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APRIL 24, 2026--University of Oklahoma Announces 3 Regionally-Rooted Speakers for MOMENTUM 2026, a National Convening for Arts Leaders

MOMENTUM is developed by Creative Evolutions in collaboration with Theatre Communications Group and a network of U.S. and international university partners. The initiative brings together professionals, faculty, students, funders, and civic leaders to generate and refine actionable solutions with real-world application.

The University of Oklahoma is positioning itself as a visible national contributor to leadership innovation while creating opportunities for faculty research, student engagement, and regional collaboration.

"The University of Oklahoma is very proud to be a part of Momentum, and especially to start this essential, national conversation. Serving as a leading resource for important research in all major fields in the arts, humanities, and sciences is our chief mission. We're looking forward to welcoming the many non-profit arts leaders who plan to attend, and we can't wait to see what happens."

-Seth Gordon, Professor of Drama at the University of Oklahoma.

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WHERE IS MOMENTUM CONVENING?

The University of Oklahoma convening on June 26–27, 2026 launches a summer-long national cycle that also includes successive gatherings at the University of the Bahamas, Seattle University, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Each two-day convening functions as both a local forum and a national contribution. Ideas generated at OU will be documented and carried forward to subsequent sites, shaping an evolving national conversation that culminates in a public webinar and shared body of work in September.

“Innovation that makes impactful change is rarely a top-down activity.

It begins in local communities. It activates with local leaders who understand the fabric and texture of their region, the lived experiences, the history in the room, the tensions, the assets, and the relationships that make change possible. MOMENTUM 2026 recognizes that regional leadership is not a smaller version of national strategy; it is the pilot laboratory for it. When we intentionally honor local knowledge as functional expertise and invest in leaders who are already deeply rooted in the communities they serve, we don’t just scale ideas; we scale and uplift wisdom. And that is how real, sustainable, diverse national innovation can happen.”

- Calida Jones, Co-Founder, Creative Evolutions

2026 MOMENTUM Schedule​​

• June 10–13 – Kickoff session at the TCG National Conference (Puerto Rico) – tickets​
• June 26–27 – University of Oklahoma
• July 14–15 – University of the Bahamas
• July 25–26 – Seattle University
• August 5–6 – Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Each site convenes approximately 100–200 participants for facilitated design labs and plenary dialogues. Materials from each session are recorded, synthesized, and shared forward with the next cohort, allowing ideas to be tested, refined, and expanded across regions.

By the end of the summer, MOMENTUM will produce a widely accessible sourcebook that includes pilot-ready governance and leadership models, recorded plenary conversations, and cross-institutional documentation connecting regional innovation to national strategy.

Registration is now open at MomentumRevolutions.com.

Professionals, faculty, students, funders, and civic leaders are invited to attend one or more locations across the summer. Each convening stands on its own while also contributing to a larger national exchange, allowing participants to engage locally while helping shape a broader body of actionable leadership models.

Early registration is encouraged, as space at each university site is intentionally limited to support meaningful design work. An Early Bird Discount is available for registrations before April 30, 2026 (use code: EARLYMOMENTUM).

Sponsorships range from $5,000 to $50,000 per site, with opportunities for both local underwriting and national participation. All sponsors will be recognized across the MOMENTUM cycle and within post-summer publications, report-outs, and piloting activities.

WHO ARE THE REGIONALLY-ROOTED SPEAKERS?

Each MOMENTUM location will be hosted by leaders at the Partner University with two inspirational sessions. One session will be led by regionally-rooted innovators and entrepreneurs, and the other will feature a speaker in a summer-long unified speaker series.

Seth Gordon, Professor of Performance at University of Oklahoma

SETH GORDON is Professor of Performance at the University of Oklahoma Helmerich School of Drama, where he teaches Directing and Theatre Management. At OU, he has directed productions of Ms. Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley, Mad Forest, Radium Girls, Waiting for Lefty, and A Christmas Carol.

Prior to moving into academia, he was a national leader in new play development and a highly regarded director throughout the United States. He served as Associate Artistic Director at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and the Cleveland Play House, and Associate Producer at Primary Stages in New York. In St. Louis, he created Ignite!, a new play festival.

At the Cleveland Play House, he created FusionFest, a multi-disciplinary arts festival that had a new play festival in it; and at Primary Stages, he created the New American Writers Group. He has directed plays at these three theatres, Stages Repertory Theatre in Houston, TheatreSquared in Fayetteville, AK, Shakespeare and Company in Massachusetts, Syracuse Stage, the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival, the St. Lou Fringe Festival, Studio Arena Theatre in Buffalo, American Stage in Florida, and in New York, at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Theatre of the New City, and countless other places.

He directed the Arabic premiere of Our Town in Cairo. He received the 2004 and 2006 Northern Ohio Live Award, the 2014 Houston Theatre Award, and numerous nominations by the Houston Theatre Awards and the St. Louis Theatre Critics Circle Awards for his direction. He currently serves as management and executive search consultant for non-profit theatres, and he is on the Board of Directors of Oklahoma Cit Rep. His book, “Crossroads in the American Theatre: New Leaders in a New Age” was published by Smith and Kraus in 2025. He considers himself a lucky man.

Clifford Hudson, Past CEO, SONIC; Past Trustee, Ford Foundation

Clifford Hudson spent 35 years of his career at Sonic Corp., an Oklahoma City-based, then a publicly held company that owns, operates and franchises SONIC Drive-In restaurants. Most recently, he was Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of this public company with more than 3,500 franchised and company-operated drive-in restaurants. He left the company upon its sale in December 2018.

