Joseph H. Kluger | Principal

Joe Kluger Headshot

I recommend watching this inspiring, yet provocative keynote speech for the 2022 APAP Conference by Ben Cameron, President of the Jerome Foundation, which explores several key questions that arts and culture groups must consider as they adapt programs and strategies for ongoing post-pandemic challenges.”

Joseph (Joe) H. Kluger, a Principal of WolfBrown, has over 30 years of experience as an arts and culture executive and consultant in strategic planning, organizational collaboration, facilities development, governance, executive coaching, executive compensation benchmarking, and succession planning. His clients are nonprofit museums, theaters, opera companies, symphony orchestras, performing arts centers, and arts education institutions.

At WolfBrown, Joe Kluger facilitated collaborative planning processes that help board, staff, and artistic leaders. He helped them address the challenges resulting from the disruptive COVID-19 pandemic by reaching alignment on strategies to achieve ambitious, but realistically achievable organizational objectives. The resulting plans must further a public service mission and be sufficiently compelling to garner financial support. There must also be adequate organizational capacity to implement the plans. As well, with many years of likely post-pandemic uncertainty, the plans must be based on dynamic strategies that are adaptable to environmental changes and short-term metrics.

Joe Kluger is also an internationally recognized expert in the use of technology to accomplish strategic objectives in the arts. He provides advice in this area to organizations such as the League of American Orchestras and OPERA America and their members.

Prior to his consulting career, Joe held leadership positions in the symphony field. This includes President of The Philadelphia Orchestra Association, where he helped develop the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts and raised over $130 million for the endowment. He joined The Philadelphia Orchestra as General Manager, after serving on the staff of the New York Philharmonic in a variety of positions, culminating in the position of Orchestra Manager.

Kluger has held voluntary leadership positions as Chair of Philadelphia Mayor Nutter’s Cultural Advisory Council and President of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. Kluger has also served as a Theatre Ambassador of the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia. He sat on the Board of Overseers of the Curtis Institute of Music. He also sat on the Boards of National Philanthropic Trust, the Marian Anderson Award, the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Arts and Business Council of Philadelphia, Sunderman Conservatory at Gettysburg College, and Pennsylvania Governor Rendell’s Arts and Culture Transition Team.

Kluger holds an M.A. in Arts Administration from NYU and a B.A. in Music from Trinity College in Hartford. He has participated in the Senior Executive Leadership Program of NTL Institute, the Wharton Fellows Master Class on Merger, Acquisition & Renewal, and the Executive Coaching Workshop at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. As an executive coach in the arts, he is qualified to administer Level B psychological assessment instruments.

Kluger has served as a guest lecturer on leadership and arts administration at the graduate and undergraduate level at Curtis, Wharton, Penn, NYU, and Drexel. He has studied piano and voice, the latter including a summer at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. Kluger has been both a director and performer in numerous amateur musical theater productions.

Kluger has recently contributed to our flagship newsletter “On Our Minds” with a piece on equity in strategic planning.

Joe Kluger can be reached directly via email.

CAREERS AT WOLFBROWN

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