205 Connecting the Community by Bringing the World to Washington D.C. with President and CEO of Washington Performing Arts, Jenny Bilfield | Greater Washington DC DMV Changemaker

Mahan Tavakoli: 

Welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm really excited this week to be speaking with Jenny Bilfield. Jenny is the president and CEO of Washington Performing Arts, which is based in Washington DC and was founded back in 1965. It's an organization that's long been one of the nation's preeminent multidisciplinary arts presenters and was the first organization of its kind to receive the coveted national middle of arts conferred by President Obama at the White House. 

Jenny has positioned Washington Performing Arts as an important incubator of imaginative main stage community and educational programs. I really enjoyed this conversation with Jenny on her leadership, including leading the organization through the pandemic to achieving greater purpose and greater impact in our community. 

I am sure you will enjoy the conversation too. I also love hearing from you. Keep your comments coming, mahan@mahantavakoli.com. There's a microphone icon on partneringleadership.com. You can leave voice messages for me there. Don't forget to follow the podcast on your favorite platform. Tuesday, Conversations with magnificent change makers from the Greater Washington DC, DMV region like Jenny and Thursday conversations with brilliant global thought leaders. Now here is my conversation with Jenny Bilfield.

Jenny Bilfield, welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm thrilled to have you in this conversation with me,

Jenny Bilfield: 

Thank you. I'm delighted to speak with you 

Mahan Tavakoli: 

I'm excited about what you have been able to do leading, watching a performing art, most especially through the past couple of years, which have been very challenging for a lot of organizations, let alone an organization that brings people together to celebrate arts and enjoy arts.

But before we get to that, we'd love to know whereabouts you grew up and how did your upbringing impact the kind of person you've become.

Jenny Bilfield: 

Actually, my upbringing did have a really defining role in who I've become, both as a leader and as a person. I grew up on Long Island and flattered that you can't detect, or maybe you can detect my accent.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

Just when you say Long Island.

Jenny Bilfield: 

Long Island. God, there are certain, I have certain tells and I'm proud of them.

I was a surprise baby. I had a 17-year-old brother, an 18-year-old sister. They went off to school, went off to do other things, and my parents had another child. My mother was a really brilliant thinker and curious about so many different facets of the arts and economy. And she studied economics. 

My dad was a dentist. He was the town dentist, and they had a lot of time since I was, towards the second half of their lives. They had a lot of time to spend thinking about how I could be nurtured and supported and I had the added benefit of siblings who were older, who were set in their course.

Very early on, at the age of three, I started playing the piano. My mother played the piano with a lot of mistakes. Site reading music and struggling with notes and whatnot. But she's very determined and I used to play by ear with all of her mistakes.

There was no other artist in our family in any way, shape or form. Everybody basically sang out of key and was tone deaf so, I was an anomaly. And my mother, however, had grown up going to the hunter schools in New York City and she'd had this really extensive immersion in in the arts and especially contemporary arts.

So, in me, she found a concert and museum going buddy. My dad was moderately interested, but really, she was fanatical. We lived on Long Island. We went in to New York City every weekend. We went to hear music in churches, in major concert halls at art galleries, restaurants, as well as visual art theater.

So, from the time I was really little, it was, taking a chopped liver sandwich, eating it in the car, parking in the Metropolitan Museum. Parking garage and going to the latest exhibit. That sense of porousness of experiencing the arts in many different places, hearing many different types of music, seeing many different types of visual expression, sculpture, painting, and so on, was absolutely defining because that malleable mind, at a young age, being exposed to so much made me open to a huge amount of artistic expression.

So, as I began to develop as a musician, I also developed as a listener and also my cultural awareness group because I became aware of different types of instruments from different cultures, and it was pretty expansive. I think even as more time has passed, I appreciate more and more that immersion, that geography and great parental guidance offered. Now I can talk about this a little bit later too, but my parents never had any intention that I would actually make my living in the arts because they grew up.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

I don't think, I don't think too many parents, Jenny dream of their kids growing up and being in the arts. They want them to do it on the side, not as a career.

Jenny Bilfield: 

Yes. Except my husband and I are very happy that our daughter is an actress, so we're trying to break the mold there. But, in fact, my parents grew up during the depression, and for them, their goal was to make sure that I was financially secure and prepared. The assumption was that I would find someone who would take care of me, not that I would necessarily have a career where I could ground myself financially and economically. 

