Jackson Cooper

Jackson Cooper is Assistant Professor of Arts Administration at Elon University, bringing more than 15+ years of experience as a nonprofit executive, fundraising strategist, and cultural leader to his teaching and research. He is the founder of Artful Living Consulting and previously served as the inaugural Executive Director of the American Genre Film Archive, the world's largest nonprofit genre film distributor and archive. His leadership background includes roles at Pacific Northwest Ballet, Mary's Place, and the Arboretum Foundation

A published author, Cooper's books include Nonprofit Boards For Dummies (Wiley, 2026, with Caitlin Pontrello), Sustainable Fundraising (Columbia Business School Publishing, 2026, with Hannah Grannemann), and A Kids Book About Kindness (Penguin Random House/DK Publishing, 2025). His writing has also appeared in the Oxford Dictionary of Music, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, the Journal of Nonprofit Innovation, and Innovative Pedagogy in Cultural Management Education (Routledge), among other publications.

Cooper is active in public service, serving as a political appointee to the Washington State Arts Commission and the City of Seattle's LGBTQ Commission. He was President of the Board of Directors of ARCADE, an architecture and design magazine, and currently serves on the editorial review board of the Journal of Nonprofit Innovation and the advisory board of the Democratizing Philanthropy Research Initiative at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. He has served as a grant panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and 4Culture/King County Cultural Authority.

Also a practicing musical theatre and opera conductor and director, Cooper has produced more than 150 live performances, and has been recognized by Variety, The Advocate, the Cannes Film Festival, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; the symphony Symphony: Dark Testament by William Henry Curry is dedicated in his honor.

He was a Puget Sound Business Journal's 40 Under 40, received UNC-Greensboro's Young Alumni Award,  made Musical America's Top 30 Professionals of the Year (2023), and was named an Honorary Arts Fellow at the Rainier Club (2024–2026).