Every year, the Flying Leap team steps away from the daily work of making theater to do something harder: think about why we make it, and where we want to go next. This year's retreat brought together our staff and board members for the first time as a 501c3 nonprofit, and what emerged was a weekend we've been carrying with us since.
We asked everyone on the team the same three questions:
What did you take away from the retreat?
What was a moment of care you experienced?
What are you most excited to work on next?
Here's what the team shared.
What We Took Away
Every retreat has its own descriptors. This one felt expansive, grounding, and electric.
Logan gabrielle Schulman was reminded about how unique this company is. "Flying Leap cares so much about our artists and audiences. It's unlike any place I've ever worked."
For Susanna Brock, one of the most energizing moments came during the dreaming sessions: post-it notes on the wall, no idea too big. "During the year we're just in the trenches working on tasks and specific projects, and it's hard to zoom out and think about the big dreams," she reflected. "I always love seeing what dreams come back year to year, and when there are new ideas or projects that come up."
Eve Epstein left with a clearer picture of what board membership at Flying Leap can look like. "Fundraising should be focused on ambassadorship," she said. "We are all connected to the mission. By sharing our enthusiasm, we can direct donors and participants to Jess."
Jess Kaufman was left feeling the weight of the work get lighter. "Now that we have this board, we've gone from a tiny, mighty team of three to something bigger. There are five of us doing admin work for the organization, and we have these three board members, and extra help from Amy Fiore at Nonprofit Help Desk. It was really exciting to dream big in a space where that feels less intimidating, because there are so many brains in the room helping figure out how we get to the next thing."
Carla Zanoni left with a sharper strategic lens. The biggest shift for her: separating the organization-wide pitch from the project-level pitch, and treating them as parallel workstreams rather than nested ones. "We're really good at talking about the projects. The Garden and Beyond the Wall have clear theories of change, clear audiences, clear impact. What we haven't cracked is how to pitch Flying Leap itself." Naming that gap and getting excited to bridge it was the clearest strategic shift to come out of their time together.
Amanda Zamora left inspired and clear-eyed about the challenges ahead. Jess has built, in partnership with the community and her team, an extraordinary model for interactive theater that goes to people and meets them where they are. But the headwinds are real: a culture that rewards scale, speed, and prestige over the kind of slow, care-first work Flying Leap does. "The good news is we have the people and expertise to chart a strategic path forward that is both values-aligned and sustainable in terms of revenue, and the physical and mental resources that Flying Leap's care-first, community-first approach requires."
Moments of Care
Care isn't just a word in our mission statement. It's how we show up for each other, especially when no one's looking. We asked the team to name a specific moment from the retreat that embodied that.
Logan’s moment came in the form of a blizzard and a stuck car. "Jess literally drove out to me in a blizzard to help me push my car uphill through snow and ice. After pushing it a quarter mile up the hill, she called a local tow company, and that's after I had just whooped her in a 6-hour long board game. What a sport!"
Susanna said that care showed up at the table, literally. "We always have such great food. There's always great thought going into the meals, the snacks, and we often get to go out to a restaurant together. All of us are really interested in food, and I think it's really fulfilling to try new things and to experience flavors and textures and talk about them."
It sounds simple. But choosing food with care, making sure people feel nourished and delighted, is its own kind of love language, and it's one Flying Leap speaks fluently.
Eve, who was away from her son for one of her first extended trips, experienced care through being given the space to stay connected. "There was space and time given to call him."
Sometimes care is as simple as that: permission to be a whole person.
Jess’ moment came right at the start. Running her first-ever board meeting, she was nervous, wondering if she'd prepared enough. "These three beautiful, powerful, super smart women walked in the door and immediately started putting out charcuterie and making their own coffee. We got to know each other over cheese and delicious treats, and it just made me feel like, oh, the responsibility is on me to set the tone, but actually everyone is already in the tone together. We all really showed up in a loving, caring way. It made me feel like, yes, we found the right people."
For Carla, care showed up in a moment of collective restraint. Someone raised the logo as needing work, and rather than letting it become a branding rabbit hole, the group named it as "sand, not a rock" and moved on. "Care showed up as permission to say 'that matters, and not right now.' This translated into willingness to offer the feedback, openness to receiving it, and the collective discipline to protect each other's capacity by not chasing every shiny thing."
Amanda found her moment in a pivot. When the group needed to cut workshop time to beat the blizzard home, Jess made the call quickly and warmly, and what followed was a beautiful dinner. Sometimes care looks like knowing when to let go of the plan.
What We're Diving Into Next
This retreat helped us build the runway for what's next. Here's what everyone is launching into:
Logan: "The Garden tour is my biggest project at Flying Leap right now, and I am absolutely stoked to continue confirming venues and partners."
Susanna is deep in design work for The Garden, collaborating with Queens Lighting Collective's Masha Tsimring and Krit Robinson as the world of the show takes on new dimensions. "It's been very exciting to see the Garden world really coming to life and expanding with these new artists we've brought on. And we're about to hire a costume designer, which is very exciting, to really make the world of The Garden more complete and holistic."
Eve Epstein is focused on the long game. "I'm excited to work more on diversified sources of revenue so that Flying Leap becomes sustainable. There is so much opportunity for the organization to grow. This next phase entails clarifying Flying Leap's vision and building an organization that can financially support its staff."
Jess Kaufman is thinking about reach, relationships, and infrastructure. "We spent a lot of time talking about ways to put our work in front of more families and more people who might be interested in what we do. I feel like we're on the cusp of getting to know a lot more people who are excited to get on board with our particular brand of care-driven, queer, loving theater." She's also excited about what's newly possible as a 501(c)(3): "One of the things we talked about is getting a CRM and getting our donation platform up and going. I feel like I know how I can work with everybody to find and say yes to those opportunities, which is really exciting."
Carla Zanoni is focused on audience development as ambassadorship, starting with the person-to-person pipeline that Amy Fiore walked the group through. The gap she wants to close: the in-person experience of Flying Leap is magic, and that magic too often doesn't make it into the rooms where people make decisions about time, attention, or money. Concretely, she's working on building her own ambassador muscle, identifying people in her network who should meet Jess, and thinking about how her professional communities could become a warmer feeder than a cold outreach blast.
Amanda Zamora wants to go deeper with the people who know Flying Leap best. She's excited to conduct stakeholder interviews with community members and families who have experienced Flying Leap's work firsthand, learning what they value most and how invested they are in the organization's future. That knowledge, she believes, is one of the most useful things the board can bring to the work ahead.
What Makes This Team Special
Reading back through everyone's answers, a few things stand out. Care keeps showing up in unexpected places: in a blizzard, over charcuterie, in a phone call home, in a plate of snacks nobody was asked to bring. That's not an accident. It's who we are.
We came to this retreat with big dreams and left with a clearer sense of how to reach them together. We can't wait to show you what comes next.