Finally. Learn me something I can use, Teach.

Check out this article in the Money Section of today's NYT. Champlain College is taking a couple of semesters to teach their students about "financial sophistication" or, more plainly, financial literacy. Eureka.

This idea is more than good. It's obvious. And necessary. Clearly a high percentage of Americans (99%?) have an insufficient education about personal finances, credit cards and mortgages. Me included. I've spend the last decade (since graduating) trying to wade through the murky processes and sharp truths about debt (student and otherwise), budgeting and savings.

Let this idea ring out across the land! Let us teach our children how to live in a capitalist democracy!

It's not really about school...

... this going back to school business. I have to keep reminding myself of that. Don't get me wrong, I love school. Madly. I love to organize papers and label things and buy books and take notes. I love all the motions of that; however, these academic habits do not pardon the fact that most of my scholastic achievements have consisted of high levels of bullshit. As much as I love school, I am an agonizingly slow reader. It is torturous really, to sit down to the prospect of a 200 page reading assignment. So I learned how to bullshit. And write good papers. I learned to glean the important themes and, most importantly, how to regurgitate the concepts that the teachers were obviously trying to get us to get. I graduated from an Ivy League university with a double major and a 3.8 GPA. And I am ashamed to admit that I probably actually completed only 30-40% of my work.

But this is different. I've enrolled in a business certificate program at UW Foster Business School. It'll meet two nights a week for six months and, apparently, the workload is going to be enormous. In undergrad, I was obsessed with grades and ranking and achievement. That's not going to be the case this time around - because many of these subjects (finance, accounting, investment) will be so foreign to me that my bullshitting skills will be next to powerless, but also because this is more like vocational school for me. I don't need to be the best student in the class. I just need to learn some things that will be useful when I pull them out of my pocket and shine light on them in the big, bad, real world.

You see, the end game here is not school. Or even a good job. My goal in all of this, the possibility I am creating, is a new lifestyle for myself. I want to use business to create a lifestyle that allows me flexibility, independence and financial freedom. Likely, this will be through a new business or another sort of entrepreneurial endeavor. Likely, this will be online. Likely, I am speaking now of things I know little or nothing about. But I am not going to let that stop me.

I love my teaching job. I love my artistic pursuits and my professional life as a performer and writer. And I will still love them when I am also running my own business which will let me travel for six months out of the year and exercise all my other muscles - like management, marketing and strategy. This is going to be good. This is going to be really good. And school is just one avenue I'm paving into this dream.

The Details of Matters

Here's a new video created by the Theater Communications Group (basically, the largest community of theater organizations and artists in the United States of America). It argues for the value of the arts and particularly for live theater in our national culture and consciousness. I suppose these things are not obvious for some people. I suppose, somewhere, in places I don't look and publications I don't read, someone is arguing that arts are not essential and that theater does not matter. It's hard for me to understand that point of view which, ironically, makes it hard for me to argue against it. It is good to be reminded, to actually articulate the whys and not just the whats.


Stage Matters from Theatre Communications Group on Vimeo.

"No men will be allowed in the room."

It was sort of like this, but way lovelier.

This weekend there was an enormous meeting of the minds between West Coast and East Coast women, focusing on growing entrepreneurship opportunities and encouraging venture capitalism among women. Called together by business champions Ms. Perry Piscione and Janet Hanson, 100 women sat across from one another and talked possibility.

I haven't quite mastered how to format links and references, so below is an excerpt from the NYT article. This event is incredibly exciting to me - not only because I will probably be seeking investors for a new company within a year but because this weekend, in Menlo Park, California, there was a room full of female role models for me to look to. Possibility abounds.

"Ms. Perry Piscione sees West Coast businesswomen opening their Rolodexes and, perhaps more important, their wallets for one another, and she says she believes their East Coast counterparts have something to learn. “There are all of these women who made tons of money and now are not doing anything with it,” she said. East Coast women may have attended top business schools and reached the apex of corporate America, but Ms. Perry Piscione said, "they’re not making their mark.” They are losing relevance, she said, in the “new economy.”

With that in mind, she has joined with Janet Hanson, the former Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers executive who founded 85 Broads, a global network of professional women, to organize what they are calling “Alley to the Valley,” an invitation-only event this week for 50 women. Twenty-five self-made women from the East Coast, many with net worths of more than $100 million, are traveling to the Rosewood Hotel on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, Calif., the heart of Silicon Valley, to meet with 25 of their West Coast counterparts and talk about thinking and investing more entrepreneurially. The event begins Thursday night with a kickoff dinner at the Atherton, Calif., home of Linda Law, the founding partner of Law & Associates, a real estate development company, and an active investor in start-ups.

Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, will deliver the keynote speech to a group that is expected to include Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, a partner at Accel Partners, and Sue Siegel, a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures, both of whom were entrepreneurs before becoming venture capitalists. Among those Ms. Hanson has invited from the East Coast are Barbara Byrne, who is a vice chairwoman of Barclays Capital and was vice chairwoman of Lehman Brothers; Maria Cirino, who was a successful serial entrepreneur before becoming a co-founder of .406 Ventures in Boston; and Pauline Brown, who recently resigned as a managing director at the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, to pursue entrepreneurial and socially oriented projects. No men will be allowed in the room." (NYT 11/10/10)

The Why of All of This

I am an experienced actor, an enthusiastic writer and a teacher by nature. I have spent the first ten years of my career working in the Seattle arts community - appearing in major roles on stages across the city, creating and producing my own original solo work and founding and managing a successful ensemble theater company. For most of that time, I have been a professor of acting at Cornish College of the Arts where I have taught a core course in collaboration, skill integration and self-expression to first year theater majors. I train them rigorously in acting and creative technique. I challenge them to listen to and develop their own voices as artists, innovators and citizens. Each year, Cornish College graduates found new theater companies in Seattle and across the country. Part of my personal mission as a working artist is to encourage other young artists to create their own platforms to present and develop their work.

My parents were big-hearted and unflappable in their support of my ambitions. They also both struggled with gambling (both in the stock market and at the casinos) and failed to teach me realistic or useful tools with which to use money. My ignorance made me reckless in assuming undergraduate student debt and I took a long time to understand the function of debt and investment. I have been teaching myself money management skills since I became an adult and have gained a working knowledge of personal finance in my own career, as well as tools for fundraising, budgeting and grantwriting as a theater producer.

I believe that the average young person in this country does not receive an adequate education in personal finance, credit and debt management, savings or investment. I believe this is especially true of individuals who choose to pursue a career in the arts. I believe that the cliche of the "struggling artist" is a self-defeating concept that prevents artists from valuing themselves or their work.

As an artist, I want to learn more about finance, investment, management and organization in order to sustain myself and continue to grow in my career. As an educator, I want to teach other artists in every discipline how to manage personal finance, control debt, market themselves and effectively use investment to sustain and grow their own careers. As an entrepreneur, I intend to establish a business that provides goods and experiences that build community and empower individuals to live joyful, healthy lives. As a citizen, I will play a role in creating policy that values artists and makes their lives sustainable in America. I plan to lead by example.