Jess Solomon, MSOD

I'm a facilitator and organization development practitioner from Baltimore, a city where remnants of redlining, resistance, and radical creativity exist on the same block. That proximity is in my practice.

This era of my work is about integration: bringing together everything I've learned across movements, institutions, artmaking, and facilitation to support leaders and groups navigating complexity with clarity and care. I design spaces where people can think together under real conditions, make decisions without losing the plot, and find their way back to their North Star. I draw on theory, cultural strategy, and hard-won practice to help groups strengthen collective wisdom, build endurance, and make choices that move them closer to the world they're trying to build.

Culture Rules Everything is the studio where all of this lives. It builds on my earlier consultancy, Art in Praxis, and holds client work alongside creative experiments I can't stop thinking about. One of those is Mabley Comedy Club, a community of practice exploring Black feminist comedy as a site of truth-telling, craft, and connection. [Learn more about other projects in the Studio.]

Over the last 15 years I've partnered with funding collaboratives, cultural institutions, municipalities, and movement organizations across the U.S. The work has lived at the intersection of resource mobilization, capacity building, and the the slow, nonlinear work of systems change. My career spans the social impact sector: education, arts administration, youth development, nonprofit leadership, and philanthropy, including senior leadership roles and board service.

My formal foundation is in organization development, communication studies, and Black studies. I also have a growing collection of art by Black women and gender expansive artists, alongside ephemera and rare books by Black feminists. Collecting is another way I practice attention, stewardship, and care.

All of my work is connected by a simple understanding: culture is not secondary to change. It shapes what we can imagine, what we can sustain, and what futures we are able to build together.