Spotlighting New Finance Leaders in the Sector
By Tory Clarke
For as long as they have existed, arts and culture institutions have needed visionary leadership and those leaders have often come steeped in the space that they operate in, with years of performing arts, or visual arts, or visitor experience.
In today’s environment however, whether you are a performing arts venue, a festival, a film center, an historical center, a visitor center, a museum/gallery, an opera, an orchestra, a science and learning center, a theater, a zoo, an aquarium or a garden, there is one consistent theme: financial complexity, increased reliance on earned revenue, shifting donor expectations, and the imperative of access and inclusion.
The role of the financial leader has never been more pivotal. Over the past decade Bridge Partners has seen a clear evolution in the CFO and senior finance functions: a new cohort of strategic partners who are playing key leadership roles and shaping the very trajectory of organizations. These are leaders who can marry financial rigor with strategic foresight, and who bring fresh, cross-sector experience to bear on the unique challenges of arts and culture.
Two appointments in the past month tell this story.
At the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Gregory Lee has stepped into the role of Chief Financial Officer following a national search. Gregory came to the CSO from Habitat for Humanity Central Arizona and previously spent nearly two decades with the Arizona Cardinals. His transition into arts leadership reflects a broader trend: organizations are reaching outside the traditional arts pipeline to bring in seasoned executives with expertise in scale, operational innovation, and financial strategy.
At the Brooklyn Public Library, we were proud to place Zhi hen Li as Assistant Vice President, Controller. Zhi’s career spans nonprofit and corporate settings—including the American Museum of Natural History, Marymount Manhattan College to B2B Soft—bringing both technical depth and versatility. His arrival signals the growing demand for finance leaders who can translate seamlessly between sectors, applying private-sector discipline to mission-driven institutions that serve millions.
Other finance leadership searches in the arts and culture space that reflect this cross-sector background include Nordin Moloo as Director of Finance (CFO) at the Glenstone Museum and Marcus Miller as Chief Financial Officer of the Charles Wright Museum.
These appointments are not isolated. They align closely with the insights from our recent national study, The Leader of 2030, in which we polled executives to better understand the attributes leaders will need in the decade ahead. Across industries, we were told that the future demands cognitive diversity, cross-functional experience, innovative thinking, and agility in the face of uncertainty.
Those same traits are increasingly essential for finance leaders in arts and culture. The days of narrowly focused, “numbers-only” CFOs are gone. Institutions now require leaders who can:
- Navigate complexity with agility – moving between earned revenue, philanthropy, and innovative funding models to ensure long-term sustainability.
- Bring cross-sector perspectives – translating lessons from fields as varied as higher education, professional sports, and corporate finance into the nonprofit arts and culture arena.
- Act as strategic thought partners – in addition to leading teams that keep the books balanced and the auditors happy, actively shaping organizational vision, community impact, and long-term resilience.
In short, the present and future of finance leadership in this sector is one of breadth and adaptability.
Bridge Partners is proud to support arts and cultural institutions that also include the NYPL, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Trust, the Eiteljorg Museum and others in embracing this evolution. Their choices reflect a new reality: leadership in arts and culture is not stewardship, hospitality and visitor experience alone, it is also about vision, resilience, innovation revenue generation and the ability to lead teams/organizations into the future with both rigor and imagination.