But certainly, my interest in the arts, if I could combine that with a way of making money, hence my speed demon typing skills and my good secretarial skills. If I could combine my love of arts with my employable skills, then I had their full encouragement.

But I found my path very early and they were certainly supportive enough for me to determine that it was the right path for me.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

So, from early on, did you want to end up having a career in the arts?

Jenny Bilfield: 

Absolutely. There was never any other question from my earliest memories that I wanted my life to be in the arts in some way up until the age of 16, when I graduated from high school, I assumed that I would make it as a composer or pianist. That was my direction I was immersed. I went to a Saturday program in New York.

I went to college early because I wanted that incredible saturation. But at the same time, I had a series of internships that enabled me to plunge into the depths of producing and arts management. And I discovered that I had a real interest and talent for connecting audiences with artists.

That was something where I could be both creative and also operationally focused and it activated all of my different skills and interests. So, it was actually probably the age of 17 where I decided I wanted to be on the producing and management side. And I have never detoured from that.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

That's incredible. What a wonderful thing that you've been able to pursue that and spend your life and career in the arts. Now at some point, I'm going to circle back and I need to find out about those chopped liver sandwiches that you were eating

Jenny Bilfield: 

Very visceral memory.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

In the car. Were those by choice or by default?

Jenny Bilfield: 

Oh no. My mother was like, Okay, we don't have time to eat lunch and eating lunch at Lincoln Center is expensive and eating lunch at the Metropolitan Museum is expensive. So, she would make the chopped liver sandwiches, which were notable for many reasons, one of which is that she didn't always thoroughly cook the chicken livers.

So I know that's an unpalatable memory, but I also know what it tastes like to have a chicken liver sandwich with milk, because I would have a container of milk and I would sit there with it on my lap trying to eat while she drove, finishing it in the basement garage and then heading up to the concert or to the show and it's a wonderful memory. I'm glad there's some distance.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

It's one of those things I bet most of the listeners, if they're eating right now, they put their food aside and pay full attention to the rest of your story. 

So, you had all these aspirations as a young musician, young composer growing up. What were your experiences like in high school before then ending up going to college to pursue a degree in music?

Jenny Bilfield: 

I was fortunate to grow up in a school system that did prioritize the arts and sports and many other ways in which students could express their talents and pursue excellence. And so, my music department and art department had classes in music theory and band and orchestra and so, I just threw myself into it.

I played piano for the chorus. I composed; I had a teacher who mentored me. And I also, starting in actually middle school ninth grade I, or eighth grade, I started organizing library concerts. So, for the three periods that lunch time ran. I would organize concerts and I would help pick the music and I would play some of it, and I would introduce it and make a little program.

And unbeknownst to me, that this was actually a career path I would also sit in the library and I would literally read cover to cover the history of rock and roll music. The history of classical music and Musical America, which was one of those, business to business tones where every manager and every artist is advertised.

So, I began to master not just the terminology and the history and the sequencing, but also who was active in the field. So, there aren't that many 18-year old’s who walk into an office and say, Oh yeah, that one is located there. That one's on West 57th Street. Oh, that one has this roster.

Oh, and this is an assistant manager here. So somehow, every possible brain cell was firing and it just spoke to me. And it very much so happened in the school, in the libraries, the collections, the records that I could take out. Arts education was a really big part of my youth in public school.

And I think that's one of the reasons Washington performing arts education programs in the school speaks to me because I know that kind of catalytic impact.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

It's really important, Jenny, when I reflect on the fact that over the past couple of decades there's been so much focus on STEM. Some people talk about steam, but primarily STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Some of the arts programs have been cut. Some of the focus has been taken out from all of those things that can help us connect with our humanity, connect with each other.

Some of the things that artificial intelligence and computers cannot duplicate yet are the ones that we've taken out of the schooling. So, it's great that you had the opportunity to pursue that, and now you have the opportunity to offer that to the community. So, you end up studying music but pretty early on in your career at 23. You decided to start an orchestra dedicated to performing music.

So, I both wanna know about that and what gave you the courage to start an orchestra, which starting any business, an entrepreneurial venture is risky now we celebrate entrepreneurs more so than we did 20, 30 years ago. So why did you decide to start it and what gave you the courage to start it? 

Jenny Bilfield: 

They're great questions and I learned a great deal about my leadership and my sense of tenacity. And maybe just my, pigheadedness, honestly, just that sense of. I didn't know what I didn't know.

