Purpose-Driven Leadership in Uncertain Times

Dan Titmuss: Hello, friends! Dan here. Can you believe we’re nearing the end of 2024? Cue the confetti… and maybe a deep, collective breath. If you’re anything like me, this time of year is equal parts excitement and chaos. Deadlines are looming, holiday campaigns are buzzing, and it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Today’s episode is all about taking a beat to reconnect with our why. And to do that, we are revisiting one of the most energizing moments of the year: Capacity Interactive’s Boot Camp. This October, nearly 400 arts marketers gathered in New York City — and even more joined us online — for two glorious days of inspiration, collaboration, and more caffeine than any of us should probably admit. In this episode, we are releasing one of our most popular Boot Camp sessions featuring CI’s President Priya Iyer Doshi and Terri Freeman, president of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum. They talk about purpose-driven leadership, resilience, and how to navigate uncertain times with a clear vision. It’s a timely conversation and a powerful reminder of the importance of our work. And because I couldn’t resist, I also played roving reporter on the Boot Camp floor, asking arts administrators about their year in review. They shared their excitements, challenges, and what’s keeping them inspired as we roll into 2025. Their answers might just give you that little spark you’ve been looking for. So grab a cup of something warm — coffee, cocoa, maybe a festive peppermint latte — and let’s dive in, shall we?

Priya Iyer Doshi: Welcome back to our Boot Camp stage. You’ve been here before.

Terri Freeman: I have. I have.

Priya Iyer Doshi: It’s so nice to have you back.

Terri Freeman: Thanks for inviting me back.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Very excited to talk to you today. So let’s start by just sharing a little bit about your journey and your sort of journey through your arts career thus far.

Terri Freeman: So let me introduce myself. I’m Terri Freeman. I am a Black woman who is a boomer — probably the only one in the room. I have on dark blue jeans, a white shirt, and a brown suede-ish jacket. And I’m so happy to be here. I am president of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture. I’ve served in that capacity for the past almost four years. Prior to that, I was president of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee at the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. So my tenure in the arts and culture community has only been about 10 years, but prior to that I worked in philanthropy for way too long. So that really is my background. But before we get into the hard questions, I just have to give a shout out. I heard us talk about the Jonas Brothers, so I know who they are, but okay. I heard us talk about the Gilmore Girls, and I’m like, “Never seen the show ever in my life.” I heard us talk about Taylor Swift. I do know who Taylor Swift is. But whoever is doing the music in between the breaks…

Priya Iyer Doshi: That is Sana. Where is she? There she is.

Terri Freeman: Where are you?

Priya Iyer Doshi: Sana Colter, right there.

Terri Freeman: Girl!

Priya Iyer Doshi: Stand up!

Terri Freeman: From the one boomer in the room: Thank you for the old Black people music. I appreciate it. And Frankie Beverly just did me proud just on that last break, so thank you very much.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Okay. I don’t really know how to transition from that to this conversation, but I’m going to try. Okay. So you have spent time over the past nearly 30 decades in —

Terri Freeman: No, 30 years.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Sorry, 30 decades. Oh my gosh.

Terri Freeman: I’m old, but not quite that old.

Priya Iyer Doshi: 30 years! Can you imagine? 30 decades. 30 years.

Terri Freeman: See, you need that for this last session. That’s the key.

Priya Iyer Doshi: 30 decades. Wow. Okay. So 30 years. And you have led through many crises during that time. We actually have a slide to illustrate some of the things that have happened over the past 30 years. And of course these are more societal things that were happening, but there were also things happening in your personal life that you were managing. So I’m just curious, one, how does it feel to look at the volume that you see on that screen?

Terri Freeman: So it really is daunting to look at this, and I mean, I know a bunch of you all don’t even know that 1992 existed, but it did. But when I look at the breadth of unfortunate instances that have occurred in our country and trying to lead at the same time as these things were happening and trying to maintain my own personal sanity and mental health while trying to help other people do the job that they needed to do, it is daunting. At the same time, unfortunately, I know what we see at 2020 won’t be the last thing that we have to manage through. And so we have to be able to move forward through really difficult times and help our communities move through that because they depend on the work that we do as outlets in many ways. So we have to deal with how we are dealing with it, and then we have to help other people try to deal with it.

Priya Iyer Doshi: And for you on top of these things, speaking about just your own personal crises that layered on top of that, and what that did to what was also happening around in the world?

Terri Freeman: So this spans quite some time, but in particular, 2020 was a tough year for all of us. Everybody had a difficult time in 2020, and for me, it was particularly difficult. I was in a bad car accident at the beginning of 2020 that prevented me from walking for 12 weeks, and it happened in January. So 12 weeks after January 15th was March 15th. I went back to work, closed the museum down in a couple of days after I got back to work, and started doing the whole remote thing. My mother got ill, she ended up passing in the August of that year. And at that point I decided that it was important to make a transition back to — at that time I was in Memphis — make the transition back to Maryland because my husband was in two locations. He was in Maryland and he was in Memphis, but he spent more time in Maryland.

So I decided to go back and I was blessed enough to get the position at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum. But unfortunately a year after being in that role, my husband passed suddenly and unexpectedly. So in 18 months I had some really significant loss. And I’m an only child, so losing my mom and then losing my husband… My mom was expected. She had lung cancer. My husband actually died from Covid, but it was a blood clot that took him. So we did not expect that, and it was tough. But interestingly for me, my work became what helped me move past that grief and to just continue to contribute. And of course there were all these other things that were happening in 2020: the George Floyd and the Breonna Taylor and all of these other things that were going on. And I was working at an organization that was seen as the moral compass for the country in a lot of ways, at the National Civil Rights Museum.

