GENOVESE VANDERHOOF & ASSOCIATES
Cultural Management Consultants
Position Announcement
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
IN Series
Washington, DC/Baltimore, MD
“Opera that speaks and Theater that sings”
IN SERIES, one of the nation’s leading companies for innovative “small” Opera and music-theater work, invites applications and recommendations for the newly created full-time position of Executive Director.
An iconic second company founded more than forty years ago in the nation’s capital, IN Series produces opera-theater in novel ways. The mission of IN Series is to make theatre from music: transforming artists, audiences, and community by disrupting expectations, nourishing empathy, stimulating insight, and deepening the conversation.
Today it produces both in Washington, DC and in Baltimore, Maryland. In the twelve- month period between June 2025 and June 2026, IN Series will stage nine premieres: world premieres, American premieres, and staged premieres, including the six new productions that are part of the 25/26 IN Principio Season. IN Series will also be relocating to a permanent home for its day-to-day operations, as well as creating a new cash reserve fund to ensure future financial sustainability and investment in possible future commissions or co-commissions.
With an ever-increasing amount of production activity as well as organizational growth, IN Series seeks a partner to work collaboratively with Artistic Director Timothy Nelson and the Board of Directors to achieve the company’s vision and realize its strategy for long-term sustainability.
Reporting to the Board of Directors, the Executive Director is the lead staff person for all management and administrative functions at IN Series. This position is responsible for overseeing the financial, managing, and operational functions of this cutting-edge organization and partnering with the Board to recruit and develop a high performance Board of Directors. The annual budget is approximately $1.1 million.
The Executive Director has oversight of all administrative operations including financial management and budgeting, fund-raising, strategic planning, marketing, supervision of the operating agreements of the new venue, and board development, guided by a set of defined strategic imperatives from the 2025 strategic plan.
The responsibilities will evolve as the collaborative model itself evolves. The Executive Director will be a collegial and collaborative partner with the Artistic Director in planning future seasons, ensuring the organization’s vision and mission are realized to the highest possible artistic standards that prudent fiscal management will allow.
The Organization
In 2020 the IN Series worked with Michael Kaiser and the Devos Institute to draft its first Strategic Plan which spoke to the ambitions of the organization. While the global pandemic temporarily thwarted some of these dreams, the board and staff are currently creating a 2025 version.
The mission of IN Series is embodied in these principles:
- Authentic partnership is a form of justice;
- Art is a reckoning not only with our history but with our present;
- Making art is a form of optimism;
- Art should generate genuine engagement by building more fully diverse communities;
- Art must not shy away from complexity;
- We work to make art available to all people by breaking down barriers that prohibit participation.
Artistic Director Timothy Nelson
During his tenure Artistic Director, Timothy Nelson has grown the company into the leading voice in American “small” opera – redefining the artform, the boundaries between repertoires, cultural histories and expressions, and living into the vision that opera-theater presented intimately has greater power to impact and ultimately transform audiences and communities.
His recent work with the company includes a three-year cycle of Monteverdi’s operas, each in collaboration with different contemporary practitioners of Asian forms of dance and theater; OTHELLO/DESDEMONA, a two-evening theatrical experience combining a new version of Verdi’s Otello with new interludes by composer Matthew Evan Taylor, and Toni Morrison’s play Desdemona with music by Nina Simone; LAS MISTICAS DE MEXICO, an immersive arts experience weaving together an 11th century chant-drama with four centuries of music and poetry by mystical Mexican female artists explores the disappearance of women and children throughout Latin America; THE PROMISED END, a staging of Verdi’s Requiem with an original one-woman version of Shakespeare’s King Lear; REQUIEM combining the unfinished requiems of three composers who died young: Mozart, Vivier, and Boulanger; THE ORDERING OF MOSES, an immersive first staging of Nathanial Dett’s epic oratorio in collaboration with three DC churches telling their unique story of race, religion, and reconciliation; L’ENFANCE DU CHRIST, a staging of Berlioz’s oratorio in which audiences travelled through a migration journey at the US/Mexican border searching for welcome.
Before joining IN Series, Nelson was Artistic Director the Netherlands Opera Studio and Nieuwe Stemmen of the Rotterdam Operadagen (now the O Festival). Active as director, conductor, and composer, Nelson’s musicality is primarily in work that is equally committed to community engagement, authentic collaboration, reverence bounded by irreverence, and innovation.
The Position:
We seek an energetic manager with the maturity and experience to help evolve our leadership model, someone who can evaluate current job responsibilities and workloads of our small but dedicated staff team, and foster an internal and external culture of collaboration, innovation, inclusion, and transparency. We envision a person with a strong vision, eager to participate in imagining together with the Artistic Director the future growth, growth, and partnership possibilities for the organization.
The successful candidate will have a proven track record of effective leadership, strong financial skills, fund-raising, strategic planning, the building of community partnerships, and demonstrated business acumen.
The ideal candidate will have a demonstrated commitment to artistic excellence and high ethical standards, who will build on the company’s solid foundation and reputation while attracting ever greater public awareness, visibility, and support.
The administrative staff team includes a development and marketing director and a chief of operations, and use of an outsourced public relations/media agency and contracted accountant. The artistic staff includes the Artistic Director and Artistic Associate, as well as a contracted Technical Director and Production Manager.
Qualifications and Skills:
- Bachelor’s degree (or higher) in opera or classical music, performing arts, not for profit management or arts management or related fields or commensurate experience.
- Five to seven years prior experience in arts administration or not for profit management or related areas. Knowledge of and experience in the performing arts, preferably opera
- Strong financial acumen and experience in budgeting, financial reporting, and cash flow management. General knowledge of not-for-profit arts revenue generation (marketing and audience development, all aspects of fund-raising), strategic and operating planning, budget development, office administration, board relations and governance, information systems, facilities management, contract negotiation, and human resource management.
- Past experience in a shared leadership model would be highly desirable.
- Working knowledge of financial, web-based computer, and customer relationship management systems.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills, the ability to inspire enthusiasm, to foster an internal and external culture of collaboration, innovation, inclusion, and transparency.
Compensation: This is a full-time position; the successful candidate is expected to relocate to the District of Columbia area. The full-time (exempt) salary range is $90,000 to $100,000 with a benefits package. Relocation expenses negotiable.
Desired Start Date: By the first week of October 2025.
Application Process: Interested candidates are invited to submit a letter of interest, resume and a contact list of professional references in confidence to:
Margaret Genovese
Senior Partner
Genovese Vanderhoof & Associates
gvamargaret@aol.com
416/340-2762
For additional information: https://www.inseries.org.
Deadline for Applications: Friday, 15 August 2025
Equal Employment Opportunity: It is the policy of the IN Series to afford equal employment opportunity to all individuals regardless of race, creed, color, religion, gender, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, veteran status, disability, medical condition, gender identity or sexual orientation.
