#LinkedOut: I Trained the MFAs. I'm still Marked N/A.

Highly Qualified & Weirdly Unhirable

I did go to college.

Sort of.

Long enough to realize I didn’t want to sit in a classroom learning how to be a dancer. I just wanted to be one.

So I left.

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I was a Dance Performance Major at the University of Akron with a Business cognate (which is really just a fancy word for “minor,” but hey… it looked great in the catalog!). It was the arts & the business which was exactly what I was interested in learning.

But it didn’t work out for me so I did what most dancers are dreaming about doing after graduation. I joined a professional company!

I danced, choreographed, toured, got critiqued in real time, learned from mistakes, got better.

Eventually, I transitioned into arts administration while still performing. I was the Rehearsal Coordinator, then Assistant to the Artistic director. Then years later I did was many professional dancers dream about. I started my own company!

(well production company…but a company at the least!)

I’ve been leading teams, managing budgets, producing shows, writing grants, building multi-platform projects, fundraising, the whole package. The work said “Executive Director.” The resume just didn’t.

Because I didn’t finish school.

Because I don’t have a graduate degree in arts administration.

Because apparently, you can do the job, but unless you learned how to do the job in a classroom, your experience is “not accredited”.

What’s frustrating is how often arts administration roles list a bachelor’s, or even a master’s, as a baseline requirement, regardless of the actual skills needed. A 2017 Harvard study found that degree inflation shuts out experienced professionals across industries. And in the arts, that means people like me, folks who’ve done the work, led the teams, built the budgets, don’t even get in the room because we don’t have the credential. Not because we can’t do the job, but because we didn’t learn how to do it in a classroom.

And that bias doesn’t stop at the office door — it shows up in the studio too.

I spent years mentoring dancers fresh out of MFA programs. Artists with degrees in dance performance and pedagogy and I’m the one showing them how to navigate company life, how to lead, how to hold space in the room, how to make it all work. I’m their first stop when they need guidance…creatively, professionally, and emotionally.

But on paper? They’re more qualified than me.

This is where my frustration lies. It’s the double standard that lived experience builds your actual ability, but the degree gets you through the front door.

And let me be clear, I’m not knocking MFAs. If you chose that path, truly, I respect it. You committed to deep study, and that matters. But some of us chose a different kind of path that came with creating under pressure, growing through failures, leading before we were ready, and learning everything the hard (and beautiful) way.

We didn’t study theory. We were the case study.

So here’s my question to anyone in the arts who hires, curates, or builds creative teams:

when did a printed credential become louder than lived experience?

And to the creatives like me, who’ve built their careers without the extra letters after their names: keep building. We may not have the degree, but we’ve got the goods.

So, this is for:

• the ones who dropped out when the classroom couldn’t keep up with their kind of learning.

• the ones who never got to walk across the stage because they were already commanding it.

• the ones who forged their practice in the belly of the administrative beast — one email, one spreadsheet, one last-minute miracle at a time.

• the ones who started picking up admin gigs just to cover the bills, and found themselves leading teams with purpose and precision.

And to the ones who keep getting told a a bachelors if mandatory and master’s degree is “preferred”.

I prefer you!

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This Week’s Pitch

Curious about the leadership work I do outside the theater?

I co-lead THRIVE Leadership & Team Consulting, where we help mission-driven teams communicate better, navigate conflict, and creatively collaborate with clarity.

We design experiences that go beyond the PowerPoint—bringing teams into movement, reflection, and honest conversation so they can build the trust, clarity, and communication skills needed to collaborate effectively and deliver on their mission.

If your organization is looking for something deeper than a retreat or one-off training, we’d love to talk.

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See You Next Week!

Thanks for reading #LinkedOut—a weekly, slightly chaotic, sometimes-too-real reflection on looking for work, staying creative, and navigating the in-between with some humor and clarity.

Every week’s entry drops Thursday at 10am.

Until then, keep building. Keep breathing. Keep being weirdly unhirable in all the best ways.