Kristin Patton and Nick Rabkin both have backgrounds in theatre. Kristin literally grew up in a theatre. Her father was the first paid staff at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and her mother was a longtime member of the acting company. She was trained and worked as a professional stage manager before taking a job with an investment firm, earning an MBA at the University of Chicago’s Booth School, and working all along with performing arts organizations in a range of leadership and consulting capacities. Nick was the executive director of Chicago’s Organic Theater Company and independently produced a Jeff Award-winning musical adaptation of the feminist comic strip, “Sylvia.”. Both have backgrounds, as well, with philanthropies that support the arts: Nick for a decade at the MacArthur Foundation (after serving as Deputy Commissioner of Cultural Affairs in Chicago), and Kristin as a consultant to Woods Fund of Chicago and the Arts Work Fund for Organizational Development. Nick directed the Center for Arts Policy at Columbia College Chicago and has been a senior research scientist at NORC at the University of Chicago. Over the last decade both have built consulting/research practices in the arts. Kristin’s is Ensemble Consulting; Nick’s is reMaking Culture. Both have long and deeply engaged with the sector and have consulted with a number of Chicago theatres. We will be ably assisted by Logan Jones, a professional stage manager and project manager at Ensemble Consulting, who brings high level project and digital data management skills.