Greater Chicago Area
Experienced professional performing arts and non-profit leader, executive producer ▪ strategic thinker and exceptionally insightful long-range planner ▪ Highly accomplished non-profit director with C-level experience ▪ Demonstrated success and proficiency at multiple start-up concepts and businesses, including new revenue-generating opportunities in the arts, nightlife and entertainment industries ▪ Decisive innovator with entrepreneurial approach to artistic administration, programming and establishing administrative infrastructure ▪ Intuitive communicator with a proven capacity to shape institutional and artistic visions into an actionable strategies ▪ Ability to engage with key clients, stakeholders and diverse constituents at all levels of management ▪ Effective public spokesman, influential communicator and ambassador
The largest free performing arts festival in the Midwest.
Full-service commercial General Management Services and an Innovative and progressive arts management company that offers a broad range of talents and experts in the arts and culture community with a focus on performing arts. • Experienced commercial and non-profit theatrical and multi-genre producer and director • Artistic direction and programming consultancy • Board Relations & capital campaign/philanthropy consultation • Interim C-level Management, staff coaching, executive search • Contract review and negotiation strategies • Arts, artist and production management • Global artistic contacts • Touring, transfers, general and company management services • Concessions enhancement and customer experience enrichment • Event and fundraiser production • Bespoke and curated artistic and cultural tours • Press and social media consult • Program series creation and development • Commissioning and producing strategies and management • Relocation and housing services for incoming artists and groups • Best practices • Clients include: Illinois Coalition Against Handgun Violence, Urban Theatre Company, Chicago Children's Theatre, Navy Pier, Inc.,
At BLVE Consults, we believe in the process. Our mission is to create stronger organizations by building effective systems and processes and encouraging transformational leadership. BLVE connects you back to the mission and values of your work by building the structure necessary to make the space for creativity, ideas, and innovation. BLVE RECRUITMENT & TRANSITION SERVICES BLVE Consults recognizes the importance of solid and seamless staffing for any sized organization. With BLVE’s team collective experience of proven leadership and recruiting, BLVE’s Recruitment & Transition Services, led by Steve Abrams, can provide you with interim leadership and staffing, affordable recruitment services, and is also adept at filling in on day-to-day operations during periods of transition.
Artistic Director/Producer for Chicago LIVE Again- Chicago's official welcome back to live performances featuring two stages, over 50 performances including Lyric Opera, South Chicago Dance Theater, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Broadway in Chicago, About Face Theater, Chicago Fringe Opera and many others, Navy Pier, Chicago, IL, Sept 2021
Navy Pier has been an icon and popular destination throughout much of Chicago’s history and is the #1 leisure destination in the midwest. Centrally located in downtown Chicago, Navy Pier attracts over 9 million visitors annually, I served as its first Resident Artistic Director, helping to set the artistic vision as Chicago's cultural district through the creation of a center for local arts, increasing the cultural cache and extending the cultural lakefront and to continue Daniel Burnham's original vision of "the people's Pier," in part, through collaboration with Chicago's more than 600 performing arts organizations and artists.
Consulted on marketing, messaging, social media and brand development for one of Chicago’s premier arts organizations.