Juilliard - Shaping the Future of the Performing Arts
Founded in 1905, The Juilliard School (“Juilliard”) is a world leader in performing arts education. The school’s mission is to cultivate excellence through the highest caliber of education in music, dance, and drama for gifted students from around the world, so they may achieve their fullest potential, expanding the reach and elevating the impact of the arts.
Located at Lincoln Center in New York City, Juilliard offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in music (classical, jazz, historical performance, and vocal arts), dance, and drama (acting and playwriting). Currently more than 850 artists from 40 states and 54 countries and regions are enrolled in the college divisions, where they appear in over 800 annual performances in the school’s five theaters; at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully and David Geffen halls and at Carnegie Hall; as well as other venues around New York City, the country, and the world. In addition to the college, Juilliard has a Preparatory Division comprised of Juilliard Pre-College and the Music Advancement Program, as well as an Extension division. Beyond its New York campus, Juilliard is defining new directions in global performing arts education for a range of learners and enthusiasts through The Tianjin Juilliard School and K-12 educational curricula.
In April of 2025, Juilliard announced a campaign to become tuition-free. This is a major initiative aimed at making the institution more accessible to students and ensuring that talented artists can pursue their dreams without financial barriers. The school is in the process of raising $550 million to finance this effort.
The Role
Reporting to the President, the Chief Financial Officer (“CFO”) is responsible for providing leadership and control of all aspects of the finance function in accordance with the objectives, strategies, and policies established by the President, the Board of Trustees, and the senior leadership team. Above all, the CFO is a proactive, creative, and high-energy strategic partner with the President, senior leadership team, and Board in driving and enabling the school’s ambitious strategic financial plan including its mission to provide for full tuition scholarships in the future.
The CFO operates at multiple levels, some high-level and ambiguous at the ideation phase, and some very detailed and “in the weeds.” The CFO leads strategic financial planning and evaluates and guides accounting, the financial budgeting process, as well as aligning finance to operations. They will continue to build an ever more mature finance organization that further strengthens the enterprise and brings a robust financial management lens to the activities of the organization.
The successful candidate is a strategic thinker, with an open and collaborative style of leadership that encourages teamwork and cooperation, and is a strong role model, manager and coach, with the ability to provide a positive working and learning environment for staff, as well as to develop a first-class service organization that responds effectively to inquiries and engenders trust from the community.
Key Accountabilities
- Serves as a trusted advisor and strategic partner to the President and Board, ensuring that institutional goals are supported by sound and sustainable financial strategy.
- Serves as the primary management interface with the Investment Committee of the Board; oversees the relationship with Juilliard's outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO), ensures investment performance and portfolio positioning are reported clearly to trustees, and monitors adherence to Board-approved investment policy and endowment spending guidelines.
- Serves as the primary management interface with the Audit and Risk Committee; proactively keeps the Committee informed of environment changes, audit findings, risk exposures, and remediation actions.
- Serves as the primary management interface with the Budget Committee of the board ensuring trustees have timely, accurate, and decision-ready financial information at every stage of the budget cycle.
- Oversee Juilliard's financial infrastructure: financial planning and policies, forecasting, accounting practices, treasury management, and relationships with financial and/or business partners.
- Leads an enterprise-wide risk management process: identifies, assesses, and prioritizes financial, operational, and reputational risks; develops mitigation strategies; presents a risk register to senior leadership and the Board annually.
- Develops and maintains long-range financial plans that tie together operating plans, capital requirements, and strategic objectives.
- Ensure that key sensitivities, risks, and uncertainties in the annual budget and financial strategic plan are appropriately called out for review and oversight by key constituents.
- Ensures that the annual budget process incorporates expense control aligned with the mission to provide for full tuition scholarships.
- Proactively identifies innovative financing approaches, revenue diversification opportunities, and cost structures that expand rather than constrain institutional ambition.
- Work closely with the leadership team to help inform financial aspects of operational, administrative, artistic support, and earned revenue areas.
- Partner closely with Development and the senior leadership team to structure, execute, and monitor an ambitious capital campaign that is underway as well as growth in annual giving.
- Continue to develop the school’s Enterprise Resource Planning platform (Oracle), in partnership with the Chief Technology Officer
- Manage and drive the annual budget process, monitoring budget schedules and workflow, working with management staff to prepare budget information, and developing budget documents and accompanying memoranda for presentation to senior administration and the Board.
- Strengthen the capabilities of the Finance organization, particularly to offer actionable business insights, through a combination of people development and skills development.
- Instill a spirit of continuous improvement in the Finance organization with its people, processes, and technologies.
- As a part of its ongoing mission and goals, serve as a key leader in the global Juilliard community and maintain a strong network across the School globally.