Since then, he has formed DIA Equity Partners and, with them, has completed the acquisition of Fast Fresh Brands, the holding company of two healthy fast casual concepts. He also joined the law firm Crowe & Dunlevy as Of Counsel in the firm’s Oklahoma City office.

Hudson is the former Chair of the Board of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, where he served as a board member from 2001-2011. Hudson also served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), a presidential appointment, from 1994-2001, and as Trustee of the Ford Foundation (New York) from 2006-2017. He served as Chairman of the Oklahoma City School Board from 2001-2008, a position created in 2000 as part of a $530 million MAPS for Kids initiative for the Oklahoma City Public School system. He currently serves as Chair of the Board of Union Theological Seminary of New York City, and President of the Board of Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre.

Hudson graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a B.A. in History, from which he also received in 2011 an honorary doctoral degree in humane letters. He holds a J.D. from Georgetown University, where he served as Chair of the Board of Visitors from 2013-2016. In 2014, Georgetown University awarded him the John Carroll Award, its highest alumni recognition.

In 2020, Harper Collins published Cliff’s first book entitled Master of None: How a Jack of All Trades Can Still Reach the Top. In addition, he has been the guest on numerous national television, radio and podcast programs, including his own podcast, “Master of None”. In 2025, Forbes Books published “Bricks and Clicks”, a book Hudson has co-authored along with Craig Miller, his former CIO at Sonic. Hudson is also an amateur vocalist and musician, including playing rhythm guitar and keyboards for the Sonic Tones, an eight member group made up of Sonic Corp. executives. Their group performed with the OKC Philharmonic and, in 2003, at the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland as part of Fortune Magazine’s Annual Battle of Corporate Bands.

heather ahtone, Director, Curatorial Affairs, First Americans Museum (FAM)

heather ahtone is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and descendant of strong Choctaw women. She currently serves as Director, Curatorial Affairs, at First Americans Museum (FAM) in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and has worked in the Native arts community since 1993. Dr. ahtone has established a career as a curator, arts writer, and cultural researcher. Additionally, Dr. ahtone maintains service on numerous advisory boards and in professional capacities that advocate on behalf of Indigenous knowledge and scholarship in the field. She is currently a board member for the Association of Art Museum Curators, Native American Art Studies Association, Clara Luper Civil Rights Center, and on the Smithsonian’s American Art Journal editorial board. Her research explores the intersection between Indigenous cultural knowledge and contemporary arts. ahtone has worked at the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum (now MoCNA), the Southwestern Association of Indian Arts (Santa Fe, New Mexico), on contract with Ralph Appelbaum Associates (New York), and in several positions at the University of Oklahoma, where she served as the curator of Native American and Non-Western art at OU’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art for over six years. She continues to seek opportunities to broaden discourse on global contemporary Indigenous arts, especially as it fosters an understanding of the diverse tribes in Oklahoma.

She earned an associate’s degree in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts, bachelor’s degree in Printmaking at the University of Oklahoma, master’s degree in Art History, and a doctoral degree in Interdisciplinary Studies (Art History, Anthropology, Native American Studies), also at the University of Oklahoma.

She has published numerous essays for journals and exhibition catalogues published by the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Eiteljorg Museum, Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, Peabody Essex Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Heard Museum, First Americans Museum, and, most recently, National Gallery of Art.

Her exhibitions have received positive scholarly reviews and publication awards, including Art From Indian Territory (2007), H2OK: Native Perspectives on Water Issues (2010), Hopituy: Hopi Art From the Permanent Collections (2013), Enter the Matrix: Indigenous Printmakers (2015), Intertwined, Stories of Splintered Pasts: Shan Goshorn & Sarah Sense (2015), From the Belly of Our Being: art by and about Native creation (2016), and PHOTO/SYNTHESIS (2017). Her most recent projects are OKLA HOMMA and WINIKO: Life of an Object, Selections from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (2021), both of which received national awards.

She is currently developing a methodology for creating Reunions for objects in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian’s collection with families within the tribal nations in Oklahoma, which will be published as a book and feature length film in 2025.

Trent Riley, Executive Director, Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center

Trent Riley is an arts and culture leader, author, and advocate for expanding access to the arts and arts education. As Executive Director of Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center in Oklahoma City, he leads one of the region’s most dynamic cultural institutions, overseeing exhibitions, education initiatives, fundraising, and long-term strategic growth.

Since assuming leadership, Trent has guided Oklahoma Contemporary through a period of significant momentum, strengthening its financial position, expanding its mission impact, and elevating its national profile. Under his direction, the organization has deepened partnerships with major cultural institutions, including collaborations connected to Tate UK, expanded statewide educational access, and reinforced its commitment to free admission. He has prioritized sustainable funding strategies, accelerated endowment growth, and strengthened governance practices to ensure long-term institutional stability.

Prior to Oklahoma Contemporary, Trent spent nearly a decade at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, where he contributed to generating more than $30 million in revenue for the institution. His leadership helped expand donor engagement, support major exhibitions and capital initiatives, and strengthen the museum’s national standing.In addition to his work in arts and culture leadership, Trent is an accomplished writer. He was a 2019 Oklahoma Book Award finalist and has received recognition from Publishers Weekly and The Wall Street Journal for his writing. In 2023, he was named a 40 Under 40 honoree by The Journal Record and is an alum of Leadership Oklahoma City.

Trent holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Master of Arts in Museum Studies from Oklahoma State University. A native of Central Oklahoma, he remains deeply committed to strengthening the cultural vitality of his home state.

For more information, visit MomentumRevolutions.com or contact:

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