'm curious if you can share a little bit about how the two of you work together in these roles and what that's like and maybe what's unique to that because you both have worked with other people in these roles or been in other roles in that configuration.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
I've had many chairs in my job, so I'm very accustomed to working with chairs. The first time I accepted the role of a chair is with NAS because it just felt so special to me. I was vice chair under our past chair, and I know I'm not a perfect chair, but what I try to do in my role is to be able to be responsive to what Gail and the team need and try to not offer too many things that are not asked for.
I try to work from a place of support and being responsive in ways that they are asking for versus injecting a lot of the things that I think they need that they didn't ask for. I think that that's a really easy, solid formula for any board chair. Just show up in ways that start out with, how might I support you in this moment? Because that's the work. I hope that that's what I'm doing. But listen, Gail will tell you. This board is such a cool board. It's so full of joy and purpose. Gail, what's your perspective on this? No pressure.
Gail Crider:
I'm thinking about the conversation we had about liberatory practices. We were trying to encourage the board to speak more publicly about its own spaces and spaces with us. They said, "Yeah, but we're just such an unusual beast in a way because all the other boards we serve on in our organizational boards, they're just so radically different." And then we've had this long discussion about why they have to be and what is it about structures that make it so.
I guess to go back into our world, I think we've set up this space where our board is thought partners for us. They are there to support but also to push. So it's confirming and disconfirming information and to try to build a level of trust where everybody feels like they can offer what they have in the moments it's going through their minds, so in our meetings. Board members are amazing for us in that we pick up the phone, we send a text or an email and they're there for us with some specific request or some time or anything that we're asking for or needing.
I think with Kristina and I, we met through some really high bonding moments. It really is, I trust you so deeply, Kristina, to know that you're also not going to tell me what I want to hear. You're going to tell me what's real and what you see, and that's a beautiful thing.
Plus it's great fun to work with Kristina, your energy and your humor. You bring out the best in people. When we recruit new board members, they typically will talk to Kristina. I almost, within I would say seconds, get an email or text back from the potential board members saying, "I love Kristina. That was a great conversation."
Kristina Newman-Scott:
That's nice to hear. I think a key point too though, Tim, is that our board members, while we all give to the organization time, treasure, talent, we're not the traditional fundraising board that you'd see at maybe major museums or other types of institutions that have boards that really their world and their focus is to bring in and to make large substantial donations.
It doesn't mean that there aren't people on our board who don't give if they have the ability to, but the point is that I think that that shifts the dynamic quite a bit because I think with a focus on the monetary value as the highest value, the ability to build relationships that are equitable and based on respect and trust and understanding is uncommon, because if the purse string is the thing, if it's the money that is the number one priority, then the person holding that money assumes that they and what they think and what they bring is the number one priority.
Not all the time, I'm not saying in every instance, but I think that it's a very delicate balance with that type of board because it can shift and cause tension in ways that might not be as visible in the beginning, where our board is all about the content and to Gail's point, the thought leadership to be partnered to push, pull, to hold all of us accountable, to affect systemic change and to be of service to NAS.
Tim Cynova:
Gail, speaking about being a part of the NAS team, I hear you're in the process of searching for a brand new director of community partnerships. What's the role? How are you thinking about it? And what qualities and characteristics would help someone really thrive in this role at NAS right now?
Gail Crider:
This is a new role for us, and it is born out of a collaboration that we've had now I think two years running with the LACNA Foundation, but is to, in essence take the lead on their fellowship program, the name of which specifically is the LACNA BIPOC Executive Leadership in Arts program.
This is an exciting time of change, and it's an exciting time of development of that particular program where the board really wanted to solidify its potential growth. It was a good time. It moved from kind of volunteer and some of us including NAS who were contractors working on it to now being housed inside of NAS and having a champion, if you will, a staff person that is primarily devoted to the stewardship and the future of this program.
It's an incredibly exciting time for someone coming into this really new role who loves to work with complex and fascinating partners who have a lot of amazing ideas and energy towards change that needs channeling and supporting. This particular role we anticipate working on other community partnerships that we continue to be part of and to grow. And so we're excited about the complementarity with the LACNA program and other things that we've been doing, and then having a new person housed inside of NAS because every new person changes kind of who we are and the direction we're going.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
I know it's in the name, National Arts Strategies, but I do think an attractive thing about working within the NAS community is its connectivity across the nation and the world really, intentional relationships that have been formed across the United States and across the world.
I think that somebody that is interested in work that's happening the way that NAS is focused, it was an attractive point to have proximity to this work. It's not just about being in Alexandria, thinking about arts and culture in this small space. It's really a global organization. Having proximity to research and thinkers and thought leaders that are global and that are moving the needle on this would be exciting to a candidate who finds that exciting.
Tim Cynova:
Per usual, our time has flown by. Anytime we all get together to chat, we always run out of time. The clock is not on our side for this conversation. As we bring the plane in for landing on our conversation today, where do you two want to land it?
Kristina Newman-Scott:
NAS is an incredible institution. I am biased, yes. I am biased, but I'm biased because it is truly a space where we're not afraid to be vulnerable, to challenge the status quo, to think about moving systems, to make mistakes, to be connected globally and nationally.
I just think that NAS is the type of institution that is a model for arts and cultural organizations that really want to do this kind of work everywhere in the world. I just feel super honored to be a part of this community. I think that we're also lots of fun. So anybody that wants and likes any of those things, I think they'd like me and NAS quite a bit.
Gail Crider:
Yeah, what she said. It really is joy and hope, and we're here to stand beside people who are really making positive change in the world. We're here.
Tim Cynova:
Gail and Kristina, thank you so much for sharing your time, your perspectives, your openness, your genuineness. Thanks for being friends for a decade plus on this one, and thanks for being on the podcast.
Kristina Newman-Scott:
Awesome. Thanks for having me.
Gail Crider:
Thanks, Tim.
Tim Cynova:
To learn more about National Arts Strategies, visit them online at artsstrategies.org or on the socials @ArtsStrategies. If you or someone you know might be interested in applying for their new director of community partnerships role, find out more about the opportunity, including staff videos talking about why this role is an important addition to the NAS team over on workshouldntsuck.co/NAS.
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