Paul Sznewajs

Executive Director, Ingenuity

 

Paul joined Ingenuity from Snow City Arts in Chicago, an award-winning arts organization serving pediatric patients he founded in 1998. At Ingenuity, he maintains all organizational oversight including staffing, program development, planning and finances, board relations and fundraising. Paul has forged working partnerships and alliances with numerous city departments, the school district, and almost every major cultural institution in Chicago. As a chief fundraiser, nonprofit strategist, creative director, and arts advocate, he has been honored by the White House and is a leader in Chicago’s arts and culture sector. Paul holds a BA from Marquette University and an MFA from Old Dominion University.

creative schools chicago

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

 

Schedule:

Continental Breakfast and Networking: 8:00 a.m. – 8:30 a.m.
Program:   8:30 a.m. – 9:30 a.m.

 Speaker:

Paul Sznewajs, Executive Director, Ingenuity

Without doubt, having access to art in school opens doors to new ways of learning, improves academic performance, encourages students to stay in school, increases graduation rates, and creates future generations of innovators and cultural consumers. Yet nationally there has been a disproportionate removal of arts from urban school systems for years.

Paul Sznewajs is Executive Director of Ingenuity, Chicago’s leading arts education advocacy agency.  With the advent of the citywide 2012 Chicago Cultural Plan under Mayor Emanuel and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events—along with the first CPS Arts Education Plan—Chicago has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create change on a scale that matters for some 400,000 CPS students. 

Join us for a discussion of how Ingenuity’s work to harness together city and District leadership, national cultural luminaries, hundreds of cultural institutions and arts organizations, higher education leaders, Chicago’s philanthropic community, CPS leadership, principals and certified teachers, as well as parents and students—plus new high-impact data collection—resulted in real collective impact to reinstate arts education in every Chicago public school. 

Today, the now nationally-recognized Creative Schools Initiative and the recently announced $38MM Be Creative Campaign are fueling arts growth in Chicago Public Schools.  For this work Ingenuity was a recipient of the 2013 Chicago Innovation Awards. Mr. Sznewajs was honored with Boeing Company’s 2013 Game Changer Award, given to the 5 leaders in Chicago each year who have created the greatest change in their industry.

Location:

Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas
Aon Building
22nd Floor200 East Randolph Street
Chicago, IL 60601