Lauren Slone is an internationally recognized arts leader, producer, and dancer with nearly two decades of cross-sectoral experience and subject matter expertise in programmatic design, systems change management, and grantmaking in arts philanthropy. She is the Founder & Principal of Slone Arts Advisory, a national consulting firm that supports artists and organizations in strategic program development, systems implementation, and capacity growth. She is also a co-Founder/co-Producer of BEACON performance series, an adjunct dance instructor at Hillsborough College, and a 2026 Palladium Creative Fellowship recipient. Lauren is committed to building the infrastructural conditions necessary to support creative potential at scale. 

Most recently, she served as Vice President, Artistic Programs for YoungArts, responsible for delivering strategic, financial, and operational oversight of programming. Between 2013-2023, she was MAP Fund's Director of Grants and Research, overseeing the distribution of funds to 590 multidisciplinary performance projects created by thousands of artists across the United States. She served on the core program team that operationalized Artist Relief, co-organized NYGIA working groups to improve labor conditions for artists, participated as a Mosaic Network and Fund cohort member, and was appointed to serve as Grantmakers in the Arts Support for Individual Artist Committee co-Chair between 2021-2024. To date, she has overseen the distribution of more than $55M dollars in direct support to artists.

She has lectured at American University, Brown University, CalArts, Carnegie Mellon University, Hillsborough College, Parsons’ School of Fashion/Design Sustainability, Sarah Lawrence College, The Ohio State University, among others. Her research has been published and presented through DanceNYC, PEAK Grantmaking, National Assembly of State Arts Agencies’ Leadership Institute, Gibney Dance, and Americans for the Arts.

She earned an MFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from Florida State University School of Dance where she was the first Mellon Foundation Arts Administration Fellow at Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC) and a Ballet Pedagogy Fellow. She has performed in works by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Dan Wagoner, and Loren Davidson, among others. She’s received creative residencies for her work through PS122, the Lillian E. Smith Center, MANCC as Embedded Writer-in-Residence, and Jacobs Pillow Lab with choreographer Joanna Kotze. Her performance work has been presented at Wassaic Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, and Wexner Center for the Arts, and The Palladium Theater at St. Petersburg College, among others.