Who We Are, What We Care About, and What’s Happening 

The International Festival of Arts & Ideas (the Festival) envisions a flourishing city and state in which a festival of arts and ideas plays a vital role in enriching lives and leading people to understand how their futures are intertwined. 

Our mission is to build and grow an internationally renowned festival in New Haven of the highest quality, with world-class artists, thinkers, and leaders, attracting and engaging a broad and diverse audience, celebrating and building community, and advancing economic development. 

We value excellence in performance and leadership, integrity, stewardship, collaboration, diversity, inclusiveness, and openness to new ideas, new arts, new cultures, and new individuals.  We seek to realize all of these values in context of Greater New Haven’s resilient community that stands for American ideals and celebrates global citizenship.

The Festival was founded in 1996 by Anne Calabresi, Jean Handley, and Roslyn Meyer.  We are now governed by a 24-member board of directors, led by co-chairs Annie Lin and Risë Nelson. We have a year-round staff of 11 full-time employees and up to 160 seasonal contractors. For the fiscal year ending September 30, 2025, total unaudited revenue was $2.6 million, with $2.3 million from contributions and grants and the remaining from program service revenue. Annual reports and financial statements may be found at artidea.org/reportsfinancials.

Through our history and continuing forward, we have engaged with national and international issues that affect all of humanity through the microcosm of the community. Our Ideas programming – featuring acclaimed authors, speakers, and thought leaders – is rooted in the values of creating connection, community voice, equity and justice, radical joy, and liberation. 

We provide an eclectic mix of entertaining and inspiring programs featuring internationally acclaimed dance troupes, world-class musicians from diverse genres, breathtaking circus performers, groundbreaking theater, and engaging speakers. Over time, we have welcomed global visionaries and artists such as Angelique Kidjo, Bristol Old Vic, Camille A. Brown & Dancers, Handspring Puppet Company, Rosanne Cash, Claudia Rankine, Mark Morris Dance Group, National Theatre of Scotland, Yo-Yo Ma, Bassem Youssef, Druid Theatre, Kronos Quartet, Taylor Mac, Spike Lee, Amy Tan, Baratunde Thurston, Salman Rushdie, and most recently, Joshua Redman, Samara Joy, and Jacques Pépin.  The Festival also has a track record of supporting new original work, such as Aaron Jafferis and Byron Au Yong’s trilogy blending multiple art forms to highlight Asian American stories. 

For the past 30 years, free programming has been a cornerstone of the Festival, made possible by local and global business sponsors, public partners, private contributions, and the welcoming global communities.  The Festival’s recent programmatic developments in this vein include the expansion of our high school fellowship, which offers young adults experience and industry exposure in the arts while gaining college credits through Gateway, a Connecticut State Community College. 

The Festival has also expanded beyond its traditional venues at the historic New Haven Green and university theaters into local neighborhoods and unconventional spaces. This expansion includes special tours, performances, installations, and events that showcase New Haven’s vibrant arts and culture scene. Recent collaborations include working with local organizations including the Juneteenth Coalition, Caribbean Festival, and the Yale-China Association.

The Festival operates on the unceded lands of the Quinnipiac, and is invested in the diverse communities that populate the beautiful natural spaces now known as Connecticut and Greater New Haven.  This region has a long and continuing tradition of welcoming immigrants, with one out of every eight current residents born abroad. Our diverse population speaks over 100 languages and contributes to the city's vibrant culture. Diversity is the foundation of our cultural, social, and economic vitality, and it's something we proudly celebrate.

For a formal land acknowledgement and more information about New Haven and the Festival, please visit artidea.org/about.

Our Current Moment

In 2025 we engaged almost 40,000 in-person attendees across Festival events in June. With over 85% of events free and open to the public, 150 curated events, and more than half a million views in digital content, we are well-positioned to continue growing our impact locally, regionally, and globally as a destination for creatives and audiences worldwide.  The upcoming 2026 Festival will coincide with “America 250”, celebrate local and international talent, and feature an exploration of the human condition through culturally rich and inspiring programs.   Our theme in 2026 will be HOME & BELONGING and what experiences of those ideas can look and feel like in everyday life. Home can be the place you live, but it can also be a familiar block, a warm interaction with a neighbor, or a moment during a performance that helps you feel grounded.

