Program Designer and Manager, Lead Facilitator, and Lead Coach

April 2025 - October 2025

Contracted by the City of San Diego's Cultural Affairs Division to design, build, and direct the San Diego Artist Incubator — the city's first artist-specific capacity building program. Serving 30 working artists across San Diego County, the program was built as a hybrid model: a digital learning hub (Start Here) running alongside in-person experiential events, breakout sessions, and off-site Studio Visits.

The program operated through a proprietary Focus → Reinforce → Implement framework across three content pillars: Branding & Storytelling, Marketing & Communications, and Financial Planning & Strategy. Artists moved through foundational virtual workshops, deepened their learning through 1:1 coaching with industry experts and guest speaker sessions, then applied everything in immersive 5-hour implementation workshops where they left with tangible deliverables — financial roadmaps, branding guides, and marketing plans.

Managed all program logistics, data acquisition, and monthly outcome and impact reporting to the City.

• Curriculum development across branding, marketing, and financial management

• Hybrid program coordination — digital and in-person

• Event planning and production management

• Contractor sourcing, contract development, distribution, and insurance collection

• Digital platform development and management (Start Here)

• Data acquisition, quantitative analysis, and impact reporting

• Survey design and iterative program evaluation

• Facilitation of large group, breakout, and experiential sessions

• 1:1 coaching and consulting

• Budget management and resource allocation

• Monthly outcomes reporting to a government stakeholder

• 30 artists guided through a two-month hybrid incubator

• 9 creative entrepreneurs contracted as co-facilitators and workshop leads

• 74 hours of events, workshops, and trainings delivered

• 90 hours of 1:1 coaching and consulting fulfilled across the full cohort.

As the first program of its kind, we built in continuous surveying from the start — checking not just what participants were learning, but how they were learning, where they were struggling, and what needed more room to breathe.

The data spoke early and often. One of the first things it told us: artists were learning in silos. They were absorbing information individually, without enough infrastructure to process and apply it alongside people who understood their world. The response was immediate: accountability groups, pairing artists across overlapping disciplines to co-work, collaborate, and hold each other to the work between sessions.

From there, the program kept evolving. We noticed participants needed more than virtual connection. They needed to be in the same room, working on their professional development materials together, in real time. So we added in-person co-working days. As the cohort energy grew, so did the appetite to access the larger arts community. That's where Studio Tours were born — optional, two-hour on-site visits to local artist studios, galleries, and businesses, designed to pull back the curtain on how other creatives operate and build.

The program listened every step of the way. And the outcome data reflected it.

Entering the program, the cohort averaged 3.5 out of 5 in business confidence. By final reporting, they closed at 5 out of 5. Every point on that scale was earned, not through content delivery alone, but through adaptive, responsive, community-embedded design that meets artists where they actually are.