Team

Staff

• Ryan Breaux

• Ryan works across all of LINC’s programs, with a focus on the Space for Change and Health Insurance for Artists programs, and coordinating projects for the LINC website. Ryan began his tenure at LINC in January 2009 as an intern, progressing to Program Assistant, then Coordinator. Ryan’s previous experience includes serving on the beta team at SUPERFRONT—a not-for-profit project space for experimental architecture in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn—where he was responsible for grant writing and research, programming support, and daily gallery operations. Ryan holds a B.S. in Architecture from the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, and has worked alongside design teams at several architecture firms in New York City, including Acconci Studio and Eisenman Architects. He is currently enrolled in the M.S. in Library and Information Science program at the Pratt Institute.

• Candace Jackson

• As LINC’s Managing Director, Candace focuses on implementing LINC’s suite of national program, research, and learning community initiatives.  Joining LINC in 2011, her charge is to guide all of LINC’s work to successful completion and chronicle LINC’s ten-year arc toward its sunset in 2013.  Candace is also an arts consultant specializing in organizational development, capital project development, administrative management and marketing through CJAM Consulting. Prior to starting CJAM Consulting in 2006, Candace served as Director of Operations for the Apollo Theater Foundation, Inc. During her tenure she managed the Apollo’s facilities and administrative operations, event logistics, and co-coordinated Phase I of the Apollo’s historic restoration project.  Before her work at the Apollo, she was a program officer at the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, where she managed the Cultural Industry Investment Fund, which provided capacity-building and sustainability support to over 50 arts and cultural groups. Her earlier managerial experience included positions with the Yale Repertory Theater in New Haven, CT, New Haven International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven, CT, and the Alliance Theater in Atlanta. Candace earned an MFA in Theater Management from the Yale School of Drama, and a BFA in Theater Arts and Business Administration from Howard University. Candace is also a LEED Accredited Professional.

• Taya Mueller

• Taya works across all of LINC’s programs in the management of research, communications, and grants administration. Prior to joining LINC, Taya served on the start-up team of Le Poisson Rouge, which continues to reshape the future of classical and experimental music in downtown Manhattan. In her previous role as Project Coordinator for the Columbia University Arts Initiative, Taya was the primary administrator of the Sainsbury Fund, and collaborated in the creation of the Arts Alliance network and the Art Train series, while concurrently completing Sociocultural Anthropology studies at Columbia’s School of General Studies. Her work is additionally informed by her tenure as the first National Field Operations Director for Music for America, and seven years as Outreach & Events Director for First Avenue in Minneapolis, MN. Taya’s freelance portfolio includes work for 77Boadrum, Guernica Magazine, New Yorkers for Parks, The Tank, YMCA International, and Xcel Energy Center.

• Nicholas Pelzer

• Nicholas is the Program Manager for LINC's Health Insurance for Artists and Creative Communities programs. Throughout his career, he has been committed to promoting the inclusion and full participation of underrepresented communities through education, health care, social entrepreneurship and strategic grant making.
  
  Prior to his work at LINC, Nicholas was Program Coordinator for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's New Jersey Nursing Initiative, a $22M program designed to transform nursing education and address the national nurse shortage. As a member of their Building Human Capital team, he developed and launched the portfolio’s first Collaborative Learning Community; a 24-month series of web‐based, continuing education modules designed to encourage innovative practices among grantees. In addition, as a National Urban Fellow and program consultant at RWJF, he worked on several initiatives, focusing on workforce development, childhood obesity and diversity, and inclusion. Prior to his time at RWJF, Mr. Pelzer served as Internship Program Manager for the T. Howard Foundation, a national non-profit organization dedicated to increasing diversity in multimedia and telecommunications.
  
  Nicholas is a 2010 Leadership New Jersey Fellow, a 2009 America's Leader’s of Change Fellow, and an alumnus of the AmeriCorps VISTA program where he supported youth ages 12‐20 as they launched their own social ventures. He holds an M.P.A. from Baruch College - The City University of New York, and a B.S. from James Madison University.

• Risë Wilson

• Risë is the Program Manager for LINC’s Space for Change program, which supports arts organizations and community leaders to imagine and plan for a 21st century art space. In this role, Risë is helping to re-shape a national conversation about what defines best practice in the field of Artist Space Development, where community engagement is a core principle. Her work at LINC is informed by a background that has explored the ways in which artists can and do contribute to their communities as fellow neighbors.
  
  Risë is the Founder of The Laundromat Project, an emerging social enterprise based in New York City that sponsors public art projects in neighborhood laundromats as a way of making art more accessible – physically, financially, and conceptually – to communities of color living on low incomes. After conceiving the idea for The Laundromat Project in 1999, Risë focused both her academic and professional careers on bringing the organization to fruition. In addition to graduate work, Risë pursued a practical education in non-profit arts administration by holding positions in both large-scale and grassroots cultural institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, the International Center of Photography, the Painted Bride Art Center, and Art Sanctuary. Prior to joining LINC, she served as a Research Consultant for The Ford Foundation, supporting the work of its Media, Arts and Culture unit and taught at Parsons, the New School for Design, helping product design students apply their creative talents to the public sphere.
  
  Risë is a 2008 Douglas Redd Fellow in art and community development and a 2004 Echoing Green Fellow. She holds a B.A. from Columbia University, where she was a Kluge Scholar, and an M.A. from NYU, where she was a MacCracken Fellow. Before leaving the corporate sector in 1998 to enter the field of non-profit arts, Risë worked for Procter and Gamble for 5 years in Customer Business Development.

