We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Theresa Smith-Levin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Theresa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
I started a Non-Profit with no Non-Profit training overnight. I live in a space of risk. I was a young female non-profit founder with zero training. I choose to run my company in the face of tons of rejection and tons of “you can’t do its” because I’m confident in it. I am a mother of two kids and I work full-time. Everything I do has much greater risks than my male counter parts, but without that risk, how can we change the future of what this looks like for the rest of us?
Theresa, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I am a Central Florida born-and-bred young lady. I was born in Winter Park Hospital, went to Winter Park High School, went to UCF for my undergrad degree in Music Education and Spanish. I went on to the University of Miami to receive my master’s degree in Vocal Performance. I came back to the area and was performing and started a non-profit by accident and I’ve spent the last decade trying to figure out how to use the arts to create social and tangible good in our community; to be more than fluffy, traditional, arts presentations, and to disrupt the systems in the arts that I don’t think serve everyone.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
As a person who founded this company a decade ago, I’m in a much different place than I was when I started this company. As a young female founder without a non-profit background, I couldn’t get any traction for funding and support for the mission of the work that we did . This is a place that almost every non-profit founder finds themselves in the beginning if they do not already have the money and support behind them. And for that reason, we sadly lose a lot of non-profits. I think resilience, determination, and grit are some of my main characteristics, which I think is important in this space, but I also worry about the way we celebrate these traits in women. I don’t want to be as resilient as I’ve had to be. I don’t think anyone else should have to, either. I hope that my resilience in this space burns a pathway for other people to not walk through this space with a machete. I hope I can make it easier for other people to move forward and to achieve the good work and missions that they have in their hearts.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
When presenting our mission to the public, not everyone immediately understands the relationship between our work in the arts and the overall wellness and betterment of community. How do music lessons change a child? How does attending a show change perspectives? People who haven’t had access to arts experiences, which unfortunately is true for many, many people, may not be able to see the correlation. But because American culture highly values youth sports, most people innately understand the good that comes from engaging a child in these opportunities, even if they have no professional potential or ambition. We all understand how professional sports can build and bring community together. The arts are the same.
CFVA brings people together, especially people who feel excluded from the arts. We believe in children who would otherwise never have arts opportunities. We challenge perspectives. We change hearts. We re-imagine the impact that we as artists can have on our community.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.centralfloridavocalarts.org
- Instagram: @cflvocalarts, @operadelsol
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theresa-smith-levin-7868a725/