King was killed there. So he was what was represented by that space. So even though I could only walk on one leg after the George Floyd situation occurred, I had to make my way back down to the courtyard there because I knew that the community would be coming to that space looking for some peace, looking for some solution, asking — frankly — the ancestors to help make some sense out of what was going on in our country at that time. So there were these two things that were going on, the personal and the professional. But I think that that’s what leaders do. That’s what you do. You work through it. And I know we’ll talk about how important it is for leaders to maintain their self-care because yeah, we can push through it and we can kill ourselves in the process. So we have to make sure that we’re taking care of ourselves at the same time.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Yeah. One thing I really admire about your leadership in just conversations we’ve had and our work together on the board, you always have this, your why is always so clear. Your sense of purpose is always really clear. And so I’m curious when I say something like purpose-driven leadership to you, what does that actually mean to you?

Terri Freeman: Well, for me, purpose-driven leadership is bigger than the mission of the organization. It is what can I do with that mission that is beneficial to the masses, right? Because ultimately, all of our organizations and institutions rely on the community. We have to do this for the community. We’re not just doing it for the benefit of the organization, just generally. For me, it’s always about, okay, what is the broader need that this organization can bring to the community that in meeting their needs will support my organization? So it’s always, for me, bigger. There may be things that could be lucrative for the institution, but they may not be beneficial to the community. And so I am always looking at how I can make sure that what we are presenting to the community is beneficial. So can I give an example?

Next week we’re opening an exhibit on the lynching history in the state of Maryland. And that’s tough history, but there’s no way you can make it not tough. I mean, you can’t talk about lynching and have flowers and bunnies running around. And as an African American museum, I have to be very careful to not traumatize a community that has already lived through a lot of trauma. And I have to also make everyone aware that those who were at the bottom of the tree were actually having kind of a party-like atmosphere, and often were allowed to do that because of the legal system that was in place. So to be able to balance all those messages, not make certain people feel bad, but they need to be aware, and then not re-traumatize folks who frankly are still often lynched in their communities, but make sure I’m getting this information and this history out to them is a real balancing act. And I do think that we’ve done that in this exhibit. So I’ll be interested in hearing how people respond to it. But that’s what I mean. I could have just put up there lots of pictures of, I’ve been to museums that actually have a noose at the ceiling and things like that. That’s not helpful, to me, for anyone. I think it’s more about explaining what this is and how this happened. And so I want to make sure that the purpose is around what I can do for the community.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Yeah. Yeah. I’m curious. So you said that exhibition has already opened, or…?

Terri Freeman: It opens next week

Priya Iyer Doshi: And some other things are happening a couple weeks from now.

Terri Freeman: Everything’s happening. It’s been the busiest season ever, but unfortunately we are — we’re hosting a watch party for the election.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Oh, you are doing that. When we last talked, it wasn’t confirmed.

Terri Freeman: Well, it hasn’t been confirmed whether or not I will be there, but it’s okay. They are hosting a watch party. And even in that, we’re nonpartisan. We receive some funding from the state of Maryland. So we have to be nonpartisan. We have to open the doors to everyone who comes in the museum. And again, it’s a balancing act on, okay, how do we want to handle this? I don’t want to handle it at all, but the decision has been made that we would go ahead and have this watch party. And then next year we’re planning for our 20th anniversary. And so that’s a big deal because lots of people didn’t think our museum would last 20 years. And so I’m kind of ready to rub it in people’s faces that it’s still here. And in that work, we’ll spend a lot of time talking about our namesake, Reginald F. Lewis, who was the first African American to do a billion dollar buyout deal on Wall Street back in the 1980s, I believe it was. And too few people know who he was, and he’s from Baltimore. So we’ll talk a lot about black entrepreneurship, black wealth, that sort of thing. But again, that conversation, even in a community like Baltimore where you have a significant number of people who are impoverished, is a tricky one.

And I want to make sure that it’s beneficial to the community, not just to those folks, frankly, who already have wealth. That’s not my interest. My interest is in helping the people who need the information the most be able to use it.

Priya Iyer Doshi: In going back to the watch party, just because you and I, we had talked about that a little bit before, and you had mentioned to me that in this sort of conflict of whether or not to do it and how to navigate that situation, you felt like it was something that the community needed. It was something that they had, had they asked for it? Is that how it came about?

Terri Freeman: Yes, they did. They asked for it, and it’s just so fraught. That evening will be so fraught. But they asked for it. And I understand that there are people who need to be around other people in that instance, but then I know that there are people like me who need to be able to back off of people. And so what I’ve said to the staff is: we’ll have the necessary bodies in place to be able to make sure that we can do what we need to do, but those people who really don’t feel like they can do it, let’s pull back. It reminds me of when I was working through 9/11 in Washington D.C. Of course, the Pentagon was hit. And so we created this huge fund. I was at the Community Foundation, then leading the Community Foundation, and we created this huge fund to support folks who were affected by 9/11. And we were getting in all these contributions from all over the country. Envelopes. And then there was this thing, and I don’t know how many people in the audience remember this, but there was this anthrax scare that happened in Washington D.C., right? And so anthrax was this white powder that could kill you if you looked at it.

And they were saying, if you don’t recognize the handwriting and it’s from a different place than usual, don’t open the envelope. And there we are with literally post office bins full of envelopes from strange people in strange places. And I was like, okay, we got to open these envelopes. But what I said to the staff was, if you don’t feel comfortable, don’t worry about it. We’ll get ’em opened if you don’t feel comfortable. So this whole idea of leading through all of these difficulties and balancing and doing things that are — because the staff are a part of the community — meeting the needs of the community is really important.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Yeah. I want to talk about people because you have already talked a lot about people, and I know from what I know about you, you feel like you’re nothing without your people and those people being the people that you work with, those people being the community that you serve. Can you talk about how through all these crises that you’ve led through, what does it look like to lead empathetically through that? How do you put empathy and compassion in times of hardship, in times of uncertainty, where us as human beings are really struggling to just exist, let alone work? How do you do that?

