Lauren Agosta is an independent cultural manager, facilitator, performer and artist, dedicated to supporting socially engaged art and creating dynamic spaces for collaboration and global exchange. She is an expert facilitator trained in a range of techniques and methods that promote inclusive and collaborative exchanges, discussions, and decision-making processes with creativity and people-centered approaches. Lauren has led large-scale international collaborations including the Regional Creative Hubs, an initiative bringing together artists, activists, and journalists in West Africa and the Western Balkans to challenge corruption through creative activism.

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Lauren was the Senior Culture and Collaborations Lead for Culture and Art at the Open Society Foundations (OSF). Through her work with the Arts Exchange and later the Culture and Art program at OSF, she has supported numerous artists, cultural producers, and arts and culture organizations working towards more open, just, and inclusive societies around the world. She organized the Arts Forum: Art, Public Space, and Closing Societies and helped to design and launch the Soros Arts Fellowship.

 

Lauren is an alumnus of the Cultural Diplomacy Platform’s 2018 Global Cultural Leadership Programme, run by the EU’s Cultural Relations Platform to strengthen cultural leadership skills and foster international cultural cooperation. She is a current board member for the Alliance of Leadership Fellows, a nonprofit organization focused on helping leaders working for equitable and sustainable human flourishing to become more effective leaders individually and in collaboration with one another.

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Additionally, Lauren is an accomplished opera singer. Praised for her commanding stage presence and artistry, she has performed in Opera Academy of California’s Summer Festival, in the Maazels’ Castleton Festival, and with San Francisco’s leading contemporary chamber opera company, Opera Parallèle. She is currently writing her first opera, a family drama based on the life and death of her mother.

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