S.C. Arts Leadership Institute

Keynote

Intelligent Reinvention – Leading Organizations and Designing Strategy in the Face of Uncertainty

• With Ace Callwood

Organizations are facing changes in today’s world like never before – from updates to long standing policy to the emergence of new technologies to uncertain demands from constituents we look to serve. As the broader economic and societal landscapes continue to shift, so must our organizations. Join Ace Callwood, a consultant and recovering tech entrepreneur, who teaches skills that empower leaders to build antifragility into their organization’s strategic planning and cultural mindset, and lead employees to be constantly scanning for risk and exploring new growth opportunities. This interaction session will leave you with tools to ensure your organization has a sustainable mindset that can flex in the face of uncertainty and navigate inevitable changes.

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The Thresholds of Leadership

• With Marlanda Dekine

This session invites participants to reflect on gathered insights and their leadership. Through poetry, story, and guided dialogue, poet and facilitator Marlanda Dekine will create space for leaders to consider how they and their organizations are evolving. This 60-minute session prioritizes dialogue over lecture, offering a collective pause to listen deeply, make meaning together, and step forward with renewed clarity and imagination.

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Thriving for High Performers: The Grind and the Glory

• With Alan Dow

Pressures on leaders are growing as they navigate their organizations through new terrain toward unpredictable futures. The importance of executives and rising leaders to be grounded, healthy, and rested to make critical decisions becomes more pronounced. Working through the six core fatigues – physical, emotional, social, mental, inactivity, purpose – we define how they arise and strategies for addressing them. From time management, delegation, ring-fencing interactions to simple (and non-preachy) tips on technology, movement, and sleep, we share tools for executives to design lives that provide for delivery of world-class work, sustainably.

Not a perfect life, but an optimal life with full, realistic, awareness of the tradeoffs to get there.

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Communication Across Boundaries: Using Improv to Build Trust, Spark Connection, and Lead with Empathy

• With Elizabeth Byland

Using techniques borrowed from improv, participants will learn an applicable framework for meaningful communication and tough conversations. Expect to strengthen relationships, build trust and joy with colleagues, learn improv-inspired tools that energize, not intimidate, and laugh a lot.

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Leading the Way in Arts Advocacy

• With Jeff Robinson

Arts leaders play a central role in arts advocacy, and your organizations are a cornerstone to our State’s vibrant creative sector. In this session we’ll explore how to move from advocacy participation to advocacy leadership, positioning yourself and your organization as a leading voice in your community and beyond.

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Building Community through Arts & Culture

• A panel discussion with Ashley Warthen and artists Brittany Watkins & Terrance Henderson

Learn about Richland Library’s Arts and Culture strategic plan which focuses on serving local artists, arts organizations and residents through inclusive, culturally rich, and customer-driven experiences that support its thriving arts community. Hear from past Richland Library resident artists about their experiences.

Elizabeth Byland

• Session Facilitator

Hailing from Cincinnati, Elizabeth, or EB, has 20 years of performance experience and 15 years of teaching experience. She holds the joint position as Director of Applied Health Improv with the Center for Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Care and Director of Improv with the School of the Arts Department of Theatre at Virginia Commonwealth University. EB is deeply rooted in the belief that theatre and improvisation techniques can be utilized for building empathy and identifying the emotional states in self and others.

She passionately teaches audiences how to leverage their emotional intelligence to be their authentic selves, nurture their creative ambition, and communicate across boundaries to build partnerships. Whether coaching executives on their presence and communication skills, helping organizations cultivate leadership and followership, or emceeing an organization’s next big event, EB always creates interactive experiences that are meaningful and injected with joyful energy.

 

Ace Callwood

• Keynote Speaker

Combining his role as the firm’s lead mediator with his background in tech entrepreneurship, Ace works at the intersection of digital and human to collaboratively create solutions for some of the world’s intractable issues. Through Envoy Executive Programs, he teaches leadership skills in trust-building, conflict navigation, and drawing from diverse perspectives to innovate and disrupt markets.

 

Marlanda Dekine

• Session Facilitator

Marlanda Dekine is the author of Thresh & Hold (Hub City Press) and the first poet laureate of Georgetown County Libraries in South Carolina. She is the founder of Dekine Cultural Strategies and the nonprofit Speaking Down Barriers. Her poems appear in Poetry Magazine, Callaloo, and Orion, and have been set to music by multiple composers.

Among other honors, Dekine has received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the South Carolina Arts Commission, a Fresh Voices Award from SC Humanities, and a Shirley Graham Du Bois Artist Residency from Castle of our Skins. She holds a bachelor’s in psychology from Furman University, a Master of Social Work from the University of South Carolina, and a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from Converse University.

 

Alan Dow

• Session Facilitator

Alan is the unusual medical expert who embraces empathy and the social sciences as a path to changing public health outcomes. Operating at the intersection of medicine, psychology, and behavioral economics, he moves seamlessly from the bedside to advising organizations on how to thrive, giving practical steps toward wellness, or defining how reframing health has changed our approach to work. Alan’s frank and open style encourages leaders to challenge conventional wisdom and engage with health and wellbeing as strategic issues.

An active internal medicine physician and the Ruth and Seymour Perlin Tenured Professor of Medicine and Health Administration at Virginia Commonwealth University, he directs the Center for Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Care through which educates over 2500 learners and 100 faculty each year about teamwork and communication in pursuit of better health outcomes.

 

Jeff Robinson

Jeff Robinson is the executive director of the South Carolina Arts Alliance, a statewide nonprofit organization dedicated to advocacy, leadership development, and public awareness for the arts. In his role, he leads efforts to strengthen public policy, public support, and public funding for the creative sector at both the state and national levels. The organization’s flagship event, S.C. Arts Day, brings hundreds of arts leaders, legislators, students, educators, and advocates together at the State House each year to elevate the significant impact the arts have in the Palmetto State.

 

Ashley Warthen

• Panelist

Ashley Warthen is an artist and arts librarian who has been with Richland Library for the past 16 years. As the arts coordinator, Ashley manages the Artist-in-Residence Program and curates and coordinates gallery exhibitions. Her work focuses on connecting local artists with the community, and finding ways to support and highlight our growing and thriving arts community. Ashley received her bachelor’s degree in art education in 2004, and her MLIS in 2015.

Schedule details coming soon.