Terri Freeman: Well, I think we have to be in tune with the people who work for us. I think we have to be able to really be able to discern the cues that people give us about how they are where they are, especially when you’re doing work that may be difficult or may be politically charged, meaning — I don’t mean political with a big P, I mean political with a small P. It may be based on what’s going on in the community. We’ve had some conversations in my office about what’s happening in the Middle East. That’s a tough conversation. There are people on both sides of this, and then there are people on — one individual who may be on both sides because we just want human beings to do well. We want people to be safe. We want people to be whole. Sometimes you have to be able to tell that people are only able to do so much, and you have to put in some relief valves for people.

That may mean creating a work environment that has spaces within the work environment where people can just chill. They can just go someplace. And because sometimes you need to get away from your coworkers too. So sometimes you just need a place to go chill someplace where you can think, it’s quiet, you can put your EarPods in and you can do what you have to do. Sometimes it’s actually creating opportunities for people to have discussion. Sometimes in the September 11th situation, it was actually calling in seated massage and aromatherapy to help people just get through their day because they wanted to be there to help other people, but they themselves needed help. So I also think that it’s really important to understand your people from a personal perspective, because life happens.

And everybody who walks into the office brings with them a whole lot of tapes. We never know how that tape may kind of pan out. Let me give a real recent example. We haven’t even had this conversation. So I’m in the office last week and I walked past one of my staff’s desk and literally, she’s sobbing. I mean, just sobbing. And she has an office, but it’s glass. And I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m going to have to go in here and talk to this girl because I really don’t want to know, but I don’t want her to sit there and just bawl her eyes out either. And so I go into her office and I ask the dumbest question ever: Are you okay? Well, obviously she wasn’t okay. And she’s like, no. I said, I tell you what, I don’t really want you to tell me what’s going on, but I can tell you need to do something different. If you need to go home…

And she said, I don’t want to go home because I feel better being around people. And I’m thinking, okay, but you can’t be here with this glass door sobbing because that is really not a good look. So we figured out how to put some things in front of the door, and she wanted to stay in her office space, and she just wanted people to understand that she was going through a rough patch. And I said, we will respect where you are. If you want people to stay away from your door, we’ll make sure that that’s the situation, but don’t feel like you have to be here in this state. You can leave. Well, for her, it was better to be around people. But that’s an example of just the fact that people have things that — and it was a personal situation. People have things that are going on in their lives and they come to work and they try to work through it, and not all the time can they work through it. I would rather it come out that way than to have it come out in a way where people just aren’t doing the work that we need them to do.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Yeah. So in this situation, we’re talking about supporting the team that you’re leading. I’m curious, what about in a managing up situation? Board dynamics, which I think is fun for you and I to talk about? And in these moments of uncertainty, what does it look like to… Or can you talk about maybe times that you’ve had disagreements or you’ve had to advocate perhaps on behalf of your people, the people that you’re supporting, the people that you have a day-to-day pulse on what their needs are, but perhaps in moments of uncertainty or crisis, you’re having a disagreement with the board on what you need to do?

Terri Freeman: Sure.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Talk a little bit about that.

Terri Freeman: Well, any of you that have boards know that they see the organization differently because they come in four times a year or so, and in those four times a year, sometimes we’re explaining things over that we’ve already talked about because they’re just popping back in. But their perspective on how things maybe should be flowing during particular times of difficult leadership opportunities or even from the perspective of kind of staff development can often be different because they’re not seeing it from the everyday operational perspective. And as the person who is in charge of the office, it is my role to advocate for my staff and help the board understand why what they may be suggesting as the solution — sometimes the solution for them in a difficult kind of employee-employer situation is simple. Just get rid of them. Well, it’s never that simple. It’s never that simple. And it is really important, and I try to help my board gently see this, that boards govern, staffs operate. And when we start blurring the lines, you start to get really, really messed up office environments. So we have to make sure that the board is sensitized to what is going on in the office aand why. And make sure they know what your plan is on how you’re going to handle that situation. I have been, again, for the most part, lucky in having boards that have allowed me to be the chief operator, and they have been focused on governance, but every now and again, they overstep their bounds, and I have to make sure that they understand that’s not your role, respectfully. That’s not your role. That is my role to handle, and I’ll make sure that whatever the problem is, as best as I can, there’s a solution to the problem. I get it. They are very focused on those high level things, and that’s where they should be. But when they start saying, well, I think you should, and it’s an operational issue, that’s where I have to push the pause button, and I’m very comfortable doing that.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Yeah. Are there times where you’ve been in a board conversation and that perspective has actually changed your stance or your position or your decision?

Terri Freeman: I think it’s made me look at things differently. I don’t know that it fully changes my stance, but it may say to me, okay, maybe I need to move more quickly on this situation because what they’re presenting to me is giving me a couple of more parameters around the what ifs type situation that I may not be looking at because I’m so close to the situation. So just as they’re popping in can be negative, It also can have some positive attributes because they can pull in from their experiences. But definitely there have been things that I wish that maybe I had acted on sooner, and their counsel could have pushed me to that point, but frankly, I may have been stubborn and decided I know what I’m doing. And I’m not perfect. So sometimes mistakes have occurred and the mistake being sometimes you just wait too long.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Yeah. So when you say that it’s making you make decisions sooner, do you mean the conversation is prioritizing the thing more, or you want to act…?

Terri Freeman: It’s actually giving me more information to be able to make the —

Priya Iyer Doshi: Oh, more confidence almost. Okay. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, that’s great. Well, so decision making is never black and white, certainly not in uncertain times. And I think a lot of leadership is about getting comfortable in the gray. Can you talk a little bit about your own journey and getting comfortable in the gray?

Terri Freeman: Yeah. I think as much as we want things to be a certain way, as much as we take the time to plan and figure out, okay, this is the direction we’re going. “Absolutely, we’re going this direction.” Until you can’t, and then you have to figure out, how am I going to move forward around whatever this potential obstacle is in my path? I don’t usually like to use the term nimble when it comes to organizations like ours, because we typically are not nimble. We’re like a ship, a cruise ship trying to turn. It can be really difficult, but you might not have a lot of time to maneuver. So you have to at least be flexible and figure out, okay, what are the other options that I may have? And how can I make sure that what I need to do is — I’m able to do so.