Consultants / Researchers

• Helicon Collaborative

• Helicon Collaborative is a network of professionals with expertise in research and policy formation, strategy development, capacity building, fundraising, evaluation and other dimensions of nonprofit practice. Helicon helps organizations achieve their goals by stimulating their creativity and resourcefulness, and helping them become more relevant and effective. (Visit site)

• Strategic Policy Concepts

• STRATEGIC POLICY CONCEPTS is a private, non-partisan consulting firm conducting public policy research and analysis on behalf of think tanks, government agencies, academic institutions, and lobbying firms. STRATEGIC POLICY CONCEPTS caters to organizations that need to supplement or outsource their public policy research and analysis needs either due to a lack of internal resources or capacity. Projects are developed in concert with the goals of the client in order to achieve maximum impact in the most efficient means possible. The quality and timeliness of the services provided are guaranteed as full payment is not requested until the satisfactory conclusion of the project. (Visit site)

• The Urban Institute

• The Urban Institute gathers data, conducts research, evaluates programs, offers technical assistance overseas, and educates Americans on social and economic issues — to foster sound public policy and effective government. (Visit site)

• WolfBrown

• WolfBrown helps funders, nonprofit institutions and public agencies understand their potential, set priorities and fulfill their promise. (Visit site)

Board of Directors

• Theodore Aronson (Treasurer)

• Theodore R. Aronson is the managing principal of Aronson+Johnson+Ortiz, LP (formerly Aronson + Partners) and a portfolio manager for the Quaker Small-Cap Value Fund. He began his investment career with the Quantitative Equities Group of Drexel Burnham Investment Advisors. He then co-founded Addison Capital Management in 1981 and left three years later to form the predecessor to Aronson+Johnson+Ortiz. Ted holds a BS and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a CFA charterholder and a Chartered Investment Counselor. His firm now manages approximately $20 billion in domestic equities for institutional clients

• Angie Kim

• Angie Kim is Director of Programs and Member Services at Southern California Grantmakers (SCG), which serves family, community, private, corporate, and operating foundations and individual donors.  She has over ten years of grantmaking experience having worked at the Getty Foundation where she was responsible for grantmaking, communications, and program evaluation, and the Flintridge Foundation where she managed grantmaking programs serving individual visual artists, ensemble theatres, and environmental organizations on the West Coast.

  She received her B.A. in Art History and English Literature from Linfield College, McMinnville, Oregon and holds an M.A. in Art History from University of Southern California.  Currently, she is pursuing a doctorate in Public Policy and Administration from Walden University where she is conducting social science research on ways that private philanthropy affects a greater civil society.  She serves on the boards of the Center for Cultural Innovation as its chair and Leveraging Investments in Creativity. She formerly served as vice-president of the national Grantmakers in the Arts. 

• Samuel A. Miller (President and Secretary)

• In July 2010 Sam Miller was appointed President of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.  Most recently, he spent five years as President of Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC), developing efforts centered on increasing direct support for artists. Prior to his work at LINC, Miller was Executive Director of the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) for ten years. Prior to NEFA, Miller was at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival where he served as President and Executive Director. He serves as President of the Board of LINC, as Director of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) at Wesleyan University, and on the Advisory Board of ODC/San Francisco and on the Board of Amrita Performing Arts in Phnom Penh.

• John Plukas

• John Plukas is currently co-Chairman and one of the original founders of Wainwright Bank & Trust Company. After receiving an AB from Wesleyan University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, John worked at various investment banking firms eventually becoming President of HCW Inc. He has established the John M. Plukas Fund and the Plukas Prize for Outstanding Economics Majors at Wesleyan and has also endowed a scholarship at the Harvard Business School. John is a Board Member of the Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Project, Chairman of the Board of the New England Foundation for the Arts, Board of Directors of Leveraging Investments in Creativity, and serves on the Board of Trillium Asset Management Corporation, the largest socially responsible investment management firm in the United States.

• Samina Quraeshi

• Samina Quraeshi, the Henry R. Luce Professor in Family and Community at the University of Miami, is an award-winning artist, designer and author. Quraeshi previously served as the Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts, where she advocated design and the arts as essential to the country's cultural and economic wellbeing. She has also been deeply involved in an urban design workshop in Oklahoma City, which facilitates rebuilding efforts after the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building.

• Lisa Versaci

• Lisa Versaci is the Vice President of FLX Communications, a consulting firm that specializes in planning, program design and fundraising for nonprofit organizations and foundations. Clients include the Nonprofit Finance Fund, the Anaphiel Foundation, and the Democracy Alliance. From 2001-5, she served as Director of the National Venture Fund at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and was responsible for developing investment strategies in the areas of community and economic development, civic engagement, the well-being of families and children, and the arts. Under her leadership, the fund distributed over $50 million in long-term grants. Previously, Ms. Versaci served as Vice President and Florida Director for People For the American Way Foundation and the Florida Development Coordinator for EMILY's List. She currently serves on the board of the Rhode Island School of Design, the National Immigration Forum in Washington, DC, and is affiliated with a range of political and arts organizations in Miami. Versaci earned a bachelor's degree in art history from Brown University in 1976. She and her husband, Alan Farago, have three sons and live in Coral Gables, Florida.