We are excited to engage a new Executive Director for the Festival at this moment of transition into our fourth decade and our next chapter.   As we team with our new executive leader, we have the opportunity to further transform the city with art and culture. We see the Festival as playing a unique role in New Haven.  We are not just presenting events - we are creating experiences that bring diverse communities together and contribute to the city's cultural identity. For the right person, this is a chance to lead an organization with real community impact and help shape what's possible for arts and culture here and beyond.

Our focus currently centers on our summer programming and community activations, and we are highly aware of how the world is changing around us, including the artistic participation and funding landscapes, the kinds of cultural dialogue that need platforms through our Ideas work, and the rapidly evolving realities of international travel, collaboration, and exchange.   This is a moment for us to adapt to the world around us and to create a strategy over the next several years that can be effective and adaptable to future circumstances that we can’t imagine yet.

Internally, our culture is mission-driven and community-oriented, with a strong sense of care, creativity, and commitment among our staff, board, and partners.  There has also been strain from recent periods of transition and uncertainty inside and outside the Festival. There is a genuine desire and need for clarity, stability, and shared direction. With modeled consistency, transparency, and respect in day-to-day leadership, we can build on many established relationships to reinforce a sense of trust and belonging for our team and in our community.   We are ready for that, and Greater New Haven is ready for that.

What We Are Looking for in Our Next Executive Director

Above all, we as the board and staff of the Festival are looking to hire an Executive Director who can provide visionary and strategic leadership and engage with a wide variety of people in powerful and compelling ways.  We need someone who is self-realized as a leader and can make decisions efficiently, confidently, and clearly from experience with complex real life situations.

We need you to be an exceptional communicator and relationship-builder who can design and then articulate a bold and inclusive vision for the Festival, engage people across sectors and communities, and represent the Festival with warmth, credibility, and confidence. We are looking for someone who can take risks thoughtfully, honoring what has made the Festival strong while helping us let go of past approaches when needed.

We hope you will lead with adaptability, integrity, and a dynamic growth mindset - but understanding how to grow in a stable way, and what size and scale the Festival could be to be most effective for our reality and our communities.  We need you to build trust across staff and Board, align people around shared priorities, and model openness, accountability, and collaboration. You should be someone who can guide an organization through transition and renewal while keeping people motivated, focused, and supported.

For us to consider bringing you into our team and fulfilling our values and vision, we need to see that you bring:

• Demonstrated leadership experience in unifying artistic, curatorial, or creative work, fiscal understanding and strategy, and organizational vibrancy with diverse teams
• A track record of results-oriented success in donor relations, including establishing new supporter relationships (large and small) and strong skills with personal major gift solicitation and ongoing donor nurturing
• An expansive national and global mindset that can identify how local, national, and international threads of creativity and humanity can build on each other
• A commitment to building the future of the people and communities of Connecticut 
• Non-profit leadership, with expertise in governance and operational structures.

As our Executive Director, we expect you to live full time in the Greater New Haven area, and be able to operate effectively with us in a hybrid team environment.

Aligned with the rest of our team and our financial priorities, we have set the Executive Director salary at $150,000, with employee benefits that include an individual health insurance plan, paid parental and bereavement leave, sick leave and paid time off, tax deferred annuity, and flexible spending account plan, among others.  We are also providing third party advising and transitional support at least during your first year with the Festival.

Human Expectations and Personal Values

Our team is eager to welcome an Executive Director who brings deep passion for our mission and find joy in turning shared vision into action. This leader will be an expert at active listening, thoughtful consensus building, and bring a clear-eyed and consistent focus on results and impact. They will combine confidence with empathy, ensuring that decisions are informed by those closest to the work while remaining clear, accountable, and communicative.

The Executive Director we seek will practice transformational leadership grounded in participation and trust. They will foster meaningful engagement from staff, Board, and community partners, creating structures that invite collaboration and shared responsibility. Rather than arriving with predetermined answers, our leader will value the institutional knowledge already present, ask insightful and illuminating questions, and make decisions based on insight from people who know the Festival and the community it serves. Curiosity, openness to opportunity, and respect for experience will be central to their approach.

