Special note: Jen Benoit-Bryan is serving as a Senior Advisor at Slover Linett during April and May, 2023 while transitioning to a new role at SMU DataArts. Please see the announcements here and here.

Jen oversaw a broad portfolio of research and evaluation engagements over her nine years at Slover Linett, using the tools of research and evaluation to help cultural organizations and funders meet their community, audience, and equity goals. From study design to meaning-making and strategic recommendations, she helped situate each project in the wider context of innovations in the field and trends in cultural participation.

An expert in statistical social research and the firm, Jen consulted internally and externally on research design, spearheads our use of new tools and advanced techniques, and develops team trainings. Since coming to Slover Linett in 2014, she worked on wide-ranging, often multi-year projects with the National Academy of Sciences, The High Line, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Detroit Institute of Arts, Carnegie Hall, Washington National Opera, Ballet Austin, Dallas Zoo, and New York Botanical Garden, among many other arts, culture, and informal learning organizations.

During the first two years of the pandemic, Jen served as the Principal Investigator for the multi-wave Culture + Community in a Time of Transformation study, conducted in partnership with LaPlaca Cohen and Yancey Consulting as part of LaPlaca’s Culture Track sequence. The 2020 and 2021 collaboration was one of the largest studies of cultural participation conducted in the United States, with more than 200,000 respondents and more than a thousand cultural organizations participating across the two waves of research. The Culture & community study explored the shifting role of arts and culture in people’s lives through the pandemic, the growing desire for changes towards equity in arts and culture organizations, and the ways that digital arts engagement have broadened and diversified participation. Culture + Community has been generously funded by the Wallace Foundation, Barr Foundation, William Penn Foundation, Art Bridges, IMLS, and the Terra Foundation.

Jen has been an invited speaker to a wide range of cultural convenings, including Grantmakers in the Arts, the American Alliance of Museums, the League of American Orchestras, the Association of Art Museum Directors, Opera America, the International Society for the Performing Arts, the Association of Science & Technology Centers, the California Association of Museums, the Building Museums Conference, the High Line Network, the Joint Statistical Meeting of the American Statistical Association, and the Visitor Studies Association. She has published her research on Culture + Community with the Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy and the Joint Statistical Meetings Proceedings.

Jen earned her M.P.A. from the University of Missouri, Columbia and her Ph.D. in public administration at the University of Illinois at Chicago, focusing on public policy and survey methodology. At UIC, she taught courses on both of those subjects as well as on urban government and the role of nonprofits in U.S. society. Jen is an ocean-hopping scuba diver, a modern quilter, and the pet-parent of Tycho the pup.