Arts Management

Sam Sweet leads his own consulting practice, Sam Sweet Consulting, helping non-profits build organizational capacity in order to advance their missions. An experienced and accomplished leader with proven success sparking innovation, change and growth, he currently is the Executive Director at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street NE in Washington, DC. Sam previously served as Managing Director at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia. At Signature, he led a small but artistically respected local theatre from its renovated garage space to a new, two-theater $16 million complex while building its organizational capacity to become a national force for developing and producing musical theatre, laying the groundwork for it to win the Regional Theater TONY award in 2009. Prior to that, Sam was Managing Director at The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC from 1995 to 2001. Working collaboratively with Artistic Director Michael Kahn, Sam led the Theatre to become one of the largest nonprofit theaters in the country and he began the planning for what would later become the Harman Center for the Arts. More recently, Sam served as Chief Operating Officer for the Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art and Design. He has served on the Boards of the DC Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Business Improvement District, Arlington Economic Development Commission, Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington and Leadership Greater Washington, and he was a founding board member of the Cultural Development Corporation. Sam’s “visionary leadership” was recognized by the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation with its Exponent Award in 2007. He has a BA from Columbia University and an MBA from Virginia Tech.

Teaching:

AMGT 705 Finance Budgeting for Arts II

AMGT 750 Arts Entrepreneurship I