By Todd Camp
For Turtle Creek Chorale Executive Director Kym Sosolik, striking the right balance between business and art is as exciting as it is challenging.
But before we walk that tightrope, what exactly is the role of an Executive Director? “The easiest way to explain it is that the Executive Director would be almost like the CEO running a company,” she says. “Because we are a 501(c)3, that means that we are governed by a Board of Directors, and that’s who I report to directly. The staff including the Artistic Director report to me.”
When Kym stepped in as ED in January of this year, she brought with her a wealth of business experience from the corporate world and nonprofits. Her résumé would be enviable for any organization: Board Chairman of HeartGift Dallas, a local nonprofit that provides heart surgeries to disadvantaged children from developing countries; one of the Top 25 Women to Watch in 2010 by the Dallas Business Journal; former Vice President of Human Resources for Andrews Distributing Company; and Director of Leadership and Organizational Development for SMU’s Cox School of Business Executive Education.
In the spring of 2013, former Executive Director David Fisher recommended her to the TCC board, recognizing that her skill set was a perfect fit for the Chorale.
“As a board member, I understood the state of the Chorale and knew that my business background was exactly what they needed to help create business processes, do a turnaround, create vision, create a strategic plan, and really set in place a foundation where they could rebuild, rebrand, and relaunch themselves,” she says.
But that’s a lot to swallow for an organization that is almost entirely arts driven.
For Kym, it meant a lot of purely business-minded responsibilities: creating a strategic plan that encompassed new goals for marketing and finance. That included examining the donor base (a declining factor for most arts organizations lately), building corporate sponsorships, and creating a formal development plan around fundraising.
“I was coming in with a business mind and implementing business processes because that piece was clearly missing,” she says. “But this organization wasn’t quite ready for all that, even though that’s exactly what it needed. So it’s a real balancing act to find the right balance between that strong business sense and the artistic side, because, at the end of the day, our end product and why we’re here, is music.”
That history of musical excellence is what struck her the most upon joining the TCC board, which it why she said she felt strongly about working to preserve and strengthen this important local cultural institution.
“I really do have a passion for the arts and I truly believe that because TCC is one of the iconic arts organizations in Dallas, they need to start to look at things differently in order to sustain themselves for years to come,” Kym says.
To that end, she states that her five-year, long-term vision is to ensure that TCC is “as strong artistically as we ever were, because everyone you talk to around the Chorale has a very strong historical perspective of the way we used to be,” she notes. “But time moves forward, and we have to move forward. In order for us to gain that same recognition and reverence, if you will, we have to change and become relevant.”
That means making use of market surveys to better determine the group’s target audience and what is important to them while strategically reaching out to engage younger audiences while remaining fresh and vibrant. It also means staying aware of other options audiences have. “From our perspective, we have to now think about what the competitive landscape really looks like and what dollars we’re competing for.”
“I think the key for me is going to be to help the organization create innovative performances that actually reach out and touch the audience in a way that takes them on this personal journey.”
Turtle Creek Chorale: The Blog 