Henry Timms
Henry Timms is President and CEO of Lincoln Center – the world’s leading performing arts center, encompassing the Metropolitan Opera, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Juilliard, Film at Lincoln Center, New York City Ballet, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center Theater, the School of American Ballet, and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Under his leadership, Lincoln Center has been credited with a significant transformation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he created an entire outdoor performing arts center, with ten stages and performance spaces. This allowed over 70 NYC organizations to perform and rehearse safely. In all, over 300,000 people attended events during these challenging months. He has also significantly expanded the civic service of the organization. For example, he created crowd-sourced memorial concerts – featuring artists like Yo-Yo Ma – to allow people to recognize those they lost when regular funerals were not possible. He also turned Lincoln Center into a food bank, a blood drive, and a polling station: all efforts to serve the city during the pandemic.
In the face of the crisis, he also has led the acceleration – by two years – and completed the fundraising for the $550M David Geffen Hall project, to create one of the world’s greatest performance spaces. By building through the pandemic forces, the project created over 6,000 jobs, and over half-a billion dollars of economic activity. Of particular note, 40% of contracts for the project were with minority and women-led business enterprises, and over 50% of the workforce are from diverse backgrounds. A signature of his tenure has been a commitment to diversity and inclusion. His executive team, senior staff and board of directors now benefit significantly from greater representation of diverse leadership, and he has transformed programming to feature a much wider showcase of artists from different backgrounds and perspectives. As the New York Times has noted “Lincoln Center is one of the few arts organizations to show substantial progress in bringing more diversity to its upper ranks”.
He is the creator and co-founder of “Giving Tuesday”, a global philanthropic movement that engages people in close to 100 countries. Designed as a counterpoint to Black Friday, it has generated over $7 Billion for good causes in the US alone. By some estimates it is the largest and most diverse philanthropic movement in history. President Obama commented “The response to Giving Tuesday demonstrates the enormous potential we have to leave an enduring mark, not only in our communities but around the world”. The recent special Spring 2020 edition – supporting COVID-19 causes – catalyzed over $500M online.
Henry is the co-author of the international bestselling book New Power, which was named a Book of the Year by Bloomberg, Fortune, FT and CNBC. It was short-listed for the FT/McKinsey Book of the Year.
Previously he was the President and CEO of 92NY, a leading NYC cultural and community center. Under his leadership, the 144-year-old institution was named to Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Companies” list.
He is a Hauser Leader at Harvard Kennedy School, a Senior Fellow at both Stanford University and the United Nations Foundation, a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the co-chair of the Belfer Center for Innovation and Social Impact at 92NY.