I can give you an example from when I was at the National Civil Rights Museum. We had a situation, and I’m trying to think, I want to say that this was probably 2015 or 2016, and I can’t remember unfortunately, and this is really sad, I can’t remember which Black man it was that died, but we ended up having this, what it was called in the courtyard, where people came to the courtyard and they got down on the ground and pretended, actually, “I can’t breathe.” It was here. Eric Garner. Thank you very much. It was here in New York. And so we did the die-in, and I’ll have to say my board wasn’t real thrilled about it. They felt it was far too political, and my response to them was, but it’s what the community needed to happen. We needed to be able to do that. And what frankly would people think about the National Civil Rights Museum if we didn’t do that, have that type of action?

I’ll say, I mean, over the course of my tenure there, I pushed the envelope quite a bit when it came to things like that and was not always in line with the board, but they let me stay there for six years. So I guess it’s because it was bringing people to the museum, it was bringing people into the museum. So that was one of those circumstances where it was black and white to me, but it wasn’t black and white to the organization. They didn’t see it as black and white. And there is this saying, you don’t always want to ask permission. You sometimes want to ask forgiveness. And this was one of those situations where I felt it was really important for me to just to move forward. And then I could ask forgiveness and I’ll fall on the sword. However I need to fall on the sword. But it was the right thing for the community.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Yeah, that’s one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever gotten from you, which is just the community will give you the answer even when decisions aren’t black and white, the community gives you the answer. And I feel like you have told me many, many stories of times where the community gave you a sense of intuition or helped you follow your gut or gave you the path forward. Do you want to share some of those stories?

Terri Freeman: I’ll tell you, there was a situation that I ran into while I was at, and this is a picture actually of an exhibit that we did in Baltimore that focused on the fact that Black people had to get healthcare from Black people because white people would not give us healthcare, and that they set up in West Baltimore Black professionals in healthcare that were really taking care of the community. But when I was at the National Civil Rights Museum, there was an instance when I would walk around that museum — has anybody been to that museum? National Civil Rights Museum? So you know that each room kind of talks about a campaign during the ’50s-’60s Civil Rights Movement. And there are lots of images, lots of images about a nonviolent movement that actually was very violent. It was very violent because there was violence that was affected on the people who were trying to be nonviolent.

And I would walk through the museum as people were in the museum, and I would just see the emotion on people’s faces. It really didn’t matter what age. You could feel it. I remember once there was a little girl — little girl, she was 13 years old or about that — and she was so moved by what she was seeing that people who were trying to, just trying to have the same rights as someone else, she couldn’t understand that — first of all, she’s 13 years old. So trying to even comprehend why these people don’t have these rights, seeing the violence that was being afforded them and seeing them kind of move through in this manner, that was still, I don’t know if I would say it was kind, but it was certainly, they were still the upstanding citizens that they should have always been treated as, even through the difficult period.

And it would so impact people. They would get to the museum shop. That’s where you need to always end up. You want to move people to buying something and taking something home with them. And they would just talk to the people in the retail shop about what their experience was and how it changed them, and how they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. They hadn’t learned this information. Nobody told them this. And they were just so moved by the fact that people who were being treated so poorly could then pretty much show to some degree, in some instances, kindness to those who were treating them so poorly. That was a frequent occurrence. But one story I think that really, really, really affected me when I was there as I was walking through, as I did on a daily basis, there was a gentleman who was there, looked to be like a granddad with his grandson, and they’re walking through the museum and he’s telling these stories, and he’s trying to interpret for this young man who looked to be about nine or so.

And finally I overheard the little boy say, so what did you do, granddad? And it was such a powerful question because we’re always telling young people what they should be doing, but the question should sometimes be asked of us, “So what did you do?” And I always looked at young people differently from that point on in that museum, that I had a responsibility to say to them what I had done or had not done, or why at least… This image here, and this gets back to kind of purpose-driven and being supportive of the community. This was the 2017 Women’s March. Now this is Memphis, Tennessee. So I had come to Memphis, Tennessee from, I had been working in Washington D.C. and I had seen what was going on in Washington with the Women’s March, and I’m thinking it’s Memphis. Okay, so what, 50 people are going to show up or something? Well, clearly from this picture you can see there were way more than 50 people that showed up, and they asked if they could end the march at the National Civil Rights Museum because of what it stood for, that it stood for everything that they wanted, that we wanted this Women’s March to stand for. And this is what for me made that job so wonderful, because I did get an opportunity to frankly put Terri into the role, but connect so much with the community.

And in connecting to the community, then the community affected me in a positive way.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Yeah, it drove you almost.

Terri Freeman: Yeah. And I think it made me a more empathetic leader, connecting with the community, understanding that there were needs. I wasn’t just doing a job any longer. I was doing something that was going to be beneficial for a group of folks that was much larger than myself.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Are there ways now that in your day-to-day you… like, touch points or ways to sort of touch a rock and stay in touch with the community to remind you of that sort of why for you?

Terri Freeman: Well, I think honestly, Priya, I think in my head it’s just there. I’m always thinking that that’s why I’m doing it. But we’re getting ready to open a children’s museum in our museum to talk about these stories of African American history in Maryland. And before we do that, we’re going to go to the community and ask them what they want. Because we may be thinking, oh, we’ll just put some stuff in there that will, I don’t mean this in a pejorative way, but dumb down the story to a child’s level. And the parents may be thinking, or the guardians or the community may be thinking, well, we need another play space that is going to allow children to move around and get out some of this energy. So we want to make sure that we’re meeting the needs of the community, but also ensuring that we have the educational experience for young people that we think is important for everybody to have, frankly, when they come to the museum.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Yeah, love that. I want to start to turn inwards a little bit, but I’ll use community as our sort of bridge. Can you talk about your personal community, the community that you surround yourself in in your personal life and what that does for your inspiration?