Transparency and calm presence will define their leadership style. We are seeking someone whose voice conveys steadiness, compassion, and clarity, paired with a sense of humor and ease of being that supports healthy organizational culture. They will lead by actively engaging staff, artists, Board members, community partners, and neighborhood voices to building an environment of trust, openness, and shared purpose.  They will help us find and refine our shared vision and the practical steps to get there, rather than imposing their own arbitrary agenda on our unique place in the world.

At the same time, this leader will be decisive and disciplined. They will set priorities, communicate expectations clearly, and align the organization in practical terms. They will value team input while understanding when a decision needs to be made and making it. High emotional intelligence and a strong guiding presence will allow them to manage with candor, empathy, and an open door, enabling growth towards excellence for the organization and all the people in it through both accountability and care.  The clarity and rigor that they bring to the rest of us is also something we would love to see them apply to themselves - explaining priorities and decisions, acknowledging their own limits, and boldly taking responsibility for the team and for themselves and how they show up.

Like an orchestral conductor, this Executive Director will understand the full score of the organization, recognize how each role contributes to the whole, and help the ensemble perform in harmony. They will notice when something is out of alignment and respond with specificity, clarity and support, keeping people connected to purpose and to one another.  Above all, this Executive Director will translate values into daily action, building trust through consistency, clarity, and care, and guiding the Festival toward a future shaped by participation, purpose, and shared leadership.

Where We Need You to Have Specific Expertise

We do not need you to be an expert in every part of running the Festival, but as our Executive Director we do need you to be highly capable in certain areas.  We also expect that work in these areas will be the main focus of your time.

Fundraising and External Representation: You will be our chief fundraiser and external ambassador, working closely with the board and accomplished development staff on a daily basis. That means we expect you to co-lead on the Festival’s revenue strategy, personally cultivate major donors, actively strengthen partnerships, and make the case for why this Festival matters on a daily basis. 

Structural Details of Seasonal Presenting:  While you are not expected to be the primary curator of artists or speakers for the Festival, a front-line producer or production manager, or an accountant or financial specialist, we need you to understand how a festival is produced at a systems level (budgets, revenues, planning and production timelines, partnerships, and risk management), and from an artistic / creative perspective (assessing quality, understanding the impact of different combinations of artists and works, considerations of the trajectory of experiences over time, and how mixes of content relate to different audiences or communities), so that creative choices are wisely and clearly matched with relational, operational and financial progress.  We also need you to be able to identify when any of those activities are getting confused, behind, mis-aligned, or breaking down so you can take action to remedy them before they become major problems.

Guiding Alignment and Coordination: We need you to set and drive strategic direction, including developing a new formal strategic plan in the coming years and aligning the activities of all staff and the board with that direction.  This includes taking personal responsibility for the culture and internal function of the board, the staff as a team, our seasonal collaborators for the summer Festival, and the dynamics between those three groups together.

Central to this is also taking personal responsibility for how the Festival team communicates, internally and externally.  We are eager to have an Executive Director who collaborates openly on strategy , programming, and finances, communicates consistently, and approaches the Board and staff directors as true partners in stewardship. Communication should be open, two-way, and people-centered, keeping the team informed, heard, and aligned while also extending outward in a visible, warm, and authentic way to artists, partners, funders, and the broader community. 

Practical examples of this kind of communication and alignment work could include:

• Pro-actively sharing regular updates (including clear financial reporting) and providing context for key decisions and strategy, with time for the team to process and bring their perspectives to the table
• Raising questions and challenges early and welcoming dialogue, oversight, alternate perspectives, and exploration together in meetings or over time
• Embracing a mix of structured communication (staff meetings, check-ins, purposeful agendas) and informal accessibility (open-door conversations, informal time spent together, timely responses)
• Communicating externally through various formal and informal channels with authenticity, clarity, warmth, and follow-through

Systemically Embedding and Advancing Core Priorities:  Beyond these practical abilities or approaches, we are a complex organization with many priorities that continue to develop over time.  As a visionary and strategist, we hope our next Executive Director will find the ways to link together all the threads, and not let important but less urgent-feeling needs fall to the wayside. We can’t do everything at once, but we are intent on building the Festival for now and for the future.  