But as a young composer and studying at college, I had a number of friends who were in the graduate program. This was at the University of Pennsylvania and all of them were writing really large-scale works, like for orchestra, 85 people for their masters in dissertations. Yet there was no orchestra at the university that was able to perform the work. So very often, the music was written for the degree and then it languished waiting for a performance.

And I thought, Wow, this is just like something is not connecting here, why are we encouraging people to create work that they will never hear/ Fast forward, I applied for a job basically running the office of a training orchestra that was defunct. The board had closed the organization down.

They were searching for a mission because a lot of the work that they had done training young musicians for careers was now being done by performing arts conservatories. So, I was hired to be the office manager and to help support the organization's strategic explorations in various ways.

The job paid me enough to move into New York City. I think I was making $30,000 at the time, and so I spent the very lonely times in the office, all dressed up in my suit, going to the office, which was abandoned. Reading every bit of information. The bylaws, the minutes, and the organization had been started in 1930.

So, I was reading 50 years of board minutes audition information history, working with strategic planning consultants. And I briefly had another job, I left, I came back as the managing director. But the board having exhausted a lot of ideas that had been presented to them were very open to a new idea.

And I said one of the things that makes a musician more competitive is their ability to adapt in any situation they're thrown into. So, what if we focus that on a training orchestra? An orchestra that prepares young musicians to perform music by living composers, music that's never been heard before and to be able to do it in a rehearsal and then to record it. That way they can walk into anything site, read the music. 

The board was intrigued. I spoke with Manhattan School of Music, one of the premier conservatories in the world, and we talked about involving their undergraduates and graduate students in this auditioning.

And I happened to be able to identify a conductor who was just between major gigs. He was leaving the Juilliard School and the Aspen Music Festival, George Mester, he had time. So, a number of different elements came together to fulfill this. And honestly, I think the board was excited and also needed an idea to propel forward.

And so, at the age of 22, 23, they're like, Let's give it a try. Having a great music director mattered and we took off. But I will say that to your question about what sort of propelled that and what gave me the confidence. From the time I was really young, I had heard girls don't do this. Women don't compose music. I heard that women don't have careers, not from my home, but a lot of the messages that I had in the 1970s and eighties were pretty bleak. You'll work for a few years and then you'll have children. There were a lot of assumptions about me having grown up as the daughter of a dentist on Long Island, that I had a natural trajectory towards marriage and being taken care of.

Honestly, knowing what I was capable of, I felt very defiant at every one of those turns. I already had that sense of rumbling in my stomach to push back against assumptions about myself. An important lesson to never make monolithic assumptions about people. But I felt it acutely for a number of years.

 So, when I did present my idea to colleagues in the music world, Pulitzer Prize winning composers, leaders of major institutions, I had a lot of very positive feedback Yes, this is needed. It doesn't exist, do it. 

And there was one extremely prominent person who was affiliated with Lincoln Center in the Juilliard School at the time, and he called me, and I'll never forget this conversation. He said, “I received your proposal. And I think it's a very nice idea, but frankly, any composer worth their salt doesn't need to hear their music performed in order to know that it's good. I wish you well, but I don't think it'll work.” Hung up and I remember putting my head down on the desk and crying because this was someone who was, like an oracle within our field. My first response was to cry and then my next response was, expletive. I'm gonna show him like he's wrong. He's at a place in his life where he doesn't need this sort of thing, but there are thousands of people who do. And it was that very defining moment of realizing that this is but one person's opinion. I should be aware of it. I should evaluate how much weight it should carry. I should share it with other people to see if, you know, there's merit in it, and then ultimately make the decision going forward. As I look back to do that at 23 and just basically, make whatever gesture in his direction, we went ahead and did it. 

Mahan Tavakoli: 

What a great example. Jenny. Gallop had done research on the most successful sales people, and one of the things they found is that people think that the most successful sales people are the ones that don't mind rejection, and that's not true. They are not the ones that don't mind rejection, and they are not the ones that are paralyzed by rejection.

They are the ones that, to your point, are almost ticked off and motivated by that rejection so you use that as motivation to launch this, which is outstanding for many reasons, including the fact that you met your life partner, Joel, there too.

Jenny Bilfield: 

Very true. As we say, never say never make monolithic assumptions, because I was a composer, I knew how insular our field could be, and certainly was at the time, less so now. I always said I'll never marry your data composer because I assumed that all we would ever talk about is music and music theory and all of this.

