The Whitney Museum of American Art Retains Isaacson, Miller to Find Chief Advancement Officer
March 4, 2024 – Jack Gorman, Elizabeth Neustaedter, and Bryce Ervin of Boston-based Isaacson, Miller are currently seeking a chief advancement officer for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The museum is looking to identify and recruit a strategic, innovative, entrepreneurial, and results-oriented chief advancement officer. This will join the Whitney at a time of unique opportunity and impact following the museum’s successful and transformative expansion in 2015, and the recent appointment, in 2023, of Scott Rothkopf as the Alice Pratt Brown director – a dynamic new leader with a focus on aligning the Whitney’s founding mission with ambitious programmatic, audience, and community goals.
With values-led initiatives defining the trajectory of the Whitney and its engagement with its various audiences and stakeholders, the chief advancement officer will lead all aspects of institutional advancement, translating this vision into new modes of donor engagement and compelling fundraising opportunities, while building a culture of philanthropy that is inclusive of the Whitney’s diverse audiences and constituencies.
Reporting to the director, the chief advancement officer will lead the museum’s comprehensive institutional advancement initiatives and fundraising strategy. This will include stewarding and growing the Whitney’s significant individual giving programs, expanding corporate partnerships and sponsorships via strategic relationships, developing support from foundations, and managing a related program of special events to support brand building, benefit fulfillment, and donor cultivation.
With the Whitney’s commitment to expanding audience access, increasing impact, and prioritizing inclusion, the next chief advancement officer will bring creativity and innovation to these advancement functions by establishing a structured, proactive, best-practice organization to support the museum’s ambitious and progressive goals. The chief advancement officer role is suited to candidates from a variety of professional backgrounds and experiences including outside of the museum and not-for-profit sectors. Most importantly, the successful candidate will have a proven track record of strategic thinking, data-driven decision making, responsibility for revenue growth, and the ability to lead teams to successful return-driven outcomes.
The Whitney Museum of American Art is a modern and contemporary American art museum. The institution was originally founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, a prominent American socialite, sculptor, and art patron after whom it is named. The Whitney focuses on collecting and preserving 20th- and 21st-century American art. Its permanent collection, spanning the late-19th century to the present, comprises more than 25,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, films, videos, and artifacts of new media by more than 3,500 artists.
Finding Transformational Leaders
A nationally recognized search firm focused on recruiting transformational leaders for mission-driven organizations, Isaacson, Miller has conducted thousands of placements over more than three decades. More than half of the firm’s work has been in academia, involving university presidents, college chancellors and deans. The firm has filled top leadership posts at Wellesley College, Washington State University, Miami University, Howard University, Bowdoin College, Dartmouth, NYU, Virginia State University, and the University of North Carolina, among others.
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John Isaacson, the firm’s chair, founded Isaacson, Miller in 1982. He has led searches in many areas of the firm’s practice. Mr. Isaacson has helped the firm develop its cumulative knowledge of the craft of search and has attended, with increasing interest, to the missionary purposes of institutions, the political and economic disciplines of specialized markets, and the emotional and intellectual learnings that leaders acquire in a committed working life.
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Mr. Gorman joined Isaacson, Miller in 1995 and has spent his tenure building and broadening the firm’s advancement practice. A member of Isaacson, Miller’s emerging development practice early on, he assumed its leadership when he became a vice president and director in 2002. The firm’s advancement practice has grown from a two-person team to its current size of 23 and focuses on cabinet-level advancement roles for clients in a range of sectors including higher education institutions; independent schools; research institutes; associations; foundations; and advocacy, conservation, healthcare, and visual and performing arts institutions. Mr. Gorman has also led searches for chief executive officers and senior-level roles in communications and finance.
Ms. Neustaedter, director, has focused on communication and advancement searches since joining Isaacson, Miller in 2002. She has worked with a broad array of clients, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Princeton University, Kenyon College, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian Institution. Engaged, service-oriented, and thoughtful, Ms. Neustaedter has placed numerous vice presidents and associate vice chancellors of communications, including for Brown University; University of California, Berkeley; Grinnell College; and College of the Holy Cross.
Mr. Ervin joined Isaacson, Miller as an associate in 2021. Prior to joining the firm, he worked in the office of admissions at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME. As an Associate Dean of Admissions, Mr. Ervin managed spring campus programs, domestic travel, and oversaw recruitment in the Pacific Northwest and greater Los Angeles regions.
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Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Executive Editor; Lily Fauver, Senior Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
