Jonathan Kuuskoski

(he/his)

Chair of Entrepreneurship & Leadership and Associate Professor of Music

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Bio

Jonathan Kuuskoski helps artists self-start careers. As Chair of the Department of Entrepreneurship and Leadership and Director of the EXCEL Lab at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance, he oversees all aspects of their wide-ranging programming, including extensive career advising, a performing arts venture incubator, co-curricular training resources, a graduate certificate and undergraduate minor, and the annual distribution of more than $100,000 in student project, venture, and internship funding.

EXCEL has grown exponentially over the last decade, having delivered nearly $1 million to-date in direct student support. The Lab has incubated 50 student ventures, launched hundreds of student-led projects, and supported hundreds of paid student internships across the globe. During his tenure, the Department of Entrepreneurship & Leadership has significantly expanded their faculty and staff team, has grown and sustained more than two dozen curricular offerings, and actively collaborates with leading arts organizations and peer institutions to host a who’s who of performing artists and arts leaders on campus, expanding all students’ circle of access to the professional world of the performing arts. More than 1,000 students participate annually in EXCEL’s highly integrated approach to professional development blending entrepreneurship, leadership and management training resources, all within SMTD’s unique performing arts environment and a perennial top-10 university entrepreneurship ecosystem (2015-present, Princeton Review / Entrepreneur Magazine).

Jonathan has presented talks, workshops and research at leading arts institutions, including at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins, Yale University, the Bolz Center for Arts Administration (Wisconsin School of Business), New World Symphony, the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna (mdw), and the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music. He has provided commentary on a number of music sector issues for CNN, Forbes, and Inc.com, and his work in the arts entrepreneurship and leadership space has been profiled nationally by CNBC, Crain’s Detroit Business, Symphony Magazine, and other news outlets.

His recent publication, “Narrowing the Gap: Implications of Arts Business Training on Artist Labor Market Outcomes” (co-authored with Dr. Christos Makridis in the journal Artivate, Vol. 12), is the first empirical study examining the impact of business training on artists’ earnings using U.S. Census Bureau data. The paper has subsequently been covered in Forbes, and was featured by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Arts Research Quarterly periodical, the National Archive of Data on Arts & Culture (NADAC).

He previously served as Director of Entrepreneurship and Community Programs at the University of Missouri School of Music, where he led the successful re-launch and re-branding of Community Music @ Mizzou – doubling enrollments and revenue over three years to reach more than 2,500 community members – while designing and implementing all aspects of the region’s first Music Entrepreneurship program, including Undergraduate and Graduate Music Entrepreneurship Certificates. For more than a decade he also served as a faculty member at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst Arts Extension Service (2012-2023), where he designed and taught one of the field’s first online arts entrepreneurship courses that has served hundreds of visual, performing, and literary artists of all backgrounds, ages and experience levels.

A classical pianist by training, he performed for several years as solo, duo and chamber pianist across North America, Europe, and New Zealand. He continues to engage with the piano pedagogy community, having been actively involved in both the Music Teachers National Association and National Conference on Piano Pedagogy, presenting scholarship and serving on various programming committees. He is currently authoring chapters on entrepreneurship for both the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Piano Pedagogy (Christopher Fisher and Sally Cathcart, Eds.) and the Cambridge Companion to Piano Pedagogy (Christopher Madden, Ed.). He also writes the “Everyday Entrepreneur” column for the journal American Music Teacher, which reaches 17,000 music educators across North America.