This guy was among 500 people who sent in musical scores to be reviewed by our different juries. And his score rose to a very high level, and our conductor looked at it and the choice was whether to include the work in the readings and performances or not.

And so, the conductor chose this Viola concerto by composer Joel Phillip Friedman, and my task was to find a violist who was good enough to play it if I could find the right violist, we could premiere it at Carnegie Hall. And I called my manager contact since I knew of them from my high school days.

And one of the great violists of the world was just leaving his position at the New York Phil Harmonic. He was the youngest musician, hired by the New York Phil Harmonic to start a solo career. And he was looking for a Carnegie Hall debut. I happened to have the Viola Concerto and so Paul Newbauer was drafted to do this work.

We proceeded the performance was scheduled, five world premieres in one evening. All the press was there. The New Yorker, the New York Times, the Daily News, the Washington Post AP, on and on. This was the concerto that was the centerpiece of the program. People just swooned at this work.

It was gorgeous. It was really well played. It was complicated and the piece was fabulously reviewed. So, one of the services that my organization provided was helping composers promote additional performances, find publishing agreements and whatnot. So, this composer, Joel Phillip Friedman, kept coming around.

We went to receptions, we went to concerts, all of us together, and my assistant Margaret at the time said, I think he likes you. And I'm like, No, he's the composer. Like he was a clown or something. I don't date clowns because clowns are scary and they're in surfaces. 

So, everybody saw it except for me and I swear you could have knocked me over with a feather. I was so focused on my pronouncements that I didn't even posit the possibility. And then finally, as we became super close friends, the walls came down and I began to realize that the multi-dimensions of this person.

So, we've been together 32 years. This is our 30th anniversary this year and we do talk about music and we spar frequently, and I deeply value and love him. And frankly, I never realized how crucial the choice of a mate would be, a spouse, a partner, would be in my own ability to do what I do because the demands of my work, the opportunities to live in different parts of the country would've been impossible had I not had someone who, at a very cellular level, understood what drives me and why it's important to me. And I've had a number of friends who have not had that support where there was a limit. And every opportunity Joel has said this sounds interesting. It sounds like you really wanna do it. Let's explore it. Funny how life works. I also always said we'll never leave New York. Let's buy an apartment in Brooklyn. And then two years after we bought an apartment, I was recruited out to Stanford. So, no more pronouncements. I pronounce that there will be no more pronouncements.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

The only pronouncement is just the fact that having the right partner in life makes a huge difference to the joy and satisfaction and what we are able to accomplish in life. 

Now, you had your daughter and you lost your parents, which I think there are moments in life that ground us on how short this experience is and what's truly important for us. What was that experience like for you, having those things happen within a short window, Jenny?

Jenny Bilfield: 

Yes. And not to mention 9-11. So, over the course of literally two years, my father died. I got pregnant with my daughter a month later. Had my daughter, she was a preemie about a month early, and then my mother died three months after that. The part about, being pregnant was further complicated by the fact that I was the first person at this, then 70-year-old company to ever get pregnant, leave and come back because there was no maternity leave policy.

And it was completely befuddling what you would do with a pregnant woman who wanted to continue to work. This was one of those moments that challenged me to work at multiple levels. It was also at a time in New York where frankly, if people had kids, they were not encouraged to talk about them.

If you had to pick up your kid, you usually invented a doctor's appointment or you have to pick up your dry cleaning. There was certainly no ever talked about work life balance. 

So, I was trying to manage first of all, the grief of losing my father and my mother's health issues. Having my daughter having a pregnancy, that was largely fine but as I was approaching the end, I developed some physical challenges. I was quote an older mother at 35. 

I showed up every single day for work. And when we had those 7:00 AM calls with our London office, I was there. I never felt that I could stop. So, when I had Holly, I had a maternity leave that was spread out over time where I would work and have time at home. My husband, Joel, was really involved. We had a wonderful person in our life who was Holly Sitter and I lived 10 minutes from the office.

We stayed in a small apartment so that we could have that convenience and that ease for me. But our office culture changed when I had my daughter. It changed because she came to visit. Our sitter would drop her off and she'd crawl around the office. People who were really reclusive would come out of their offices.

