Holly Sidford

President

Holly is a strategic thinker, program developer and fundraiser with three decades of experience leading and developing nonprofit cultural and philanthropic organizations. Prior to launching Helicon in 2007, Holly was the founding president of Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC), a ten-year initiative to expand support for creative artists and guided the research and fundraising that undergirds it. Prior to that, Holly was program director for arts, parks and adult literacy at the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund; interim director of arts and culture at the Ford Foundation and The Howard Gilman Foundation; executive director of the New England Foundation for the Arts and associate director of the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. She holds a B.A. in American history and literature from Mount Holyoke College and a Management Certificate from Columbia University.

Marcelle Hinand Cady

Principal

Marcy is a management consultant with 20 years of experience working with nonprofit cultural organizations and foundations on strategy, program development and assessment. Prior to joining Helicon, Marcy was program director for the arts at the James Irvine Foundation. There she commissioned groundbreaking research on cultural engagement and initiated innovative programs to boost cultural participation. Prior to that, Marcy worked with the TCC Group, where she developed and managed the Knight Foundation's Community Partners in the Arts Access Program, among other large-scale projects. Marcy managed the Ford Foundation's $40 million New Directions/New Donors for the Arts program, and held positions at the Nonprofit Finance Fund, the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts. She holds a B.A. from Skidmore College and an M.F.A. from Brown University.

Alexis Frasz

Alexis is a researcher, writer and thinker with a passion for creative ideas and elegant synthesis. She has worked as a consultant in the nonprofit cultural sector for five years. Prior to joining Helicon, Alexis worked at AEA Consulting, an international consulting firm, where she conducted cultural policy research, trend studies, strategic planning and market research. While there, she developed an analysis of trends affecting the performing arts sector for the Australia Council on the Arts, and co-authored Critical Issues Facing the Arts in California for the James Irvine Foundation. She was editor of AEA's magazine, Platform, and has written about technology and trends affecting the cultural sector in several publications. Before AEA, Alexis worked at New York's Center for an Urban Future, where she contributed to a comprehensive study of the sector, Creative New York. She holds a B.A. (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from Princeton. In her spare time, she runs a kung fu studio.
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