What's A Zoot?
Zoot overcame an orthopedic disability to work a dozen years as an international touring breakdancer, swing dancer, mime, improv actor, and arts educator. He worked in film and television with Prince, Michael Jackson, James Cameron, Arsenio Hall, and others; toured his shows internationally; and taught in schools, prisons, and juvenile halls under 17 grants and commissions. But his love was working in the community.
He switched to administration, leading an award-winning prison arts program for six years. He then became the LA Cultural Affairs Arts Center Director for the Harbor, where his team built four new community cultural centers, managed six partnered art centers, and produced four festivals. Later, as an interim CEO, he transformed a theatre company working in juvenile halls, and an internationally-known hip-hop cultural center in Long Beach. Fullerton’s historic Muckenthaler Cultural Center was close to bankruptcy in 2007 when Zoot took the helm. Six months later, the recession hit. During the Great Recession, income, audience, and programs grew 400% from consensus vision planning, original programming and presenting, social enterprise, audience development, the first STEAM programs in Orange County, which won county and state awards, institutional arts program contracts, and resource development.
This success led Zoot to an MBA in Nonprofit Management from Hope International University, authoring two books on nonprofit leadership and a new career path. He led a nonprofit center at Cal State Fullerton while teaching and training leaders there, at Cal Poly Pomona, and at Fullerton College. As a consultant and interim CEO, Zoot routinely doubled the budgets of organizations, raising over $42M as a CFRE with an 86% success rate on grants. As interim CEO for Fullerton College and Hope Center for the Arts, both were resurrected from issues during COVID-19.
Besides his MBA, Zoot holds a BA in Dance Performance from St. Mary’s College of California’s LEAP program, a certificate in Theatre from Second City Theatre School, Leadership Fellowships from Coro Southern California, Executive Service Corps, Leadership Long Beach, and The California Arts Council’s Multicultural Arts Leaders program. He has taught at the university level Leadership, Nonprofit Management, Marketing, Curriculum Design, Corporate Social Responsibility, Business Soft Skills, Theatre, and Public Speaking. He has served twice as a Humanities Scholar for California Humanities Council grants.
Today, Zoot is the interim CEO of Pasadena Heritage. He continues to work as an artist in state prisons in a program he started at the Muckenthaler. He is active in Rotary, tours his book, speaks at conferences, and trains new leaders at Cal Poly Pomona and with Jericho Road Pasadena.
Zoot is ready to help you with your issues. See our CLIENT LIST.
Download Zoot’s Resume HERE
What is 4M-Pact?
Why do we, as a sector, define ourselves by what we don’t do well… make a profit? Who else defines themselves by their tax status? And by doing that, do we take the emphasis off of sustainability? We should be defining ourselves by what we do well: Social Impact. If we did, we might better evaluate our work and find sustainable social enterprise. In my take on “4M-Pact,” I am working to drive this point home. My four Ms?
Mission- It all comes down to the mission and being mission-driven for success.
Management- We must prioritize best practices of leadership, management, and supervision for sustainable success through regular maintenance (wait, is that another M?).
Modeling- There are few new ideas in the world. What can we learn from other models in our sector and in other sectors? Let’s always look for and take the best ideas out there to make us better.
Magic- Leave room for great culture, strategic partnerships, and innovation that makes magic happen in our communities… The unseen, but definitely felt, part of our work.
With these four “M”s, we can make a great social impact on our communities and set ourselves up for great success that outlasts our leadership of it!
