Noah is an experienced nonprofit leader, executive, coach, and consultant who brings a twenty-five-year track record of successful leadership and results to each client’s project. Born in Brooklyn, NY, he grew up in Portland, ME, and moved to Nashville in 2012. He started his career as a stage manager for theatre, ballet, symphony, and opera, and throughout his career has lived or worked in over 41 states. Noah facilitates Circles with the Circle Center and is passionate in his support of missional organizations creating roles, policies & procedures while also protecting the quality of culture within the organization.
Before launching his nonprofit management consulting practice in 2016, he progressed from managing shows to leading teams, departments, and institutions and understands how to deliver bottom-line results and impactful mission outcomes. He enjoys working with people with big visions to help them turn them into reality – to turn their visions into verbs. With clients across the U.S. and internationally, his varied experience includes work on strategic planning, board development, human resources, and system change analysis for arts groups, law firms, counseling agencies, ministries, social service agencies, chambers of commerce, women’s shelters, and grassroots advocacy groups.
Noah has extensive experience in nonprofit executive leadership roles, including Nashville Children’s Theatre, where he increased audience numbers for the school matinee performance series by 24% and government funding by 55%; and at Nashville Opera, where he erased the company’s accrued debt and broke revenue records with both main stage and second stage productions. At Tulsa Opera, he led the production department for eight years, managing multi-million dollar production budgets, including contracting and support for over 300 singers, musicians, crew, and staff each season.
Noah combines his real-world experiences with a people-first focus to help teams build a shared vision they can operationalize, manage, implement, and measure. He designs and delivers process change, drives increased employee engagement, and improved organizational alignment from top to bottom within each agency.
He is a champion for inclusion, diversity, equity, and access. From 2010-12, he served on the Leadership Team for Tulsa Regional Chamber’s Tulsa Young Professionals (TYPros) Diversity Crew, leading diversity and inclusion initiatives for the nation’s largest YP organization. He helped develop the nation’s first sensory-friendly opera program with Vanderbilt’s TRIAD program (The Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders) and is a graduate of Metro Arts’ REAL: Racial Equity in Arts Leadership program. Tulsa Business Journal named Noah one of 2009’s “40 Under 40” Professionals to Watch. In 2010, he was named “The Visionary” by Tulsa People Magazine for their article Change Agents in Tulsa. He has spoken at or served on panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, OPERA America, Metro Arts, Arts and Business Council of Greater Nashville, Center for Nonprofit Management, and Americans for the Arts. In 2021, his consulting practice achieved LGBTE Certified Business Enterprise ® status through the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.
Noah has a strong relationship with the Center for Nonprofit Management, where he facilitates, consults, and is part of the collective impact consulting cohort. He is on the faculty for Young Leaders Council and is the project lead for CNM’s OnBoard program, where he teaches business professionals how to serve on nonprofit boards. He has served on the boards for Nashville Arts Coalition (past Chair), Tennesseans for the Arts (past President), and Tennessee Diversity Consortium. He is a member of the Society of Human Resource Managers (SHRM), national and Middle Tennessee chapters. He maintains membership as a stage manager in the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA). He is a certified Talent Optimization Consultant with Predictive Index and a member of the National Association of Nonprofit Organizations and Executives. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Southern Maine with a B.A. in technical theatre and received a Master’s in Fine Arts in stage management from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In his free time, Noah takes pottery classes at The Clay Lady’s Campus and studies mindfulness meditation.
