Different rooms, one throughline.

I’ve performed on opera stages, co-founded a company, helped lead an institution, and now I’m building software. The work looks different every time. The instinct underneath it doesn’t.

My story

From the stage. To strategy. To building something of my own.

About a decade ago, I made a decision that changed the course of my career.

I stepped away from pursuing opera full-time and co-founded City Lyric Opera in New York City. It was my first experience building something from the ground up, and it completely changed how I thought about leadership, creativity, and the arts.

I’d spent years preparing for a career on stage, earning my Master’s in Vocal Performance from the Manhattan School of Music. But co-founding City Lyric revealed something I hadn’t expected.

I was even more fulfilled bringing talented people together around a shared vision than I was standing in the spotlight myself. I loved building the team, shaping the experience, and asking the bigger questions that determine whether an organization truly connects. That curiosity never left me.

The best organizations aren’t defined by the size of their budget. They’re defined by clarity.

They know who they are, why they exist, and how to invite people into a mission worth joining. Over the past decade, that idea has carried me from the rehearsal hall to the boardroom, from marketing campaigns to fundraising strategy, from nonprofit leadership to entrepreneurship.

It still sits at the center of everything I do.

Five chapters

The moments that shaped how I build.

Chapter I
Opera & Performance

The stage.

Years performing opera taught me the lesson behind everything I build: a story doesn't just inform people, it moves them. Performance is where I first felt how a story takes hold, in a room, in a body, in a single held note.

Chapter II
City Lyric Opera

The leap.

Co-founding a company from nothing taught me you build the thing before anyone is sure of it. I learned to gather people around an idea before it fully existed, and found I loved creating the vessel as much as performing inside it.

Chapter III
Knoxville Opera

Growing an institution.

Leading fundraising and marketing taught me that strategy only works when a story carries it. People don't invest in budgets or buy tickets to logistics, they give themselves to a narrative they want to belong to.

Chapter IV
Now live

Building the future.

Building software taught me the work has to scale. GreenRoom turns hard-won lessons about arts organizations into tools they use every day, the infrastructure a story needs to keep being told. Alongside it I’m building Narratives, which brings story strategy to the marketing teams inside performing arts organizations. Two companies, one field, opposite ends of the same problem.

The venture · GreenRoom • Status · Live • greenroomcrm.com →

Chapter V
Still being written

What's next.

Now I'm exploring how technology and story shape each other, across writing, speaking, and projects still taking form. Every chapter taught me the same thing: the medium keeps changing, but the work doesn't.

✦ Intermission ✦

Outside of my work, I’m a wife, a mom of two daughters, a lifelong creative, and someone whose faith shapes both my life and my leadership.

My career has worn many titles: performer, founder, nonprofit leader, entrepreneur. But they’ve always been expressions of the same calling: storyteller.

Come find me after the show.

Have a story worth telling, a room worth gathering, or something interesting you’re building?

Twenty minutes, on a call: a season, a story, or whatever you’re making. Not a sales pitch, and not for everyone, but if that sounds like you, let’s talk.

Book 20 minutes →or write first, hello [at] bykatiespencer.com

Katie Spencer.

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