Thomas Pearson provides responsive, strategic advice to organizations and their leadership so they can accomplish meaningful and lasting change. He helps design and facilitate planning processes and organizational assessments, create adaptive programs, craft external messaging, refi ne internal systems, and provide executive search and interim leadership services. Recent work includes search or planning projects at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, ArtsPool, Children’s Musical Theater of San Jose, the Geff en Playhouse, Goodspeed Musicals, Great Lakes Theater/Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival, Unicorn Theatre, and others. Thomas spent eleven years as Executive Director of New York Stage and Film (NYSAF), a leading organization dedicated to developing new work in process for theater, fi lm, and beyond. During his tenure, NYSAF supported over 300 projects and 2500+ artists, including Tony Award winners Hamilton, Hadestown, and The Humans, Pulitzer Prize fi nalists The Wolves (Sarah DeLappe) and Taylor Mac’s epic A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, and a variety of work from artists such as Rachel Chavkin, Lynn Nottage, Michael Friedman, Ayad Akhtar, César Alvarez, and countless others. Thomas’s role at NYSAF spanned strategy, operations, fundraising and external aff airs. His time was marked by a strategic deepening of programming and organizational capacity, including new programs such as the Filmmakers’ Workshop, NYSAF NOW, and the NYC Winter Season, an expansion of the permanent year-round staff , board and funder development, and expanded commitments to pay equity, access, agency, and belonging, to address historical inequities. In accordance with this strategic expansion, NYSAF’s institutional budget, annual contributed revenue, and net assets doubled. Prior to NYSAF, Thomas was a theatrical literary agent at International Creative Management (ICM), where he represented a wide variety of artists in theater and other live performance, as well as fi lm, television, and new media platforms. He facilitated the development and premiere of work such as Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Passing Strange, Fela!, An Iliad, and Tarell Alvin McCraney’s landmark The Brother/Sister Plays, and clients included Stephen Belber, Michael Friedman, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Patricia McGregor, Charles L. Mee, Lisa Peterson, Will Power, Jose Rivera, Alex Timbers, and Evan Yionoulis. Other previous work includes four years as the Associate Managing Director of Off -Broadway’s New York Theatre Workshop, where he served as the general manager for the development and production of new work by artists such as Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. He serves on the board of Theater Mitu (Rubén Polendo, Founding Artistic Director) and as the Treasurer of the Haldane School Foundation, and was a founding board member of Les Fréres Corbusier (Alex Timbers, Artistic Director). Thomas received BA degrees in Literature and Theater Studies from Yale University, and lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with his family.

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Carlton Ford, Managing Director Carlton Ford (he/him) brings over 15 years of nonprofi t arts leadership experience to his role as Managing Director and Consultant at Diaz Inclusion Consulting. Carlton off ers a multifaceted perspective from his work across the public and private sectors, with a keen focus on performing arts and cultural institutions.

Having secured over $30 million in funding for arts/culture and social change organizations, including Interlochen Center for the Arts, Adrienne Arsht Center, Florida Grand Opera, and Taproot Foundation, Carlton specializes in consensus-building, fundraising, leadership coaching, board development, and strategic planning to bring the tenets of inclusion, diversity, equity, and access (IDEA) to life for organizations, teams, and individuals.

Named one of Miami's 40 Under 40 Black Leaders of Today and Tomorrow (2016), Carlton is an active thought leader, with select pieces including the Miami Herald Op-Ed Careless labels like 'underserved' ignore the richness, diversity among Blacks, the DonorSearch Philanthropy Masterminds podcast episode, The Inheritance and The Gift: A Conversation with Carlton Ford, and Check Your Labels: Race, Identity, and Power in Grant Writing with Grants Plus.

As a former opera singer, Carlton enjoyed an international career including venues like Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera, the Berlin Philharmonic, and Emmy and Oscar-nominated projects. He is a founding member of Victory Hall Opera and holds degrees from Rice University and The Juilliard School, and a certifi cation in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Workplace from the University of South Florida.

Carlton currently serves as a Blue Mentor for New World Symphony, guiding and advising alumni Fellows on their entrepreneurial projects. He also sits on the boards of Chamber Music America and Miami’s Nu Deco Ensemble, where he is Board Chair.

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