The Perfect Combination of Expertise, Process, and Passion

Founded in 2000, The Roan Group counsels organizations and institutions at important junctures in their evolution. Our strategy expertise addresses both a broad array of markets, categories, organizations, and disciplines.

Unlike many consulting firms, our principals are experienced professionals who have worked in executive, senior external affairs, brand-management, and advancement positions. Our hands-on experience ensures that the strategies and campaigns that we craft will work in real-world organizational environments. Our methodology is not only thorough, but it is practical and real-world.

We have accomplished Strategic Review and Planning engagements with organizations like the Earth Share, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the Kimmel Center, the Cultural Development Corporation, Washington, DC, Center for Creative Arts, Florida International Festival - the American home of the London Symphony Orchestra.

Our seminar series on Branding, Creativity, Creating a Learning Organization, and Strategic Revenue Management have been presented by most major performing arts service organizations across North America.

Our work with leading arts and entertainment organizations, festivals, and trade associations throughout North America gives us a unique perspective on challenges and opportunities, particularly considering the new-economy realities. Our approach is solution-oriented, opportunistic, and focused. We bring first-rate partners and vendors to every engagement, affording our clients the benefits of cost advantages and priority service. We make it possible for our client organizations to leverage their human and financial resources.

The Roan Group has consulted with leading arts and cultural organizations – large and small – across all the disciplines throughout North America. We understand the challenges that cultural institutions encounter in highly competitive marketplaces. We are experienced in developing strategies that connect diverse target audiences and the cultural organizations that desire to serve them. We are experienced in the dynamics of cultural tourism and are well versed in the complex issues involved in local and regional community building.

Experts in Strategic Development for Cultural and Heritage Organizations

We currently serve as strategy counsel to clients in state and federal agencies, not-for-profit organizations, and private sector firms throughout North America. With specialties in strategy development, communications, strategic planning, and organizational development, we work in a variety of categories, including the fine and performing arts, environment, publishing, entertainment, charitable foundation, service organization, education, professional services, and architectural sectors.

Roan Group creative products have garnered numerous awards and appeared in leading industry publications, ranging from Communication Arts and Illustration to Graphis and Print.

The Roan Group has earned an industry reputation for boosting the revenues and organizational performance of its clients. The firm’s projects and engagements have led to keynote addresses, speaking appearances, panel presentations, and seminars at major service organization conferences, including the American Symphony Orchestra League, National Arts Marketing Partnership, Association of Performing Arts Presenters, Canadian Arts Presenting Association, Dance USA, Theatre Communications Group, League of Resident Theatres, League of Historic American Theatres, and the National Cultural Tourism Summit (USA).

Neill Archer Roan, Principal

Neill Archer Roan leads The Roan Group, a strategy consulting firm based in Washington, DC. The firm's clientele includes state and federal agencies, not-for-profit organizations, and private sector firms throughout North America. Mr. Roan has consulted in healthcare, the environment, publishing, entertainment, arts, charitable foundation, association management, education, technology, financial services, and architectural sectors.

Mr. Roan held executive and senior management positions at Washington's Arena Stage, the Oregon Bach Festival, the California Center for the Arts, and the Hult Center for the Performing Arts where his responsibilities ranged from programming, producing, public affairs, organizational development, advancement, policy development, facilities development, strategic planning, and administration.

While Mr. Roan worked as a presenter and/or executive, he commissioned and produced works by Arvo Pärt, Osvaldo Golijov, John Adams, Linda Bouchard, Robert Kyr, and others. His thematic approach to classical music programming was described by The Times, London as "a pioneering approach to programming."

Mr. Roan is a gold- and silver-medal-winning art director and creative director whose national and international awards for marketing, branding, communications, and fundraising number in the hundreds. He is a published poet, author, lecturer, keynote speaker, and former educator who has lectured or taught at Harvard University, Yale University, the University of Oregon, the University of Nebraska, the University of Rhode Island, American University, and others.

