Wharton Arts Names Nancy Tagle New Director Of Development

Wharton Arts has appointed Nancy Tagle as its new Director of Development, effective September 16, 2024.

“I'm thrilled to welcome Nancy Tagle as our new Director of Development,” said Wharton Arts Executive Director Gina Caruso. “With 15 years of senior development experience, Nancy brings a wealth of expertise and has a proven track record for successful fundraising. I look forward to working with her on the exciting opportunities ahead!”

Tagle is an experienced Development professional with over 15 years of achieving results in nonprofit fundraising, strategic planning, and nonprofit administration. She most recently served as the Director of Development for more than five years at Summit Speech School, New Jersey's leading Listening and Spoken Language program for children with hearing loss. She brought success to the program by securing major gifts from individuals, developing a robust grant program, cultivating donor relationships, envisioning donor cultivation events, and conducting an endowment and capital campaign. During this time, she secured the largest gift in the school's history.

Previous experience includes Development positions at Brooklyn Children's Museum and South Street Seaport Museum, where she administered grant programs and managed special events of all varieties. She also worked for the Office of the Provost at Boston University where she completed a Master of Science degree in Arts Administration. Her undergraduate degree was earned at the College of the Holy Cross in Art History. She remains passionate about the arts and believes access to music education, theater arts, and the visual arts should be enjoyed by all children. Tagle lives in Chatham, NJ with her family. She is a proud mom to two daughters and loves taking in musical theater, plays, and volleyball with them.

Joining Tagle on the Wharton Arts Development team is Development Associate Tyler Selvig, a young professional completing his doctoral work in Oboe Performance at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. Selvig has studied at the Eastman School of Music, Crane School of Music, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and credits school and freelance work with occasions to connect with donors by way of administrative and volunteer opportunities. He has helped run several successful fundraising events with Relay for Life: American Cancer Society and the College Light Opera Company.

Said Caruso, “We're excited to welcome Tyler Selvig as our new Development Associate. He brings valuable experience from his work with Relay for Life and the College Light Opera Company, and he's also a gifted musician. His passion for both music and philanthropy will be a great asset to our team.”

Selvig is a Chicago native who made his way to the east coast for school and is now happily a New Jersey transplant. Growing up in the Midwest, he enjoyed performing in the city and composing for local orchestras at a young age. Selvig has performed with several regional orchestras and chamber groups across the country, including the Lafayette Symphony Orchestra, Heartland Festival Orchestra, and Chicagoland Pops Orchestra, and he recently competed in the Fischoff National Chamber Competition. Some artists he has been lucky to collaborate with include Jodi Benson, Béla Fleck, and Min Kwon. After starting his Wharton Arts journey as a Student Services Associate at the Performing Arts School in February 2024, Selvig is thrilled to now begin working with the Development team. He has a passion for connecting with others through art, storytelling, and the beauty of music and enjoys composing music, reading, cooking, painting, and laughing with loved ones when time allows.

Wharton Arts' mission is to offer accessible, high quality performing arts education that sparks personal growth and builds inclusive communities.
Wharton Arts' vision is for a transformative performing arts education in an inclusive community to be accessible for everyone.

Wharton Arts is New Jersey's largest independent non-profit community performing arts education center serving nearly 2,000 students through a range of classes and ensembles. The 5 ensembles of the New Jersey Youth Chorus, an auditioned choral ensemble program for students in grades 3–12, encourage a love and appreciation of choral music while nurturing personal growth and creative development. The 15 ensembles of the New Jersey Youth Symphony, which serve nearly 600 students in grades 3–12 by audition, inspire young people to achieve musical excellence through high-level ensemble training and performance opportunities. Based in Paterson, the Paterson Music Project is an El Sistema-inspired program of Wharton Arts that uses music education as a vehicle for social action by empowering and inspiring young people to achieve their full potential through the community experience of ensemble learning and playing. From Pathways classes for young children to Lifelong Learning programs for adults, the Wharton Performing Arts School has a robust musical theater and drama program and offers both private and group classes for instruments and voice for all ages and all abilities. With the belief in the positive and unifying influence of music and that performing arts education should be accessible to all people regardless of their ability to pay, Wharton Arts offers need-based scholarships. 

Wharton Arts is located in Berkeley Heights, New Providence, and Paterson, NJ and reaches students from 12 counties. All of Wharton Arts' extraordinary teaching artists, faculty members, and conductors hold degrees in their teaching specialty and have been vetted and trained to enable our students to achieve their personal best.

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