Seth Lepore
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.
STATS
$325k +
raised as half of a two-person team, fundraising and daily operations at once
700+
shows, workshops, and events performed, emceed, or facilitated.
Reading rooms of complexity, uncertainty and nuance until novelty and ambiguity became friends
25 Years+
inside cooperative, mission-driven, and self-built organizations. Never a conventional one
Some Brilliant Unknowns I’ve Worked With
Faces of Medicine · Mass Collaborative / Easthampton Co.Lab · Lighthouse Holyoke · School One · Cofab Design · Out CT · El Camino / Boys and Girls Club of Greater Holyoke
You won't recognize most of these names. That's not an accident.
Universities and arts service organizations that hired me to work with students who would go on to create significant change in the world…
Universities
✰ Evergreen College
✰ WSU Pullman
✰ Hampshire College
✰ Southern Illinois University
✰ Naropa University
Art Service Organizations
✰ Springboard for the Arts
✰ Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston
✰ Assets for Artists
✰ Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council
“The answer is always in the room.”
The Throughline
25 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
School One: Fund-a-Scholar Auction
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.
Lighthouse: The Art of Story
Faces of Medicine: Documentary Production and Operations
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.
The Nuts and Bolts of Being a Performing Artist
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.
The same capability, three ways
-
Hold the room
➪ The hard conversation
➯ The transition
➩ The retreat that needs a steady, neutral hand.
-
Make it run
❀ The quiet systems that let a small or cooperative organization function without everyone holding it in their head
-
Raise it
💸 The fundraiser or gala that needs someone who can see the long game and move people and money in the same night.
The Role I’m (Pretty) Perfect For
✰ 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
✰ However, open to project-based work too, when the shape of the need calls for that instead
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.