Competencies
Given the wide scope of the role and the key accountabilities, candidates will be assessed on the following competencies:
Shaping Strategy
Shaping strategy centers on enabling organizations to make informed choices about their strategic focus and modes of engagement. This individual will play an active role in shaping strategic financial planning and heavily influence the strategic assumptions and frameworks within their own area and broadly across the school. The CFO will approach strategy with an enabling attitude and creative ethos in devising innovative ways to finance the school's ambitions. The CFO will identify opportunities to reframe and reshape direction and priorities using external and internal data/information, creating win-win situations for the organization. They will foster ongoing strategic discussions rich with financial insights to enable the refinement of strategy and its financial implications considering external or internal shifts, changes, or opportunities.
Driving Results
The candidate has a proven record of consistent delivery of year-over-year improvement in financial results in environments characterized by a sense of urgency, continuous improvement, and the importance of detail orientation. The candidate will have demonstrated the ability to design, track, and ensure collective accountability to the key performance metrics and operational goals that drive the enterprise forward. Of importance, this person must be comfortable operating to drive results in both strategic matters as well as details.
Driving Change
This individual will be an innovative thinker oriented towards exploring new approaches and will bring a high level of sophistication to this role. The CFO will challenge existing structures and processes to make it possible for innovation and continuous improvement to happen across boundaries and throughout the entire organization. They will push these boundaries when necessary to find new perspectives, discuss/shape the ideas that emerge, and channel them into impactful actions.
Influencing Collaboratively
The candidate is effective in working with peers, partners, and others who are not in the line of command, to positively impact business performance as well as to resolve issues in a constructive way. Internally at Juilliard, they will need to demonstrate the ability to influence the senior leadership team and Board decision making based on their credibility and functional expertise and by demonstrating leadership, initiative, and the ability to build strong partnerships. The CFO will approach relationship building in a spirit of partnership and overinvest in developing strong working relationships across the organization. The CFO will need to communicate clear, accurate, and timely financial and strategic information to both internal and external parties.
Developing Talent
The CFO is focused on coaching, mentoring, and developing the finance team to ensure continued growth in personal and organizational capabilities and the success of the business. They leverage a combination of people development, retention, and recruiting to develop strong individual performers and help the team attain their potential as finance executives and leaders. This individual will possess the ability to effectively motivate others to achieve goals and objectives as they build next level of leadership talent.
Leading Teams
The candidate will bring an ability to lead with transparency and integrity, act decisively, and foster a culture of humanity, creativity, and learning. They will be viewed as a natural leader across the organization and will possess managerial skills that are reflected by their organizational abilities, success developing a talented team, skill in managing resources, responsiveness to management, and good judgment.
Requirements
- B.A./B.S. in Accounting required, with a minimum of seven years of progressive work experience in internal accounting, including familiarity with financial structures and budgeting.
- Experience in successfully leading and directing financial planning, budgeting and forecasting, and fiscal risk management at a selective higher education institution, conservatory, or other organization of similar complexity and stature, including experience partnering with key stakeholders across an organization.
- Knowledge of higher education, conservatory, or nonprofit financial management, including an understanding of the current economic challenges facing colleges and universities.
- Excellent attention to detail and verbal, written, organizational, and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to partner, work effectively, and closely with a diverse group of constituents.
- Must have a demonstrated passion for excellent customer service and commitment to exceptional quality.
- Must be able to identify priorities within multiple assignments in a high-pressure, short deadline environment, and be able to work with diplomacy and efficiency in such an environment.
- Must have sound judgment, with an open and collaborative style that encourages teamwork and cooperation and be a strong role model and coach.
Preferred Qualifications
- MBA or comparable advanced degree
- Not-for-profit work experience with understanding of fundraising, endowment management and budgeting
- Experience overseeing all required government filings for accuracy and timeliness.
Salary range starting at $450,000.00.
In addition to your CV, applicants are asked to submit a cover letter that articulates your interest in, and qualifications for, this role.
Nondiscrimination Policy
The Juilliard School is committed to a policy of equal treatment and opportunity in every aspect of its relations with its faculty, staff, students, and other members of the Juilliard community, and does not discriminate on the basis of actual or perceived race, color, religion, creed, age, sex, national origin, alienage, ancestry, citizenship, sexual orientation or preference, gender identity, physical or mental disability, medical condition, predisposing genetic characteristics, marital status, partnership status, or any other basis prohibited by applicable local, state, or federal law. This nondiscrimination policy covers, but is not limited to, recruitment, hiring, training, benefits, rates of pay and other forms of compensation as well as student admission, access, and treatment in school programs and activities.
