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Artist INC Management

Artist INC is a collaborative partnership of the Charlotte Street Foundation, the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City, and the UMKC Innovation Center.


David H Hughes, Jr. is the Founder and Director of Charlotte Street Foundation. Prior to devoting full time to CSF, Hughes worked in various marketing and sales positions for American Century Investments for 12 years; he previously had worked in marketing, government affairs and public relation capacities for Hallmark Cards in Kansas City and for Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. (a small private bank) in New York. His interest in the non-profit sector has been long-standing through board service for numerous visual art, theatre and dance organizations, including Kansas City Art Institute. He also has worked for the Hall Family Foundation and as part of the philanthropic decision-making team while at American Century. Hughes is an avid devotee of many local artists and has given most of his walls to their efforts. He grew up in Kansas City, and graduated from Stanford with a BA and Yale with a Masters in Public and Private Management.


Kate Hackman has been deeply engaged in Kansas City’s arts community for 14 years as an arts administrator, curator, writer, editor, teacher, and advocate. She is currently Co-Director of Charlotte Street Foundation, where she has worked for 9 years. Previous positions include Founding Editor of Review magazine; Director of the Art in the Loop Foundation; and Assistant Director, Exit Art, New York.

Diane Scott, as part of a joint venture between the UMKC Innovation Center and the Small Business & Technology Development Center, designs and manages innovative professional development programs for fine artists. Over the past four years, Diane has worked as an integral member of the Artist INC team, a consortium of the Innovation Center, ArtsKC and Charlotte Street Foundation, that provides Kansas City artists with services to master the business end of their art careers. Prior to this Diane was a member of the management faculty at Wichita State University in the Barton School of Business for more than 11 years, winning numerous teaching awards including the 2006 Barton School of Business Undergraduate Teacher of the Year and the 2008 WSU Academy for Effective Teaching award. Diane specializes in creative and fine arts entrepreneurship, management and organizational behavior and has taught thousands of current and future business people in traditional classrooms and professional development settings how to improve their strategic planning, marketing, project planning, teamwork, leadership, coaching and communication skills. Diane holds a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and a Master of Business Administration from WSU.

As well as working as the Artist INC Program Coordinator, Cory Imig is an interdisciplinary artist currently working in Kansas City, Missouri. She received her BFA from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2008 where she studied fibers and sculpture. After graduation Cory attended residencies at Virginia Commonwealth University and The Vermont Studio Center. She has participated in numerous shows in the Kansas City area and surrounding region.  In 2010, Imig and four co-collaborators received a Rocket Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts, administered by the Charlotte Street Foundation and the Spencer Museum of Art in support of PLUG Projects.  PLUG Projects is an artist-run gallery space focused on expanding connections of artists in Kansas City as part of a wider, national network of artists.  Imig has been a participant in both Artist INC Live (Spring 2010) and Artist INC II (Fall 2012). 

Paul Tyler has been working at the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City for over ten years, since moving to Missouri in late 2001. In the fall of 2005 he began work on research and planning for the ArtsKC Fund, the new united arts fund for the Kansas City region that was launched in the spring of 2007. He now serves as Grants Director for the fund. Previous work at the Arts Council focused on research, arts advocacy, economic development and the arts, and arts marketing. He has been Project Director for several NEA grants to the Arts Council.  Other responsibilities include his involvement in bringing Creative Capital’s Professional Development Workshop to Kansas City for a three-year series of weekend retreats with individual artists. Paul has been closely involved with the planning work for Artist INC since the beginning. Tyler served for seven years as Deputy Director of the state arts agency in Virginia, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, where he supervised financial reporting and tracking for an average of $4.5 million in grants disbursed annually. A graduate of the University of Virginia with a BA in English and Drama, Paul has over twenty-five years of experience related to financial management and administration in the arts. His earlier career experience includes work in professional theatre, dance and museum management at non-profit organizations such as Theatre Virginia, the Richmond Ballet, and the Valentine Museum in Richmond.