Victoria Lanier, Executive Director, Education Through Music-Los Angeles
HALO Award Cohort 12 (2023-2024)
Cohort 13 kicked off its program year in February with the “Intro to HALO” meeting. Victoria Lanier, Executive Director of Education Through Music-Los Angeles (ETM-LA) and Cohort 12 member, joined the meeting as a special guest. As an alum of the HALO Award program, Victoria was able to provide the new cohort with a glimpse of what to expect from the program by sharing her experiences, insights, and lessons learned.
At the time of “Intro to HALO” the participating organizations had yet to declare their individual capacity building teams for the cohort. To help inform their team compositions, Victoria detailed ETM-LA’s approach to shaping its capacity building team. They put together a team that held a diversity of roles within their organization that all had different touchpoints with their volunteers so that they could offer different perspectives. Her involvement as part of the capacity-building team also underscored the value of leadership participation in driving forward positive changes.
Victoria walked through a few additional points that were specific to experiences of ETM-LA and the cohort. Specifically, the ways in which ETM-LA utilized the HALO Award funding, the impacts of the program on ETM-LA, and how Blue Garnet, the HALO Award program facilitator and technical assistance provider, supports the cohort. Coming out of the HALO Award program, Victoria was proud to share that ETM-LA staff and Board are committed to making volunteers a core focus by continuously investing time, resources, and energy to strengthen and maintain the volunteer program.
We thank Victoria for sharing her insights and setting the stage for Cohort 13’s journey with HALO.