Each of these can be its own major initiative - we ask that you consider these as valuable priorities and find the ways for us to embed them into the long-term life of the Festival.  As we move forward, we would like to see:

• Leadership continuity and organizational learning sustained over time.  This includes guiding thoughtful succession planning across staff, seasonal collaborators, and key leadership roles, and building pathways for professional growth, knowledge transfer, and stability during periods of transition and renewal.
• Board and staff insight meaningfully shaping organizational culture and direction.  Growing a healthy organizational culture that actively synthesizes input from both Board and staff, translating shared learning and experience into practices that strengthen trust, clarity, and long-term impact.
• Education, learning, and dialogue functioning as core to the Festival’s identity. Championing initiatives that deepen learning and connection (such as fellowships, educational programs, and community dialogues) and ensuring they are structurally supported, well-resourced, and integrated into the Festival’s broader mission and strategy.
• Artistic and intellectual vision remaining responsive and relevant.  Ensuring that the Festival continues to engage with current issues, social trends, and global themes, and that its artistic and intellectual ambitions remain timely, grounded in community context, and aligned with evolving cultural realities.
• The Festival functioning as a platform for exchange and civic dialogue.  The Festival expands its role as a space for dialogue among diverse communities and neighborhoods, embedding participation, exchange, and relationship-building into programming and engagement strategies.
• Intercultural learning and inclusion realized in practice, not just stated.  Our team can continue to find ways to model and reinforce intercultural awareness, growth, and participation through specific day to day behaviors, organizational norms, partnerships, and decision-making processes.
• The Festival’s identity and public presence stewarded with intention.  The Festival’s brand and public narrative should consistently reflect its values, distinctiveness, and role in shaping both the cultural life of New Haven and its national and international profile, and that communications express the impact of the Festival’s work clearly and consistently.

Together, these priorities (and others) call for a leader who knows how to move beyond vision alone and translate our values into systems, so that learning, inclusion, dialogue, artistic relevance, excellence, and organizational health are not dependent on personality, but are reliably carried forward through structure, practice, and shared leadership.

Also, to state it clearly, we will need you to steward the Festival by watching for the needs we don’t know we have, to be able to respond to the circumstances we cannot foresee, or to recognize the amazing opportunities we may not be actively seeking.  No list of responsibilities can include all the things we will need to do as a team, that our community will need from your leadership, or encompass all that we can envision and create collaboratively together.

How this Search will Operate – Values, Communication, and Compensation

Overall Estimated Timeline:

After the end of the application period, please reach out if you are still interested, and we will let you know if there is still an opportunity for consideration.

• Preferred Application Period:          
  February 1 to March 9, 2026 
• Initial Candidate Meetings:          
  March 2026
• Semi-Finalist Meetings (Virtual):          
  Late March to Early April, 2026 
• Finalist Meetings On-Site in New Haven, CT:                
  Late April to Early May, 2026
• Employment Begins:          
  June 2026

This search process is rooted in values shared by the Festival and Creative Evolutions, and will include the following elements:

• It is essential to us that you are treated with respect and appreciated for the value you bring to the Festival through your participation in this process. Candidates who do not advance will be notified promptly.
   
• Throughout the process, we commit to maintaining active communication with you, so you are never uncertain about what is happening or where things stand with your application or the hiring process.
   
• It is essential that the whole company, including the staff and board, participate in the selection process. Final candidates will have the opportunity to visit in-person and meet the team before a hiring decision is made.

Additionally, Creative Evolutions is engaging paid industry advisors who will collaborate to design and participate in Semi-finalist meetings as part of the process. These advisors will provide their perceptions and evaluations to the board. They will also commit to participating in quarterly calls with the selected Executive Director during their first year of employment at the Festival. This ongoing support is intended to strengthen the Festival as an organization and to provide strong collegial or mentorship support to the new Executive Director during the transition period.