Mr. Roan’s book, Scale + Timbre, an architecture book about the Canadian architect, Bing Thom, and the development of Vancouver’s Chan Centre for the Performing Arts was released in November 2002 by British publisher Black Dog Press.

Mr. Roan served as a Director and Treasurer of the American Arts Alliance. He is a former 2 two-term President of Oregon Ad-vocates for the Arts and a former Director of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters and the Western Arts Alliance. In 1993, he chaired the National Endowment for the Arts' Presenting and Commissioning Large Institution’s panel, and has also served as a panelist in the Arts Education and Music Recording pro-grams of the NEA.

Mr. Roan’s artistic vision was shaped by a fifteen-year career as a professional, interna-tionally known performing artist with per-formances in Europe, South America, and Canada. He was described as an “excellent master of his craft” by John Rockwell of The New York Times after his final Carnegie Hall appearance in March 1986.

Wendy W. Roan, Principal

Wendy Roan has worked in both the private and non profit sectors in marketing, sales, customer service and fundraising. As Principal, she is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the firm as well as heading consulting engagements. She is responsible for developing market assessment segmentation studies, developing financial and fundraising models, and brand and strategic marketing and planning consulting. Wendy is also a co-presenter in seminars offered by The Roan Group.

Ms. Roan brings development and organizational development experience from both the non\ profit and corporate worlds. She was responsible for cultivation and stewardship of national corporate relationships as well as managed and strengthened relationships with charity members at the national office of Community Health Charities.

For 16 years prior, Ms. Roan launched new product lines nationally, developed and managed client relationships, opened new market channels, created and implemented strategic plans, and was responsible for growing business in all lines of the insurance industry at CIGNA, Proctor Homer Warren (PHW), and Horizon Financial Corporation.

In her last position at CIGNA before entering consulting, she developed new national distribution channels, target markets, and marketing and sales strategies, growing revenues by 65 percent to $11 million over a five-year period. She was also responsible for effective program delivery to clients. Wendy Roan earned a Marketing (MBA) and Business, Finance, and Economics (BS). She is also a RIVA-trained focus group moderator.

L. Peter Feldman, Associate Principal

L. Peter Feldman was formerly Executive Director of the Canadian Arts Presenting Association (CAPACOA), Canada's largest service association devoted to the touring component of the performing arts industry, for 22 years. He has been involved professionally in the performing arts since 1969, when, at the age of 19, he worked his first of three summer seasons at the Williamstown Theatre in his native Massachusetts, while completing a political science degree at the University of Rochester. He moved to Canada after graduation to take a production position with the Opera School at the University of Toronto.

Peter has experience as an actor, designer, stage manager and technician, which prepared him for the position of Founding Artistic Director of Stage West in Edmonton, Alberta, the first in an eventual chain of successful dinner theatres across Canada. He returned to acting for a short time before becoming a presenter in 1979. While a presenter, he was honored by the Government of the Province of Alberta as an innovator in the arts. He also served a three-year term as Alberta representative on the Advisory Board to the Canada Council Touring Office. In 2007 he received the British Columbia Touring Council's Performing Arts Award of Excellence in recognition of his 22 years of service to the Canadian touring and presenting industry.

Mr. Feldman was in his position with CAPACOA since the association's inception in 1985. He has been in demand as a speaker: as a keynote speaker for Contact East and Alberta Showcase; for a federal government-sponsored conference in Montréal on culture and technology; at the 1990 conference of the Australasian Performing Arts Centres Association and as a workshop moderator and leader for organizations including the Association of Cultural Executives and the governments of Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario.

Peter has served on the International Advisory Committee for the Esther Honens Piano Competition and the Board of Directors of the Association of Cultural Executives and was an original director of the Cultural Human Resources Council. Mr. Feldman and his wife Barbara (a former theatre manager and presenter herself) reside in Ottawa.