Program Officer, Arts

About the Wallace Foundation

The Wallace Foundation—an independent, national, New York-based philanthropy with $1.6 billion in assets—traces its origins back more than half a century to DeWitt and Lila Acheson Wallace, founders of The Reader’s Digest Association. Our work is grounded by our core values, which guide how we work together, and our mission and approach, which describes what we do. We aim to create a workplace where we all can thrive and contribute in support of our mission.

The Wallace Foundation seeks to foster equity and improvements in learning and enrichment for young people, and in the arts for everyone. The foundation has an unusual approach: In each of our focus areas –Arts, Education Leadership, and Learning and Enrichment –we seek to identify, and help answer, one or more significant questions whose answers are not known but which, if known, could help propel progress more broadly. As responsible stewards of our resources, we seek to ensure that our initiatives contribute to Wallace’s dual goals:(a) benefits for our partners and those they serve in the form of increased capacity, and (b) benefits for the broader field through credible, relevant knowledge.

For more information on The Wallace Foundation and to see examples of our work, please visit http://www.wallacefoundation.org.

The Opportunity

There are two aspects to Wallace’s work in the arts:

• Investing in the relevance and resilience of arts organizations and understanding their role in community, and
• Engaging more young people in high-quality arts learning during the school day and beyond.

Collaborating with the Vice President, Arts and members of the Arts Unit and Interdisciplinary Team, the Program Officer, Arts is a key contributor to the success of the Foundation’s initiatives, particularly in support of the Wallace Arts Initiative. They play an integral role in supporting the Initiative’s goals: strengthening the capacity of arts organizations of color to benefit their communities and documenting and sharing insights with practitioners, policymakers, funders, and industry leaders to support equitable and sustainable improvements across the arts ecosystem. The Program Officer will bring substantive field knowledge and experience to the interdisciplinary team’s work on strategy design, ongoing refinement, and implementation; managing the work of the grantees and partners to advance the overall goals of the initiative; and supporting sharing of knowledge.