Terri Freeman: And I think, again, I am at a part, a point in my career that is different than many people who are in this room, but my touch points have always been my family. There they are. I have three adult daughters. And the picture that is to your right, I guess the one in the pink is my oldest. She’s 35. The one in the middle is my baby girl, and she is 25. And the one on the left there is… she’s something else. She’ll be 33 on December 1st, and they are what grounds me. These pictures were in London and headed off to Greece. We did this the year my husband, their dad passed so suddenly. We needed to do something for ourselves, and they helped me get through that difficult time. They are truly my rock. And if anybody asks me, so what have you done? What is the thing that you are most proud of? It’s these three girls that I have created, three women who are not afraid of anything or anybody, have very strong views, and let people know what those views are, but in a way that people respect the way that they are presenting themselves. So for me, it is all about my family and being able to have, that’s my anchor. They ground me.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Yeah. I love hearing you talk about your daughters. You glow in a different way when you talk about them. It’s really special. Okay, so let’s talk about care for yourself. How do you focus on that and prioritize that?

Terri Freeman: It just has to be a thing that I’m always kind of in the back of my mind thinking about. And I think for everybody out here who has a high-stress position, if you’re in marketing, that’s high stress because you are always required to sell the next thing in a lot of ways. And people, it’s very easy for people to point fingers and saying, you’re not doing what you should be doing. They think you’re responsible for actually, you’re the other half of the equation when it comes to development and bringing money in. So that’s stressful, particularly in an environment where things are up one day and they’re down another. We don’t know when the next crisis is going to come, but I tell you what, it’s going to come. There will be another crisis that you will have to work through. So I think you have to always give yourself space and time to be able to take care of yourself. And this is what I say about Millennials and Gen Z. You all know how to say, okay, enough, I need a break. My yoga class is at 4:30. We Boomers, we would just push through it. We would be haggard and just barely being able to get the stuff done, but we just kind of push through. I think it’s an incredibly beneficial characteristic to be able to say, I, I have to take care of me to be able to come back in here tomorrow and not kill somebody.

And so I think that you just have to always have that in the back of your head. For me, that’s reading. So in the morning I get up. I’m a Wordle nut. I’m not good at it, but I’m a Wordle not. And so I do Wordle, I do Connections. I play another stupid puzzle game before I get out of the bed. I do inspirational reading all before I even step foot out of the bed. And I have — my bathroom mirror has all these affirmations on it that I have written. And I don’t focus on all of them every day, but I do focus on a couple of them. And I try to prepare myself on a daily basis for whatever may come my way. But I am a woman of faith, so I pray that whatever comes my way, I will be able to deal with it in a manner that is productive.

That’s what I want to do. I want to be able to deal with whatever comes at me in a productive manner. But I give myself time now, which I’ll tell you when I was, for those of you that are in that age range where you’ve got young kids, it’s hard. That’s a hard time. They need you and they need you to focus on — and they don’t — and kids don’t care. They don’t care how bad your day was. So what? Do for me what I need you to do for me. And cats are the same way. But you just have to give yourself time. Whatever it is that you like to do, give yourself space and time to do some of that. If you can’t do it daily, you have to at least give it to yourself weekly. And again, I don’t know what’s ahead of us with this election, but I’ll guarantee you that some way or another there is going to be some stress involved, some serious stress. You need to take care of yourselves because if you don’t, you are going to be like a cat on a hot tin roof. You’re just going to have to be able to take care of yourselves, build it in. It is a priority. It is a part of the investment that you make in yourself to be able to do the jobs that you do.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Yeah. Would you be willing to share any of your affirmations on your mirror? You can tell me no, but I’m curious.

Terri Freeman: Oh, I can’t hardly remember them.

Priya Iyer Doshi: That’s fine.

Terri Freeman: But no, one of them is: the goal is me.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Yes. Yes. Clap for that.

Terri Freeman: That’s one of ’em. Another is: prayer changes me and I can change things. So through prayer I become changed, and then I can then affect change in a way. And perfection? Perfection is for Jesus.

It is not for us. Perfection is for Jesus. We work to become perfected, but we never actually get there. And it’s important to remember that perfection just can’t be what we’re focused on. We have to do the best that we can intentionally with good intention, right? Intention is important, but perfection is not what we are supposed to do. That’s not our role. So those are some of ’em, and I change ’em. I think of things in my head and I’ll write it down. And sometimes I put the affirmation on my computer. I need to look at it throughout the day, right? Oh, and the other thing is, while I’m not one who is totally into astrology, I kind of am. And so I like to read my horoscope on a daily basis. And it doesn’t define my day for me, but it says to me, okay, this is what the atmosphere is like. So I’m going to work within this atmosphere.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Yeah. Did you get a good one this morning?

Terri Freeman: Yeah. It’s all about creativity and productivity and being able to affect things through writing in particular. So we’ll see what that means for me.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Oh, yeah. Okay. So you have been in a number of leadership roles. You’re a highly accomplished leader, and I’m curious, I want to talk a little bit more about you being what you do and you being separate from what you do. And I think it’s very easy to, regardless of role, have those things overlap in a healthy way, in an unhealthy way. Can you talk a little bit about how what you do intertwines with who you are? Can you talk about times where you’ve had to really pull those things apart and keep them separate?

Terri Freeman: Yeah. I think that happens to all of us, and particularly when you’re in leadership roles in these cultural institutions where there aren’t a lot of you in the community. So everybody knows who’s running the theater and everybody knows who’s running the ballet, and everybody knows who’s running this museum. So you are often defined by what you do, but you want people to understand that that’s not all of who you are. I went to a gallery opening recently at a children’s hospital, a gallery in the hospital in Washington D.C. and a friend of mine went with me and we walked in and the woman who was talking about the event looks up and she says, “Oh, I’m so honored that Terri Freeman is here with us. She’s the president of…” And I was thinking, I just went because I wanted to see the artwork that was going up on the walls.

I didn’t go as Terri Freeman, president of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum. I just went as Terri Freeman. It was a little frustrating for me, and thankfully he was with me and I could vent to him. But it’s one of those things where sometimes you’re not able to separate it from the perspective of those people who are external. But I know that ultimately it only takes one mistake for me to no longer be the president of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum. So I have to be very comfortable in being Terri Lee Freeman, because those three girls who you saw, those are the people who care the most about me. I’m not fooled by that. I’m not fooled by the accolades. I’m not fooled by the awards. I’m not fooled by any of that. I’m happy that people respect the work that I have done, but I also know you can be here one day…

We’ve seen it, right? Celebrities all the time. Well, you can be here one day and then the next day you are somewhere on the ground. And so I’m very realistic about that, and I make sure that I know who I am. So trying to ensure that I have a whole body of stuff that I do that has nothing to do with the position, the book club that I’m in, or the vacations that I take. I’ll tell you, I’m not one who really allows my social media to be commingled with work stuff. I don’t friend people who work with me. You’re not my friends. I may like you, but you’re not my friends that way, because you never know. Actually, I’m dealing with this right now in my office because of somebody posting something on social media and a person was a friend of theirs, and now you got foolishness going on. I just think that your social media can be used for the benefit of your organization, but it doesn’t mean that everybody that knows you has to be your friend. I have board members that will come on my page and ask to friend me, and I just ghost them.

I’m not doing it! Because some stuff is not for them to know. So there are ways that you can make sure that there is a separation of church and state, if you will, but still give everything that you need to give to the institution because you made a contract with that organization that you would do something for them and did that in good faith, and you did it because you loved the organization. We have the benefit of working around beauty, whatever form it is, but it’s beauty all day long. And I’m so blessed to be able to do that and not have to make a widget. But even beauty can get ugly after you look at it so much, so long. So we have to be able to distinguish between what is their time and what is my time.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Yeah. You have a funny story about your husband in this and a time when you had to separate… Can we tell that story? I just think it’s unique.

Terri Freeman: This was, that’s my late husband. Actually, that’s the last picture we took. It was about a week before he passed.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Wow.

Terri Freeman: And he was handsome, wasn’t he? And one day I came home from work and I’m in a tizzy and I’m going about telling people what they need to do and do this and go over here and why isn’t this done? And he looked at me and he said, you are not the president of this house. And I was like, okay, alright. I hear you. I hear you. And he wasn’t being negative, but what he was trying to say was, this is not where you tell people what to do. Right, left, pointing here, do this, do that. This is where we work together. We’re a family. And you can — sometimes the commute home isn’t long enough for you to separate from some of what has happened in the office. And so yes, that was one of the things that he told me. You make sure that you understand that here we operate differently than you do in the office place.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Yeah. Do you find it hard to leave work at work in your role?

Terri Freeman: Oh God, yes.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Yeah.

Terri Freeman: And I have a rule. I have a rule. The rule is you do not get on email before you go to sleep. And the other week I did it and I couldn’t sleep because I was like, oh my God, really? I have to deal with this when I get in the office the next day. So note to self, when you have a rule, go by the rules. Play by the rules of the game. And the rules of the game are you don’t do that late at night because you need to be able to separate from that space and rest. And when your mind is racing about all the stuff that you have to do, you just can’t do that. So yeah, it’s really important for us to take… My husband was, he was a pastor, and he used to say this often to our congregation. He would say, you need to take care of your health. He said, because God will forgive your sins, but your body won’t. That’s deep. I wouldn’t tell him that, but that’s deep. Think about that. Yeah. Okay. So for eternity you’ll be okay, but you might not make it ’til next week if you don’t take care of yourself. And so it is that mental health piece of this, the physical health piece of this. I work predominantly in community with African American people who have — are more susceptible, let me put it that way, are more susceptible to negative health outcomes for a variety of environmental reasons. And I want my people to be healthy and strong. And so I used the platform of the museum to be able to do that by not just giving them exhibits, but you saw that at blacks and white we had a health fair, and so I had the health community come to the museum. We did testing, we had a mobile clinic, we did food as medicine. That’s the sort of thing. I mean, when I say purpose-driven, I know that I have a role that is supposed to not just benefit me and the institution, but benefit the community that supports us.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we’ve talked about resilience of leaders and resilience, finding resilience in ourself. We’ve talked about the resilience of community and the power of community. So now I want us to end by talking a little bit about the resilience of our industry. And of course, you’ve seen so much and you’ve seen the resilience that our industry has. And how has witnessing that given you the confidence to lead in the way that you do?

Terri Freeman: Who would’ve ever predicted Covid and that we would literally have to go dark? Shut our doors? Where — I was at the time in Memphis. They had never shut the doors at the National Civil Rights Museum, except on the days they were closed. Who would have thought? And I remember saying to my treasurer, he said, I think you need to plan to be closed until July. And I’m like, absolutely not. Probably maybe until May, but not until July. Well, it was July 1st when we actually opened the doors. Again, we would’ve never been able to predict that. We could have never planned for that. But I will say this: in our doing everyday business, there was always the idea of we have to plan for the rainy day. And because we did that and did it well, we were able to continue to pay people for a month before we had to get the PPP and before we actually had to look at furloughing people.

So it was kind of that forward thinking and planning for that rainy day, but never would’ve thought that that rainy day would’ve been what it was. My point is that we did open. We reopened. We are here. We’re here. And in some instances, you all are here with packed houses, full audiences. You’ve got people coming in and out of your museums or zoos or whatever it is that you — Look at this. We had lines for a colloquial — I can’t say that word, colloquium, that we did about fiber arts, the Black Woman Genius exhibit that we had, and that people were coming out… There was a point in time when it was just quiet and dead in the museum. But we have bounced back. We’ve done it so many times. We’ve come back. And like I said, people, many people didn’t think that our museum would’ve lasted for 20 years.

Well, we’re here. And the same goes for your institutions. Some people probably thought, we’ll never be able to make it out of this Covid thing. And here you sit and you’ve learned lessons that you can apply when the next crisis occurs, because as I’ve said, it’s coming. My husband used to say, you’re either going into a storm, in a storm, or just coming out of one. So you figure out where you are and know the direction that you’re going to be going in. But it happens. It’s a cycle. And the fact that we are just so resilient as a community, and you know what? The broader community depends on us to be resilient because they need what we do to help them bounce back.