And then I'd see Holly on their backs getting a ride around the office. People were charmed having a baby in the office. And then they started opening up about their lives and their spouses came to visit. And we talked about more personal things and the realness of being a parent. And about a year after how was born, were a number of structural changes in the organization, and that's when I took over.

That's when everything changed significantly, because then I was really calling the shots. And there was a question should Jenny step up, there's a leadership void. The president had left, and my boss in London, much to his credit, without knowing me terribly well, saw that my relationship with the composers who were the backbone of our business and all of our different partners was really strong. He wanted the continuity. 

And so, with essentially a toddler slash infant, I became the president of the company and then 9-11 happened. So, what the simultaneity of those big life experiences taught me is that, Yes, life is fleeting. And also, frankly, that we often spend our lives saying at some point I'll get to that, or I'll mend that relationship, or, someday I'll do X, Y, Z. And there are a number of people in my life who live by that. And then their lives ended. Things changed. So much erupted around the world and I thought, holding this little baby listening to the stealth jets fly over the East River to Manhattan, seeing the lights coming and dispersing after 9-11, I thought, this is a moment where we show up and we show up in our most authentic selves, and it's time to not put things off.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

That is something that is really important for all of us to keep in mind, Jenny, for different leaders at different points. They can connect with their own humanity. but until and unless, we're able to connect with our own humanity, we are not able to connect with other people's humanity and allowed them to be truly their human selves around us.

To me, one of the most important elements in your leadership journey is this experience which enabled you to connect with your humanity and connect with another people's humanity as a leader, which is really important. 

So, you spent a few years in San Francisco and eventually accepted the role in 2013 to come to the Greater Washington DC region as the president and CEO of Washington of Performing Arts. Why did you accept that challenge and move across the country…?

Jenny Bilfield: Yes. Again.

Mahan Tavakoli: Lead this organization?

Jenny Bilfield: 

We left Brooklyn to go out to Stanford because I was named the artistic and executive director of Stanford Live, Stanford Lively Arts and over course of seven years developed a really robust program that was the next chapter of an established program, but also built a gorgeous concert hall, Bing Concert Hall, which was one of the great pleasures of a lifetime named for Peter and Helen Bing.

But as that project was really coming to fruition and there were a lot of changes in the campus arts program, I got that restlessness in my stomach. It's not that there's a specific destination, but there's a restlessness to explore. And a colleague called me and said, Washington Performing Arts is going through some changes.

They have this incredible board chair, Reggie Van Lee. They have a strategic plan that's been in a hovering position looking for a new leader. And you should take a look at the organization. As I explored, knowing about Washington Performing Arts because it's a legendary institution. The founder, Patrick Hayes and essentially co-founder Doug Wheeler, are some of the most important and influential taste makers in our field.

It was appealing to me and I thought, Washington DC would be really interesting place to live. I'd visited, I'd worked with colleagues here. It was really in learning more about the deeply embedded work around inclusive practices, inclusive thinking that was baked into the mission.

Patrick Hayes and the board chair that he appointed in 1966, Todd Duncan, was a professor of opera at Howard University. He originated the role of Corgan Porgan Best. So, the two of them in segregated Washington found a way to bring some of the most exciting and inclusive experiences in the arts to both, concert hall audiences, as well as school children.

There was always this balance, right from the very beginning in ensuring that the community as broadly defined, would show up both on stage and in the performance venues. And it really appealed to me because that mission could have been tested a million times, budget cuts and changes in leadership. But Washington Performing Arts was one of the few organizations that has remained true to those original values.

And Patrick Hayes mantra of everybody and nobody out like that, that immediately sold me. I was also sold on Washington Performing Arts is a, a very interesting opportunity because unlike any other presenter in the entire country, there are two resident gospel choirs. And gospel music, tracing back to my days, as a young composer, my mother had taken me to churches to hear music.

At the time I didn't understand that these were worship services, that this was an expression of faith. For me, it was pure music and when I was at Boosey and Hawks, I had looked into publishing gospel music. Sadly, the company was not inclined in that direction, but I knew and had heard a lot of gospel music. It reached me, it spoke to me and I had experienced the power personally. So, gospel music, commitment to community, and frankly, having been a classically trained pianist, I knew the level of artist that Washington Performing Arts was bringing, the ones that they were launching through their piano series, the orchestras that were coming.

This was a perfect fusion of all that I loved and believed in, in the arts. And for me as a leader, I find it very hard to separate what I value from the organization that I'm representing. So, Washington Performing Arts for me felt like a perfect alignment. I believe a hundred percent in the mission. I see and feel the impact, and it speaks to me on a personal level and within the broader frame of the arts community.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

Washington Performing Arts has been at the forefront of bringing the community together in addition to exposing the different parts of our community to the artists. I have known Doug for many years. Had the pleasure of having a conversation for the podcast with him. He also was aware of the potential to use Arts as a way to impact the community and bring it together.

And you have done a magnificent job building on that heritage that Washington Performing’s Arts has had, Jenny, in our community needs arts, but above and beyond that, arts can be a way to bridge divides and bring people together, and that's what I love the most about what you've been able to do at Washington Performing Arts.

Jenny Bilfield: 

Thank you. We've only had four CEOs and each one, Patrick Hayes, Doug Wheeler, Neely Pearl, and I although the expression of our values and leadership may be slightly different. Each of us has been devoted to this investment in next generation, arts education, excellence, grounding in core values and I have always found that a balance. Being true to the history and finding new ways to express the mission that has only strengthened with time.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

I love the way you put it, Jenny. Honor the past as you innovate the future because in many of the organizations that I see, some of the traditions, some of the legacies, some of the people that have known the organization for a very long time are real assets in being able to recognize and honor that past, but at times are the ones that are most hesitant with that innovation of the future. They end up talking about the way things used to work in the good old days, whatever those good old days are, and that ends up being really tough to reinvent and innovate to stay relevant to the community. 

So, how have you been able to do that? Because this is an organization with a rich heritage that has had many people, as you say, people that were buying tickets from the very early days who are still involved, people who were playing the music early days and are still involved.

How are you able to honor them yet more importantly, be able to reinvent in new ways that might not make as much sense to them as it does for the new needs in the community?

Jenny Bilfield: 

It's a great question and I think a lot of it has to do with being very clear and transparent and visible. I've often operated by the maximum, single narrative that I don't have different conversations with different people with different outcomes. I try to understand the perspectives of people that I'm speaking with and to be very clear where I've embraced mutual interests and where I have either extended them or departed. And certainly, every new leader when they, pop down into an organization, they get calls from a lot of people. I didn't wanna tell your predecessor but x, y, z work. Or I was afraid that you would do X, Y, Z and I just wanna let you know I'm watching you. Cautions from people, anonymous emails and letters. 

I learned something very early on from Doug Wheeler who is one of the great powerful managers in our world. And he said, make sure that you have the right conversations early on so that you're not surprised by the outcomes. Involve people in your thought process. Involve people in your decisions, and then everyone will have a stake in the success. And you don't have to be that adrenaline-fueled leader, constantly proving, which was very much a theme of my early youth.

Now, strength is in the coalition that forms and in the ideas that really marinate and take root and feel like a collective win. There's a lot of need to affirm what we stand for, what our mission is at the core and also to involve people in the decisions that we make. The strong anchoring in classical music, the strong commitment to arts education, to gospel and at the same time to offer ways to refresh the experiences that align with how people are consuming the arts now, whether it's digital, it's much more intimate engagement with artists. 

Artists are crafting different types of programs. So, I see in many ways an opportunity to involve people in refreshing what is known as opposed to blowing it up because the legacy is powerful and the legacy is in need of fresh view. Honestly, classical music has not been an inclusive art form. There, it has been a white European form that has, for many years, our field did not impactfully engage people as performers or as audience members from a diverse community. 

And there has been a reckoning that I think is very healthy, not only because we should be aware of where we have overlooked opportunities to include, but also because there are a lot of great artists and a lot of very interested audience members who have not been included.

That for me feels like a refresh, like a rebirth. We can love work and we can celebrate it by making it as inclusive on stage and offstage as possible. And that's the sort of challenge I love. It's not to get rid of art forms that are beloved but to find new ways to create excitement and to have people feel connected.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

That's a great way of continually reinventing the organization to bring real value to the community it serves. I love the way you put it, making it a collective win in getting the engagement and getting the involvement to build on that legacy of the past. Now, over the past couple of years, we went through the pandemic, Jenny, with initial lockdowns, people avoiding, congregating in theaters, in places together, even to this day.

I know people, some with health conditions, some older who are hesitant and don't want to be in confined spaces with others. How did the pandemic impact Washington Performing Arts and more importantly, would love to know how are you rethinking the future of WPA based on the experience we've been through over the past couple of years?

