We have decades-long working relationships with several high-quality vendors whose areas of expertise overlap and complement YoungAssociates. We have shared approaches and values with each of the individuals listed here and a history of proven results.
- Board Retreats, Strategic Planning & Governance
- Research
- Campaign Materials & Institutional Branding
- Photography
Board Retreats, Strategic Planning & Governance
During a career spanning more than thirty years, Ed Martenson has been a theater executive, a grant maker and a teacher at the graduate level. He currently is a consultant in the areas of governance and leadership for nonprofit arts organizations, an executive education program director and faculty member for National Arts Strategies (NAS) and Chair of Theater Management at Yale School of Drama. His most recent work with YoungAssociates includes the Martha Graham Center for Contemporary Dance and The Institute for Education and the Arts.
Other consulting clients have included the Alley Theatre, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, La Jolla Playhouse, Lied Center for the Performing Arts, Opera Omaha, San Jose Repertory Theatre, the Shakespeare Theatre Company and (through NAS) the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. As the consultant engaged to build NAS’s executive education program, Martenson worked with faculty from schools of business at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia and Northwestern to develop seminars on Strategy, Managing Change, and Governance. These seminars have been presented in more than 30 cities, to more than 2,000 board and professional leaders of 500 arts and cultural organizations. Additional seminars on Leadership for Developing Artistic Directors and Improving the Environment are in preparation. On NAS’s behalf, Martenson also co-directs the Executive Program for Nonprofit Leaders—Arts, a two-week residency program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
While he was Executive Director of the Guthrie Theater, the resident acting company was rebuilt, the theater was renovated, the endowment grew from $4 million to $32 million and new records were set for season tickets and annual giving. The Artistic Director was Garland Wright.
As Theater Program Director of the National Endowment for the Arts, Martenson oversaw more than $50 million in operating and capital grants to theater artists and organizations throughout the country and created a program to prevent the disappearance of resident acting ensembles.
As Managing Director of the Yale Repertory Theatre and associate professor/co-chairman of theatre administration at the Yale School of Drama, Martenson helped to reposition the Yale Rep as a teaching theater and to institute a cooperative exchange with the School of Organization and Management as part of a complete revision of the curriculum for Theatre Administration. The Dean and Artistic Director was Lloyd Richards.
Martenson served as General Manager and Managing Director of the McCarter Theatre during the time that it separated from Princeton University and established itself as an independent theater institution with professional credibility in the field. The Artistic Director was Michael Kahn.
Martenson has served on the executive and negotiating committees of the League of Resident Theaters, as a governor’s appointee to the leadership task force of the Minnesota Center for Arts Education, as treasurer of the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and on the executive committee of the American Arts Alliance.
He has developed materials for teaching purposes, including case studies or video companions on American Repertory Theatre, Minnesota Public Radio, Oklahoma City Federated Fund Drive, Taos Art Association and Whitney Museum. His articles have been published in The Journal of Arts Management and Law, Culture Wars and American Theatre.
Martenson is a graduate of Princeton University in music theory.
Research
For six years ending in 1997, Powell Justis served as Director of Individual Donor and Prospect Research for Grenzebach Flier and Associates, a full-service philanthropic management consulting firm headquartered in Chicago. The firm’s clients include educational, medical, cultural and other nonprofit organizations throughout the United States, Canada and Europe.
Mr. Justis holds a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science from The Catholic University of America and a Bachelor’s Degree in History from Salisbury University, f.k.a. Salisbury State College. He has been a member of the professional prospect research organization, the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement or APRA.
In developing reports for YoungAssociates, Mr. Justis uses a variety of materials, both electronic and traditional print. Facilities accessed include the libraries and reading rooms at the Library of Congress, the Foundation Center, the Federal Election Commission, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Public Library and other local libraries, reading rooms and facilities as needed (DAR, National Archives, the family records at Kensington Temple of LDS, the SEC, Colonial Dames, historical societies, etc.) and YoungAssociates Prospect Development Worth analysis.
Campaign Materials & Institutional Branding
Russ Lapso has a decades-long history of providing strategic planning and creative services to major corporations and nonprofit organizations alike.
Most recently, Lapso led the research, brand, and account planning function for a pharmaceutical ad agency charged with building the business for Tamiflu, a prescription product of Roche Laboratories
In the nonprofit arena, Lapso collaborated with Henry Young in developing creative strategies and marketing materials for the fundraising and capital campaign of The Guthrie Theater. Most recently Lapso and YoungAssociates worked together in the development of fundraising marketing materials for Tai Sophia, a Maryland school with degree programs for acupuncture and alternative health care. Early in Lapso’s career, as Russ Lapso & Associates, he developed fundraising materials for Martha Graham, as well as turnkey subscription marketing services for The Joffrey Ballet and the dance companies of Paul Taylor, Merce Cunningham, and Twyla Tharp.
Mr. Lapso co-founded and led for ten years the Brand Planning Department of Rapp Collins Worldwide, the largest direct response marketing services company within Omnicom. There he served major clients such as Delta Air Lines, Pfizer, Ortho-McNeil, Citizens Bank, Kaiser Permanente, and many others.
Russ Lapso has been a lecturer at Opera America and at the AAAA Annual Account Planning Conference.
He is a graduate of the School of Speech at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.
Photography
Born in Prague, Michal Daniel moved to the United States in 1969 and discovered a love for photography while serving in the US Air Force. He specializes in theatre photography that captures moments of emotion on stage and street photography that can delight or shock.
Beginning with Theatre de la Jeune Lune in 1980, Mr Daniel has photographed actors and performances at The Guthrie Theatre, The Jungle Theater, the New York Shakespeare Festival, The Joseph Papp Public Theater, The Minnesota Opera, Pillbury House Theatre, Alley Theatre, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
Daniel has taught fine black-and-white printing and ran his own custom black-and-white photography lab in Minneapolis for two decades. He also invented and marketed the original M-Grip for M Leica cameras. His online portfolio, Proofsheet.com, is the largest individual collection of theater images on the web.
Twin Cities Public Television Feature on Michal:
