Seth Lepore
Pulling Rabbits Out of Hats Since 1974
You’re wired differently. Me too.
I am an outside eye for businesses and organizations who have reached a significant turning point. The folks I work with are indispensable agents of change. Those on the fringes doing critically important work in the arts, social good, and conscious entrepreneurial sectors.
I’m an autodidact. I geek out on researching and learning as much as humanly possible. I believe curiosity is the key to limitless cognitive shifts.
I’m all about the a-ha. The light-bulb moments, not the one-hit wonder band.
I’m currently redesigning/ updating/ overhauling this site. In the meantime contact me about all things -
Operations/ Strategy/ Facilitation/ Events/ Talking Through all the Things using the contact form below.
Be well and rest.
Nobody notices Brilliant Unknowns. I make them visible.
For small and mid-size organizations doing work that matters, that means someone who "gets it" right away.
Aligned Events · Operational Systems · Facilitated Retreats
700+ rooms taught me how to embrace uncertainty with no second take. I bring that instinct to work I can point to: money raised, decisions made, communities understood.
Twenty-five years, never a normal org chart
I spent my first career self-producing national tours: booking the rooms, negotiating the contracts, running the marketing, hiring the local techs, closing out the books. Nobody called that operations. It was just what it took to keep the show running.
Later I co-founded a cooperative coworking space from nothing, and started facilitating retreats and strategic planning for organizations that didn't fit a conventional business model either. Then I ran the operations for a documentary, raising over $325,000 as one half of a two-person team, while coordinating screenings with universities and hospitals across the country at the same time.
Every environment I've worked in has been cooperative, mission-driven, or self-built. That's not a gap in my background. It's the qualification. I don't translate my experience into corporate language for organizations like yours, because I already think the way you do.
A former client told me once, "The slower you go, the faster you get there." It's not a contradiction. It's how I actually work. I ask people to slow down and sit with what's actually true before we sprint.
Side note: my last name literally means "hare." I've had to really embrace my inner tortoise.
Selected work
A few of these, in detail
Redesigned the strategy for their most important annual fundraiser with two weeks' notice. Raised over $28,000, a 7% increase and the second-highest result in the event's history. Net profit across the full event rose 3%, the third-highest ever.
Planned and emceed their third annual fundraising event. It more than doubled the previous year's total.
Ran fundraising and day-to-day operations as one half of a two-person team. Raised $325,000+ and coordinated educational screenings with universities, medical schools, and community organizations nationwide.
Built and delivered a business and self-advocacy curriculum for performing artists, since hosted by universities and service organizations across the country. Over 300 artists and arts advocates served.
What that's looked like
The same capability, three ways
The hard conversation, the transition, the retreat that needs a steady, neutral hand.
The quiet systems that let a small or cooperative organization function without everyone holding it in their head.
The fundraiser or gala that needs someone who can see the long game and move people and money in the same night.
What I'm looking for
A role, first and foremost
An event coordination, facilitator, or operations role where I'm the person a hard stretch gets handed to
On staff, day to day, not just brought in for the big moment and gone again
Open to project-based work too, when the shape of the need calls for that instead
Said on the record
"I learned more about creating a sustainable artistic business during Seth's seven-hour workshop than I did during six years of graduate study."
"If [Nuts and Bolts] were mandatory for every BFA and MFA student, it would change the arts landscape in America."
"Multiple people told me [The Art of Story] was the best fundraising event they had ever been to. That's why we raised more than twice as much as we did the previous year."
"We had two weeks to find the perfect host. Seth urged us to adopt a new strategy for the Fund-a-Scholar auction. We raised over $28k, a 7% increase from last year and the second highest performance ever."
"We covered and captured more ground in one retreat with Seth than we had in six years of previous attempts."
Let's talk about what you're holding right now.
Coordination roles, facilitation work, or a season embedded with your team. I'm looking at all three.
Get in touch