Jenny Bilfield: 

It did have a significant impact on us and frankly, the entire world of performing arts, because if you can imagine, every performer around the world lost a sense of their livelihood in a matter of two weeks. Sure, there are people who made their living online, but every opera singer, every band member, every artist who played with an ensemble in their community, people could not gather, perform, and earn a living.

And most artists don't have a salary job as I do. They don't have a guarantee of health insurance. They don't have retirement. So, this fragile community lost all sense of future livelihood all at the same time all around the world. And, I felt this unbelievable sort of gut-wrenching pain and obligation, like the movie where Sandra Bullock is driving the bus and she has to maintain a certain speed or else it'll blow up. That's the only way I can describe it was we have to act quickly, what can I do as a professional in the field? What can I do within this organization?

The days leading up to the real shutdowns, we were ready to do our annual gala for 600 people at the National Building Museum, honoring Sheila Johnson, of the Salamander Resorts and many other businesses. As the days moving towards March 14th began to unfold, it became clear that people were starting to, back out and the afternoon of March 11th, we sat in my office, Okay, do we go ahead with the live gala? Do we not? Our gala chairs were on the line, our board chair, key staff members. I thought you know what? We can't gather live. I think that's a non-starter, too scary.

What if we did everything online? What if we like made live tv? Could we relocate the gala to Salamander? Because Sheila Johnson has gorgeous space. All of the talent was already there. We had all the food ordered. The food would have to be donated. The flowers were ordered, they’d have to be donated.

But could we actually make this a virtual gala? And my colleague, Elizabeth Racheva, who's our Chief Advancement Officer, was like, I'm game. Let's think about an hour. Our event coordinator and manager, Roger White said, you know what? I think I can put together the technical side of this. And other colleagues worked with artists, children, gospel choir, and so on.

So, that day we notified the board that we were recommending this. There was no other option. It was either canceled or in 72 hours, have a virtual gala. We rolled it out to the staff and the looks on their faces were polite, shock and disbelief. And I was like, Okay, this is what we're gonna do in the next 72 hours, we're mobilizing this. 

And we pulled off what I think was the first virtual gala in the country. We achieved our goals. People watched from all over. We had live bidding we had live donations. We had 50 people at Salamander. And literally a week later, as we were all getting up to speed with Zoom, Elizabeth and Roger did an online seminar in how to do a virtual gala.

That video has been watched over 2,500 times. We have hundreds of people from around the world learning from their experience. And in so many ways, that was the seminal moment where we said, Okay, we can actually move a lot quicker, a lot nimbler than we expected. So, from that point forward, we looked at what we could do digitally to support our artists to be sure that we could pay their fees, give them a platform, and also create a really strong relationship with our audience. Surveying them what was important to them in their digital.

And it was through the feedback that we received, through the additional knowledge that we built as a team, that we launched our home delivery plus season. Many people say, Oh digital in the future. Digital in our field, in no way, shape, or form comes close to live performance because people have so much entertainment on the web that the revenue is minuscule compared to live experience. So, I'm thrilled that people value live experience, but what we learned was that a, we can move a lot more nimbly than we ever knew. Two, that our audience comprises people who wanted us to stay healthy, and so, when they couldn't support us through their ticket purchases, they enhanced their philanthropic contributions. And that honestly kept us afloat alongside the government support we received. That was crucial.

Third thing that we developed deeper relationships with artists because as we developed these digital assets, digital content, artists were able to engage differently because they weren't having to catch the next plane, the next train, to the next place. So, the programs were deep. They had multiple layers to them.

It felt like a very rich way to express our mission. And what I realized is that our mission is platform agnostic. Like, we want it to be live, but it could function and be expressed digitally. And frankly, one of the most potent examples of that was with our in-school programs and a hundred different DC public schools as partnership with the school district.

Like the teaching artists got online. We provided them with equipment and some training, and they were developing content that was then streamed to the kids and in as many ways possible as bidirectional as possible. But the teachers really wanted that continued experience for their students. Even our gospel choirs met weekly to do one-on-one sessions with vocal coaches that we provided.

We were determined to stay intact in terms of our mission and our work. And, as a leader, there were so many moments where I felt like I was out on an ice flow. As much as we talked with our peers locally and nationally, we were all doing something for the very first time.