Priya Iyer Doshi: Beautifully said. Terri, thank you for your generosity and your kindness. Thank you for being here.

Dan Titmuss: Ah, what a great conversation. You know, Boot Camp is one of my favorite times of the year, after Thanksgiving and, of course, Arbor Day. We get to sit down with folks who love our industry and want to more effectively share the art that our organizations produce and present. This year we took our microphones to the conference floor to chat with arts marketers, fundraisers, and executive leaders about what’s lighting them up, the challenges they’re tackling, and what keeps them passionate about their work. Now, most of us are art nerds to the core. We don’t just work in this industry. We live and breathe it. So naturally we asked everyone, what’s a piece of art that inspired you this year?

Oz Pereira: Honestly, I went to the Apollo Theater last night to see Amateur Night, and I was inspired by I guess a sense of history and tradition.

Rachel Adams: We had a dance performance at ACA that was called Dance/Splits, and it was extremely inspiring.

Caroline Tattersfield: Last week, I went to go see this children’s musical called Spells of the Sea at the Kennedy Center.

Dan Titmuss: Now, unsurprisingly, Broadway was a recurring theme. I mean, Boot Camp was a stone’s throw from Times Square. I’m based in Los Angeles, and whenever I visit New York, a Broadway show is one of the first tickets I book.

Claire Mohun: A piece of art that’s inspired me recently was Stereophonic, which is a play that I saw on Broadway a couple of nights ago. An incredible play with brilliant music that has left me thinking about a lot of things.

Caesar Martinez: I actually just saw Sunset Boulevard last night. Blown away.

Dan Titmuss: Everyone is talking about, is it Nicole Scherzinger?

Caesar Martinez: Nicole Scherzinger, Tom Francis… I think it’s a Jamie Lloyd production. So cool. Totally. If that’s the future of theater, I’m all for it. That’s where I am.

Dan Titmuss: And then there was a clear crowd favorite.

Shelbey Phillips: One that continues to inspire me is Hadestown.

Sofia Pavan Macias: Hadestown.

Ryan Strand: I saw Hadestown.

Dan Titmuss: It’s true. There must’ve been something in the air because Hadestown was our most popular answer this year. If you take nothing else from this episode, it’s to get tickets to Hadestown. But let’s get down to business, because that’s what Boot Camp is all about. We asked arts administrators about the biggest challenges their organizations are facing, and a key theme? Reaching new audiences.

Caesar Martinez: Well, right now, Austin’s changing. The landscape is pretty different than what it was pre-pandemic. So right now we’re in a position of strategic planning and figuring out what the next step is and how we bring the new Austin audiences into our spaces.

Billy Swann: Getting back to a regular momentum again after the pandemic and trying to reinvigorate and refresh ourselves.

Jamie Colburn: We, post-pandemic, have expanded our programming immensely, which is an incredible opportunity for us, but obviously presents challenges in terms of growing pains, of getting into the groove of things. Thankfully, we’ve started to find a rhythm, but ever expanding with our outreach of audiences and diversifying who’s coming to see the shows, the types of shows that we’re producing…

Stephanie Shipe: I think our biggest challenge is: we have a lot of data, but how do we pull it and then tell a story from it? Audiences have changed so much, and so really finding a way to harness all of that and figure out how our audiences are behaving and what we can expect in the future, and how do we meet the need for our community.

Michael Bodel: We’ve been thinking a lot about different audiences that we want to cultivate and have not yet seen the pathway for how to turn those into actual campaigns at the more niche level. And I’m hoping to learn more about how that’s done in digital spaces.

Dan Titmuss: And then there’s the fact that digital advertising is constantly changing. If you’re feeling like it’s impossible to keep up with the different social algorithms or need for endless campaign assets, you’re not alone.

What’s a challenge you’re hoping to tackle at Boot Camp?

Caroline Tattersfield: How to tackle different algorithms on the different digital media platforms, and also how to go about structuring digital campaigns when they’re constantly evolving and changing as well.

Nikki Leite: We know that the demand for content, especially graphics content, is higher than ever. So something I’ve been thinking a lot about not just this year, but going into next year, is how do we build up impactful assets, but in a way that is kind of conducive to the flexible needs we have? In the past, our theater, at least, would build up one image at a time. That one image is getting cropped into a bunch of different situations. Not so easy to do for really thin display ads. So thinking about how to approach graphics in that kind of flexible way has been kind of a learning curve and something I’ve been keeping top of mind.

Dan Titmuss: Algorithms are shifting, content demands are growing, and budgets are always tight. But Boot Camp reminded us that we’re all in this together. So what’s on your radar for 2025? We heard from attendees about the ideas they’re most excited to take back to their organizations and how they’re planning to put them into action. A standout theme was hospitality. It’s not just a buzzword. It’s a mindset that’s more important than ever as we think about how to create meaningful connections with our audiences.

Tyra Jefferson: Just thinking about ways that we can bring impact and memorable experiences to everyone who comes through our doors is so exciting to me.

Jess Frazier: I’m definitely going to say the hospitality and really thinking about, what is that patron experience? And for me, that works in advancement, which is: what is that donor experience? How are they getting to see what these artists are creating throughout our year, whether it’s National YoungArts Week or what our alumni are doing in the greater arts scene?

Dan Titmuss: Cookie Ruiz brought the theme to life in the arts world, showing how Ballet Austin prioritizes hospitality to make every audience member feel seen and valued.

Joel Rainville: Cookie’s presentation this morning about how Ballet Austin is providing hospitality and welcoming their guests was really an important reminder about how we can be welcoming and putting our guests first. I think the focus on hospitality at the conference is really an important reminder to all of us that, yes, data and marketing is important, but really it’s about providing an opportunity for our guests to have an experience that’ll change their lives.

