“One-hundred percent worth it”: The Loft Cinema’s David Correa on the value of the Executive Leadership Certificate
For more than 20 years, The Loft Cinema has served the Tucson community as an independent, nonprofit movie theater. Under the mission statement “building community by celebrating the art and diversity of film,” the theater takes aim at the inaccessibility of film in a time of rising costs and other barriers in the medium for both movie creators and moviegoers.
Across three screens and a collective of more than 500 seats, The Loft Cinema shows everything from big-budget releases to independent films. The organization also maintains dedicated annual community events, collaborations with nonprofit partners and frequent low-cost screenings for supporters.
As The Loft Cinema expands to better serve its community, the organization’s Deputy Director David Correa turned to the Executive Leadership Certificate.
The Nonprofit Executive Leadership Certificate is a program from the ASU Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation’s Nonprofit Management Institute, with national and global reach. The 6-month online program aims to educate, empower and connect nonprofit leaders through a combination of peer-to-peer learning and virtual courses taught by subject experts.
Divided between coursework, group discussions and projects for each class, the Executive Leadership Certificate is largely participant-led. With the ability to base each project and discussion on their personal experience, nonprofit leaders can directly tailor the program to their own and their organization’s unique needs and interests.
The end result is a program designed to adapt to the current circumstances of nonprofit leaders in an ever-evolving landscape, providing participants with not only an up-to-date collection of tools and knowledge taught by industry professionals but also the opportunity to collaborate with peers facing similar challenges.
For Correa, this was most true in the course “Social Entrepreneurship, Innovation and New Business Models,” which he says was an interesting contrast from The Loft Cinema’s current approach.
“I think that because we’re a movie theater, I often think of people coming to us, and our product sort of necessitates that,” Correa said. “But, I felt newly inspired for different ways in which we could reach outward and try to make strong bridges in the community.”
However, Correa says the biggest benefit was not found in the coursework, but in the connections he formed with his fellow cohort members and instructors.
Each program year of the Executive Leadership Certificate includes a maximum of 30 participants, each senior-level professionals in their respective organizations. The cohort-based structure of the program encourages knowledge-sharing and collaboration among its participants, leading to connections that often long outlast the brief program period.
“I tend to be a solitary person by nature,” Correa said. “One of the things I’ve been missing has been peer-to-peer contact and the support and wisdom that comes from having connectivity to other people that are doing a similar job.”
But Correa’s experience was not without its challenges.
This year’s Executive Leadership Certificate coincided with The Loft Cinema’s ongoing construction project, which aims to add two additional screening areas to the theater — a move that Correa says will give the organization more capacity to show the tentpole films that fund the cinema’s community events and independent film screenings.
According to Correa, the overlap created difficulty in managing his time between work in the certificate program and the ongoing project. However, Correa made multiple adjustments to overcome the time constraint. By working ahead in the online coursework and collaborating with instructors to make accommodations, he was able to get as much as possible out of his time in the program.
“I realized how understanding and accommodating each instructor was and also how I wasn’t alone in having that work intensity,” Correa said.
Now, Correa is looking forward to using his knowledge from the Executive Leadership Certificate as the organization’s newly promoted Deputy Director. This includes a new confidence in The Loft Cinema’s work as a nonprofit in the arts and entertainment space, even when compared to more traditional nonprofit industries like social services and advocacy.
“I had moments where I felt like I should sit and be silent and somebody else should have the talking stick because the work they’re doing is so important,” said Correa. “I learned over the last five months that comparison is really unfair because these are all things that make a difference in their own way.”
Going forward, Correa encourages any nonprofit leader or aspiring leader to get involved in the Executive Leadership Certificate.
“You couldn’t possibly go through this course and not have the benefits outweigh the cost and time,” Correa said. “It was one-hundred percent worth it.”
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