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The initiative includes a two-week summer intensive and events this July.

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At a moment when the cultural sector stands at a profound crossroads, Harlem Stage has announced Good Ground: The Next Generation of Women+ Leaders in the Arts; a bold, global initiative that is built to shift who leads, to strengthen leadership sustainability, and to unlock a more expansive future for the arts. Rooted in urgency and possibility, Good Ground confronts a stark reality: women comprise the majority of the nonprofit arts labor force, yet leadership remains overwhelmingly concentrated among white men, leaving women of color largely excluded from positions of power. Good Ground is planting seeds for a future the field has yet to fully imagine.

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Harlem Stage will team up with partner institutions that nominated the Inaugural 2026 Fellows: The Billie Holiday Theatre (Brooklyn, NY), The Ensemble Theatre (Houston, TX), Howard University (Washington, DC), North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University (Greensboro, NC), Spelman College (Atlanta, GA), The Theater Offensive (Boston, MA), and tiata fahodzi (Watford, UK).

Through the inaugural 12-month pilot Fellowship - designed as a beta model for future expansion - Good Ground cultivates a global network of visionary early-career women+ leaders from performing arts institutions and HBCUs, providing the mentorship, resources, and community long denied to them. This is not your typical professional development. Participants will engage in immersive residencies, leadership labs, masterclasses, site visits, and one-on-one mentorship with some of the most accomplished women leaders across the arts and beyond. Good Ground provides a sanctuary for bold, new ideas to inform the future of the arts.

The initiative includes a two-week summer intensive, fittingly with week one at the Mary Schmidt Campbell Center of Innovation & the Arts at Spelman College; a center led by Barbara Chirinos, Inaugural Artistic Director. The following week is in NYC to meet with leaders in arts and culture, tour arts institutions, and present a public forum on Thursday, July 30.

Tony Award-nominated actress and director LaTanya Richardson Jackson , Chair of the Good Ground Circle and Spelman College Alumna, underscores the stakes: “Leadership inequity is not a question of capacity; it is a question of support. Good Ground is about building the systems that ensure brilliance is not only recognized, but sustained. Mentorship, networks, and knowledge are not luxuries, they are lifelines.”

Dr. Indira Etwaroo, Artistic Director & CEO of Harlem Stage reflects: “Good Ground is a direct response to a field that continues to ask women leaders of color to navigate systems never designed for us. I created it because that cycle - this fugue of repetition - cannot define our future. We must move beyond the monolith of ‘women of color’ and toward intersectional leadership that reflects the full complexity of our lived experiences. Good Ground equips women leaders to transform systems or build new ones entirely, fully as ourselves. This work changes the ground we stand on.”

In collaboration with socially-engaged institutions, including the Tony Award-nominated, The Theater Offensive (TTO) in Boston, MA, Giselle Byrd, Executive and Artistic Director of TTO emphasizes, “As the first Black trans woman to lead a regional theater in the U.S., I have often encountered expectations to erase parts of my identity in the name of progress. What must be acknowledged is that the power of the arts lies in bringing our full selves to leadership. Good Ground stands as a powerful testament; refusing fragmentation and insisting that the beauty of our full identities be the divine source of our vision.”

Chinonyerem Odimba, the Artistic Director and Chief Executive of the British African theater in the UK, tiata fahodzi, speaks to the deeper narrative shift embedded in the initiative: “We inherit systems, but we also inherit the responsibility to reimagine them. Good Ground is an act of collective authorship; one that centers voices too often pushed to the margins and insists that new stories of leadership are not only possible, but necessary.”

The program is fully funded for all Fellows, including travel, housing, and stipends. Good Ground removes the financial barriers that have historically excluded emerging leaders of color from access and advancement.

Good Ground is ultimately about building a leadership ecosystem so strong, so interconnected, that isolation is no longer possible and inequity is no longer sustainable. The message is clear: the future of arts leadership will not be asked to make room. It will build the room. The time is now. The future is hers+.

Learn more here .

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/off-off-broadway/article/Harlem-Stage-Launches-Good-Ground-to-Power-the-Next-Generation-of-Women-Arts-Leaders-Worldwide-20260507)._