There were many in our field who just went, okay we're gonna close down. We're gonna close down for two years, and we're just gonna wait till it starts up. And I'm really proud that we took this as an opportunity to really flex and grow. It led to a lot of exhaustion on our team because learning so much that was new while people were dealing with personal realities of life at home, health, concerns, all of this, this was an intense period. But we got through it and I'm incredibly proud. And frankly, as you've probably guessed, I love the challenge of solving complex problems. It's really invigorating to me to see what we can do when there's no path forged ahead. And there was nothing to guide us.

So, what did we lose by creating something and trying it? And thankfully, our board was supportive and right behind us, 150%. Our board chair Tom Gallagher, really, I can't say enough about the integrity of his leadership as my board chair checking in every day. He also has a business; he has a family.

He made a lot of time for me and my team, and I don't take that for granted. Not every person in my position had that sort of support.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

It's wonderful that you had that support, Jenny, and that you took advantage of the opportunity. I talk a lot about Nasim to lab's, concept of antifragility, where the breakage can provide an opportunity to become stronger and better in serving the mission of the organization, which you've been able to do.

You also mentioned the exhaustion that some of your team members experience as a result of this, and that goes back to the point of your empathy as a leader and something that I see in all kinds of organizations there is a level of exhaustion that the team members have had as a result of the past couple of years.

Some of it based on just the personal exhaustion of what's been happening in people's personal lives, because it's not as if all the disruption was happening in the workplace and the personal lives were stationary and stable. So, it's really important to keep that in mind for us as we lead our organizations forward. Taking advantage of the opportunity, but having the empathy for the people that have gone through these past couple of years and need to be able to go through much more transformation over the next couple. 

So, when you reflect Jenny on your leadership experience, if you were to give advice either to younger Jenny or to leaders with respect to practices that you believe are important for effective leadership, what would you say are things that we need to keep in mind, most especially now as we go through a period which I believe will continue to require reinvention of ourselves as professionals and leaders?

Jenny Bilfield: 

The first thing I would say is find some mentors who have walked in your shoes where you identify with them personally, and professionally, and who will speak truthfully to you and whose advice you are prepared to metabolize because certainly leadership at this level is lonely, but starting out in a field, those early relationships are formative and we're presented with a lot of different paths. It helps to have thought partners who can walk alongside us. 

The second thing is really understand how the different gears within your profession intersect, and make sure that you've spent time understanding how each one is built. I believe it's really important for every leader to understand, at least at a very basic level, how different parts of their business work, even if they're well beyond what their specific area of knowledge is because to lead a group of people, you show respect for their work by developing the language of their work and by respecting the parameters of what challenges them every day. And staying in your cocoon is going to strand you within the organization so that is crucially important. 

The third thing is to figure out what your leadership signature is and your brand in a sense. I see many more people deciding what their brand is and leaning into that because I frequently felt marginalized as a young woman entering the field and underestimated, I learned early on how that feels. So, with every interaction I have, I strive to bring my, complete self and my awareness and in a city like Washington that can be extremely hierarchical. Where do you work? Where do you live, what do you do, what church are you part of? That actually getting to know people on a personal level, regardless of whether they can do something for you, whether they'll be part of your lives, have a curiosity about people that comes from an authentic place, because you will learn, you will connect and people will know when you're just BS-ing them.

I guess people can be effective when they're moving through the world in a wave of insincerity but I like to think that's not going to be a winning combination long term. And then at least whatever happens, you live with yourself, you live with the way you have moved in the world and the way you've treated people and the way you've prepared yourself to deal with change and at the moments where you don't know what to do, it's really important to feel like you have been fully yourself.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

That's a great perspective, Jenny. And the same way that you mentioned around 9-11 time period, losing your parents, having your daughter were experiences for you that helped you reconnect with yourself and what's important to you, and that has enabled you to become a more empathetic leader. What we have experienced over the past couple of years has been impactful in the lives of every individual.

Different people have been impacted in different ways, but we demand that from our interactions and our leaders, and we want that. We seek that authenticity and that authentic connection. So, I appreciate you serving as an example of what that authentic leadership is all about through sharing some of your ups and downs in your journey and the many great things, I have no doubt you will continue to achieve through the collective power in channeling that collective force building on the tradition of the Washington Performing Arts to innovate for a great new future. Thank you so much for joining me in this conversation. Jenny Bellfield.

Jenny Bilfield: 

Thank you so much.