Jen Jimenez is a seasoned professional with more than two decades of experience in development and fundraising across a variety of nonprofit organizations. A veteran of three capital campaigns, Jimenez specializes in growing development departments by setting ambitious goals and devising creative pathways to exceed them. Her expertise lies in crafting targeted solicitation strategies and diversifying prospect portfolios through genuine relationship building and innovative digital campaigns. Her frontline fundraising highlights include serving higher education institutions such as Shenandoah University, Muhlenberg College, and The Winston School of Short Hills.
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Susan Kleiner: Hello and welcome to The Think Factory: The Women’s Roundtable where we learn how women think big and grow their business. My name is Susan Kleiner, I’m a partner with Outside General Counsel Solutions and I’m the host of today’s episode. I’m happy to have here with me today Jen Jimenez.
Jen is a seasoned professional with more than two decades of experience and development and fundraising across a variety of nonprofit organizations. Her background includes working at Shenandoah University, Muhlenberg College and the Winston School of Short Hills. She is a classically trained mezzo soprano and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts and musical theater degree from Shenandoah Conservatory of Music. So she’ll be certainly singing for us today! Just kidding.
Her love of performance from a very young age is definitely apparent. She’s graced stage nationwide and acclaimed musical theater productions, including Crazy For You, South Pacific, Jekyll and Hyde, and Guys and Dolls. She’s been in TV and commercials and, you know, in general is very busy so—I’m so happy to have you here with me today!
Jen Jimenez: Thank you, Susan! It’s great to be with you.
Susan Kleiner: So I had never heard of the National Association of Teacher singing before being introduced to you. Can you explain it to the listeners?
Jen Jimenez: Sure. So we call it NATS, we are an international association made up of almost 7,000 members. They are independent voice teachers at universities and colleges, high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools. Something new that we recently have launched is a membership for composers of vocal music. We have various programs throughout the year that serve all different constituencies within our membership.
Susan Kleiner: It sounds really interesting. You have a pretty wide variety of people and it must be great for them to collaborate with each other as well. And I think you told me that about 50% of your membership are independent studio teachers, is that right?
Jen Jimenez: That’s right! It means about 50% of our membership are entrepreneurs, so either they own independent voice studios or larger music schools where they’re the primary voice teacher and have hired other teachers to teach additional disciplines like piano, guitar, violin, etc. So entrepreneurship is very ingrained in what our members do on a daily basis.
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