It doesn't have to be so hard.
And I'm saying that from the middle of it.
Hi, I’m Leah
I built an arts organization and a creative business with zero experience. The debt, the burnout, hiring my friends and losing them, the moments where I couldn't tell where the work ended and I began. Over time, I discovered the hard parts weren't the problem. They were the path.
I'm absolutely not someone who figured it all out. I'm still in the middle of learning and growing with the things I’m building. I'm just someone who stopped fighting the unfolding and learned how to help other people do the same.
.
I didn’t plan any of this.
At 24 I got on a plane with a one-way ticket to Kenya. No plan, just an artist chasing a creative call she couldn't quite explain yet. That unfolded into a photography campaign documenting global dementia, to founding DAC an artist workforce nonprofit, and growing a murals business on the side because I genuinely had no idea how to make it all work.
At some point, all of it failed. The photo projects didn't work out, I almost lost DAC in 2023 because I didn't understand cash flow, and I had to retire from murals. Through it all I've just been an artist figuring it out the hard way, while having the most extraordinary life.
I don't have a success story. I have a purpose story. A success story has a destination. A purpose story just keeps unfolding, messier and more beautiful than you planned, taking you places you never would have chosen for yourself.
It took me a long time to surrender to that. Purpose isn't something you find. It's something you keep saying yes to, even when you can't see where it leads.
Sometimes that means climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.
Purpose in Progress
It's not a motivational talk, an icebreaker, or a warmup act for the keynote. Purpose in Progress is a full experiential room for leaders, founders, and anyone tired of talking about purpose and ready to actually feel it.
Here's what happens: you pick a paint color, close your eyes, and I guide you through tying your purpose to that color. Then the music starts and you paint, keeping your color the whole time, moving around a massive communal canvas every 20 seconds.
At the end the painting gets lifted up for the whole room to see. Every color matters, even the ones we don't like. Every mark is part of something no one person could have made alone.
That's not a metaphor, it’s your purpose unfolded right in front of you.
This experience lives in retreats, leadership gatherings, and any room brave enough to stop performing and start feeling.
Developing Artist Collaboration (DAC)
The proof that this work is real.
A decade ago I started an arts organization from scratch with no roadmap and no business training. DAC has served over a thousand creatives, generated more than $2.1 million in artist sales, built hundreds of public art events from scratch, and developed Emerge our flagship creative business development program, inspired by my own journey figuring out how to build a creative business (and yes, we light stuff on fire).
I built it. I almost lost it. I rebuilt it. And I am working to ensure it outlasts me by learning the art of hiring leaders.
That decade is where everything I now bring into a room came from.
Explore My Creations
The proof that I make cool art.
Since 2011, I've been making art that lives in the world like murals on restaurant walls, children's hospitals, music festivals, tourist destinations, and beyond.
Most of the time, I painted to survive (or pay my taxes!) I squeezed creative projects into the margins of a very full-time job and called it a career.
These days, I can take on very few mural projects because DAC & Purpose in Progress are my main creative outlets.
I love taking on projects and commissions, mostly animals, in my signature style.