Dan Titmuss: Moving forward, our customer service needs to go beyond merely checking boxes. We need to find those small human touches that turn a regular visit into something memorable. Another theme on arts marketers’ list of resolutions? Accessibility. Dr. Shani Dhanda’s session challenged us all to move beyond compliance and look at inclusivity as an ongoing journey.

Jamie Colburn: I loved the accessibility one last night, particularly because at Lincoln Center we have a heavy dedication to accessibility, and so to hear not only the things that we’re doing well already, but how we can expand upon that to reach a further audience.

Eric Woodhams: There were so many wonderful takeaways. The wheels were turning in my head about immediate things we can do and things we can look forward to longterm.

Alexandra Anthony: I really loved the accessibility training, and I think that’s something we can apply to our theater and our practices a little bit more, and I just am excited to bring some of that back to the organization.

Dan Titmuss: As we look ahead, these ideas about welcoming audiences, thinking creatively about accessibility, and designing meaningful experiences will only grow in importance. Another hot topic among arts leaders was AI. From fast-tracking content creation to streamlining operations, we are seeing a clear focus on the ways technology can drive our organizations forwards in 2025.

Ryan Strand: We are firm believers at ArtsWave in the ability for certain ways of utilizing AI that can be a huge help to especially small and mid-size arts organizations that are doing a lot with very little. And if you can alleviate some of that pressure, I mean, man, it can be a game changer.

Noelle Ike: I think AI and trusting in technology to actually help you achieve the results you want is a big theme that we’ve been working with Capacity on, and so I’m really excited to hear how others bring that into their day-to-day.

Dan Titmuss: And then there was the power of collaboration to make our sector stronger.

Rachel Adams: Something I learned here at Boot Camp was — it was just a phrase that really caught my attention. We are all competing with the couch. It is true. We’re not competing with each other in the art space. We really are competing with the other things that people are tending to do, which is sit on the couch.

Bridget Favre: I’ve learned a lot about connectivity and how we can get different organizations to collaborate rather than feeling like we have to compete with one another.

Ryan Strand: Have a mission — and that mission has to be something about not just, “We want to put on great shows, we want to do this.” We all know that you want to do that, and that’s amazing, but how are you actually affecting and impacting your audience? And then when you know that, you can then go out and search for other organizations — whether they’re in the arts, whether they’re sports, whether they’re a restaurant, whatever it is — that are affecting people in a similar way. And those are those really interesting and unexpected collaborations.

Dan Titmuss: The message was clear. When we stop competing and start collaborating, we can go much further. It’s an important reminder as we strive to grow our audiences in the year ahead. To wrap up each conversation, we asked interviewees to give a quick shout out to someone at their organization: someone who made their work better, brighter, or just a bit more fun. And let me tell you, the love was flowing. From supportive colleagues to inspiring mentors, these shout outs painted a picture of the strong collaborative culture in arts organizations. It’s clear that behind every successful project is a team of dedicated, passionate people who lift each other up.

Oz Pereira: Shout out to Kevin Becerra. He’s one of our newest team members, and every conversation we have, I’m really inspired by his passion.

Shelbey Phillips: I’m going to give a shout out to Van Ackerman. We have been talking a lot about the Enneagram this year. For anyone who’s interested, he’s the man to talk to.

Rob Johnson: The guy who’s got my back right now, Steve King. Hardest worker in the biz, as far as I can tell.

Noelle Ike: Tim Washington, our marketing manager. He is always pushing me to look at new platforms, try out new things…

Nikki Leite: Shout out to Suzanne. I feel like Suzanne is kind of everybody’s work mom, and if there is something you want to vent about or go talk to her about, she is always there to talk.

Julia Reyes: Oh my gosh. So Nicolette Theroux is our ticketing and sales manager. I work above her. I oversee our ticket office as well, so I’m her boss and she’s amazing and I love her.

Amanda Dill: Yeah, my work bestie Lindsay, she’s always hyping me up. And she’s also my fellow reality show watcher, so yes.

Jess Frazier: Oh, I of course want to shout out the amazing Advancement Team. It’s been so wonderful to get to see how our new team dynamic of fundraising and marketing together in one team has been working out.

Stephanie Shipe: I want to give a huge shout out to my marketing and sales team. They’re incredible. Kellie Lawson, our marketing and communications manager, Alyssa, who’s our graphic designer, and then Amos does all of our social media and he’s just — and our house photographer. He’s amazing.

Joel Rainville: Peggy Lushine, who’s our associate director of sales, is back in Chanhassen dealing with all the issues we’ve been having with ticketing. And in fact, two weeks ago, we had to cancel four performances because we had 11 people ill with Covid.

Dan Titmuss: Oh my goodness.

Joel Rainville: And so trying to deal with trying to reseat four performances worth of people into a sold out show is pretty challenging. And so she’s doing an amazing job with her team.

Caesar Martinez: I’ll give a shout out to Greg. He’s my office mate. He’s the associate director of marketing and analytics. He’s the coolest. He would love this. This is totally his vibe. I’m going to try to get him to come next year.

Rachel Adams: Everyone in my organization. I love them all.

Dan Titmuss: Aww. Does anyone else have the warm and fuzzies? It’s melted my cold, cold heart. If you’ve got Boot Camp FOMO, you can watch all the sessions on demand at capacityinteractivebootcamp.com. Until next year, keep sharing the art, telling the stories, and doing the work that makes this industry shine. See you in 2025!

Thank you for listening to CI to Eye. This episode was edited and produced by Karen McConarty and co-written by Karen McConarty and myself, Dan Titmuss. Stephanie Medina and Jess Berube are CI to Eye’s designers and video editors and all work together to create CI’s digital content. Our music is by whoisuzo. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please take a moment to rate us or leave a review. A nice comment goes a long way in helping other people discover CI to Eye and hear from experts in the arts and beyond. If you didn’t enjoy today’s episode, pass it on to all of your enemies. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok for regular content to help you market smarter. You can also sign up for our newsletter at capacityinteractive.com so you never miss an update. And if you haven’t already, please click the subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, stay nerdy.