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P A T R O N S A L U T E | L Y R I C O P E R A O F C H I C A G O
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December 7, 2015 - January 17, 2016
Few nonprofit organizations can boast long-
standing corporate partnerships spanning four
decades. Let’s face it; lucky is the nonprofit
organization that exists for more than four
decades. Though it has taken many forms over
the years, Booz Allen Hamilton’s commitment
to Lyric Opera has held strong since Charles F.
Allison III joined Lyric’s Board of Directors in
1980. At a time when Lyric had succeeded at
establishing itself as an international presence,
but was struggling financially, stacking the
Board with keen business minds was essential
to Lyric’s future success.
Chuck Allison lent his business acumen
and company resources to Lyric for thirteen
years. When he retired from the firm, up came
Paul F. Anderson, a guy who didn’t know
much about opera, but knew that Lyric was
an important piece of Chicago’s cultural pie.
“Lyric Opera is part of the package of cultural
assets that Chicago has to offer. There are few
cities in the world that are home to as large
and as diverse a collection of first class cultural
resources as Chicago.”
Lyric quickly realized what an important
corporate partner it had found. Over the years,
Paul Anderson was asked to lead a series of
comprehensive assessments of Lyric’s compen-
sation and benefits structure, a process which
the firm has repeated three or four times since.
Booz Allen provided hundreds of hours of
their staff’s time to evaluate this particular area
of Lyric’s business practices, a task Lyric could
not have accomplished on its own. Because
of the need for increased governance in this
area, a Board committee was formed, which
Anderson chaired for many years.
When Anderson retired from Booz Allen
over ten years ago, no apparent heir to the
company’s seat on the Lyric Board was avail-
able so he continued to represent the firm on
the Board. “Then one day a couple of years
ago,” Anderson says, “one of our younger
partners, Vinay Couto, raised his hand and
said, ‘I am a huge opera fan, and I would
love to join Lyric’s Board.’ So I arranged an
introductory meeting for Vinay with Lyric’s
leadership. I remember watching Vinay and
Anthony [Freud] hit it off, sharing stories
about growing up in Great Britain. I could tell
it was a great fit.”
Couto joined the Board of Directors in
2012, and hit the ground running. As a leader
of the Strategic Planning Task Force, he was
instrumental in crafting and presenting a
comprehensive plan for Lyric’s future, which
was unanimously approved by the Board in
December 2012. The strategic plan, entitled
Breaking New Ground
, outlined Lyric’s current
mission to be the great North American opera
company, and its vision of artistic excellence,
relevance, and fiscal responsibility.
Several initiatives were established as part
of the strategic plan. Lyric Unlimited, which
embarks on its third full season of expanded
community engagement and education pro-
gramming this year, has already added five new
commissions and more than forty partner-
ships with local institutions to its repertoire.
An Innovation Committee was formed to
explore and test the latest technological trends,
and to drastically reenergize Lyric’s website.
The
Breaking New Ground
Campaign was
launched to build Lyric’s endowment; replen-
ish its working capital reserve; and invest in
much-needed modernization of stage, lighting
and rigging equipment. All of these have been
made possible in part by the important effort
of Couto and his fellow Board members.
As Lyric rapidly expanded its activity in
line with the new strategic vision, it was clear
that efforts were required to make day-to-day
operations more efficient. Again, Lyric turned
to Booz & Company (now called Strategy&)
and its parent company PwC, represented
on the Lyric Board by John Oleniczak. Paul
Carbone, Treasurer of the Board, approached
Paul Anderson requesting resources from the
firm, and yet again, the firm came through in
a major way.
Beginning in May 2015, Lyric under-
took a comprehensive operational assessment,
hoping to identify more effective approaches
for balancing the three dimensions of cost,
ticket sales and contributions essential to real-
izing Lyric’s aspiration to be the great North
American opera company. Instrumental to the
process was a team of four consultants from
Strategy& who took up residence at Lyric for
three months, diving deep into its cost struc-
ture, revenue generation and operating model.
The resulting cost and revenue models enable
Lyric to more quickly and accurately anticipate
and manage future production expenses and
revenue flows to ensure financial viability.
In addition, the Strategy& team has helped
Lyric make important changes to its operating
model, i.e. how Lyric actually manages itself.
The combination of these outcomes should
help ensure that Lyric’s financial and manage-
ment practices are as consistent with the goal
of being the leading North American opera
company as is the quality of the productions
that Lyric delivers each year.
When asked why the firm continues to
invest in Lyric Opera, Paul Anderson believes,
“They want to be associated with world-class
organizations. Lyric easily clears that hurdle.
They are also interested in attracting the best
and the brightest in the field, which requires
offering team members more than just an
exciting work environment. The ability to offer
them an opportunity to associate with other
world class organizations is real value-added.”
John Oleniczak agrees, adding that “PwC,
Strategy&, and Lyric all stand for commit-
ment to quality and we are all proud of the
work we are doing together.”
—
Meaghan Stainback
Current Board of Directors members (left to right) Paul Anderson, Vinay Couto, and John Oleniczak
The Gift of Expertise