Faculty Spotlight Page
Jean Brody, Ph.D.
Jean Brody is the Director of the Online Graduate Program in Arts Administration at Drexel University. Prior to her current position, she was the Director of the Graduate Program in Arts Administration at Goucher College for six years, where she built a national faculty and led the program through curricular review and strategic planning. She is on the Board of Directors and serves as Treasurer for the Association of Arts Administration Educators.
Brody has more than 25 years experience in education and the arts, and has worked in a variety of roles with Philadelphia arts organizations including the Philadelphia Theatre Caravan, Hedgerow Theatre, Point Breeze Performing Arts Center, the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia, Relâche, Inc., and more. She continues to consult with area nonprofit arts organizations.
Brody resides with her family in Narberth, PA, and is active in fundraising with her synagogue, Congregation Mishkan Shalom. She holds D.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from the Yale School of Drama, and a B.A. in Literature from Yale College.
Sharon M. Erwin, J.D.
Sharon Erwin has practiced in the area of arts law, litigation, employment law, information technology and alternative dispute resolution since 1981. Sharon began her career at Dechert Price & Rhoads (now Dechert LLP) as a litigator, and, after ten years as a partner in a regional law firm, established her own law offices in Philadelphia and Montgomery Counties in 1998, with a focus on the representation of cultural organizations and artists.
Sharon’s arts-related practice includes the representation of cultural nonprofits, including museums, foundations, and arts, theater and film organizations, as well as individual artists, film makers, musicians, and gallery owners. Her practice ranges from copyright and insurance advice and litigation, to contract and employment-related counseling and dispute resolution, to issues of public art, cultural heritage, and web site and database development and licensing.
Among other arts-related matters, Sharon serves as counsel on the collaborative Pennsylvania Cultural Data Project, an innovative statewide data collection effort launched in 2004. She often serves as counsel on major public art projects in Philadelphia. Sharon represented the Fairmount Park Art Association in the public art controversy surrounding the Maxfield Parrish/Louis Comfort Tiffany mosaic, The Dream Garden, which, after four years of litigation, resulted in the preservation of The Dream Garden as a cherished work of public art in Philadelphia.
Sharon is active in the Philadelphia and American Bar Associations. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Art and Cultural Heritage Law Newsletter of the International Law Section of the American Bar Association, and has been a course planner, author and lecturer for the Pennsylvania Bar Institute and the Philadelphia Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts on a number of arts and trial-related, information technology and employment law subjects, including presentations such as “An Introduction to International Law for Museum Professionals” as a faculty member for ALI-ABA’s Legal Issues for Museum Administrators, co-sponsored by the Smithsonian Museum.
Sharon has served as a member of the Board of Directors for a number of arts and cultural nonprofits, and as a Director-at-Large of the International Aviation Womens Association. She is also a Founding Patron of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation.
Sharon is admitted to the Bar of Pennsylvania and the Bars of the United States District Courts for the Eastern and Middle Districts of Pennsylvania, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and the United States Supreme Court. She has also appeared pro hac vice in the courts of several states throughout the country.
Sharon is an elected member of the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, an honorary organization of attorneys, judges, and law professors “whose professional, public, and private careers have demonstrated outstanding dedication to their communities and to the highest principles of the legal profession.”
John McCann
John McCann is a facilitator, educator and consultant. His specific expertise is in leadership education, visioning, mediation, and strategy development for organizations.
McCann is a co-founder and Director of the Institute for Cultural Policy and Practice (ICPP) at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, VA. In this capacity McCann has designed the Community Arts Leadership Academy for the Michigan Association of Community Arts Agencies (MACAA); served as lead faculty for the Orchestra Management Fellowship Program of the American Symphony Orchestra League (ASOL); and has designed leadership development seminars for Theatre Communications Group (TCG), Dance/USA, Dance/NYC, and Americans for the Arts, the national service organization for local arts agencies. His paper, Designing Effective Leadership Development Programs, was presented in June at the International Arts Policy conference in Vienna.
As co-founder and former principal of Emc.Arts, LLC, McCann served as a member of the consulting team for a broad array of clients including the Aspen Music Festival and School, Arts International, and the 18th Street Arts Complex. He has facilitated planning retreats and strategy development sessions for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, the Choral Arts Society of Washington, DC, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Washington Ballet, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), Maryland Citizens for the Arts, and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. On behalf of the National Endowment for the Arts, McCann facilitated the focus groups designed to inform the creation of the Challenge America program. He has been a member of the moderator team for both the Clinton Global Initiative and the Louisiana Recovery and Rebuilding Conference in New Orleans, and the Arts Recovery Summit funded jointly by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Arts Council of New Orleans. He also served as moderator for the Panel of Experts for the Seal of Approval program of AARP and facilitated a series of summits on the impact of newly constructed arts facilities for the Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago. Recent projects include the Cleveland Orchestra, American Arts Alliance, and the Cooperative Leadership Institute.
In addition to his work in the arts, McCann has served as a facilitator and governance consultant for organizations and initiatives in diverse fields including nature conservancies, faith communities, special needs schools, and colleges and universities. He is an active member of Facilitators Without Borders.
McCann has served as a faculty member for the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations, the Prairie Arts Leadership Institute, the New York Alliance of Arts Organizations, Empire State Partnership for Arts Education, and the American Planning Association. He is co-author of the Board Excellence Handbook for the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations.
McCann holds a BA degree in communications from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a Masters of Fine Arts degree from Virginia Tech. His life long learning includes courses in leadership through the Harvard Business School extension, and Systems Dynamics for the Senior Executive from MIT.
He is currently Vice President of the Association of Arts Administration Educators, where he co-chairs the Outcomes and Standards initiative. He serves regularly as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and numerous state arts councils. McCann’s guest lectures on arts leadership include the Bolz Center for Arts Administration at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan; North Carolina School of the Arts, and the College of Charleston.
Margaret Hasse
Margaret Hasse is a consultant to non-profit organizations, educator, and writer based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She has worked as a strategic planner with Chamber Music America and the Advancement Program of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), and as a consultant for the Philadelphia Cultural Leadership Program of The Pew Charitable Trusts.
During the 1980s, Hasse served as a lobbyist for arts education and as Executive Director for Minnesota Alliance for Arts in Education. Under her leadership, the organization grew into the largest and most effective organization of its type in the nation. As the Midwest Regional Coordinator for the Alliance network of The Kennedy Center, she provided technical assistance in planning and resource development to other arts and education organizations.
Hasse is currently principal of an arts consulting business that has a 20-year track record of helping non-profit arts organizations of all sorts and sizes become stronger through strategic planning, fundraising, evaluating, and communicating. Among her many clients are state arts councils, community arts councils, foundations, performing arts centers, arts education groups, as well as discipline-specific organizations in dance, literary arts, media arts, music, theater, and visual arts.
Margaret Hasse is also a literary artist, author of three collections of poetry, and recipient of a prestigious Fellowship in Poetry from the NEA. Her B.A. is from Stanford University, and her M.A. from the University of Minnesota, both in English.
