With college theater programs getting absorbed by other departments or eliminated altogether, you might think an advanced theater degree leaves graduates with few options. But for Signe Harriday, theater led to her new role as president and CEO of one of the Twin Cities’ oldest and largest nonprofits, Pillsbury United Communities. 

Harriday earned the position, announced June 23, after about 25 years with the organization, which runs a wide array of places and programs aimed at uplifting communities, from community centers to charter school oversight. 

Harriday previously acted, directed and taught with PUC’s Pillsbury House + Theatre before becoming its artistic producing director in 2021. She maintained those duties over the past year while also overseeing PUC’s social enterprises like KRSM Radio, Full Cycle Bike Shop and North News. 

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Now, she brings her creativity into her new role steering the organization into the future. And she’s drawing on theater experiences for the job. 

“As a director and a producer, it is actually not my job to build the set, to design the set, to build the costumes, to even perform the show. It’s actually my job to inspire the greatest performance or the best idea in the room, and then help the team find a way to make that real,” Harriday said.

Harriday’s leadership approach aligns with her work as a community organizer and multidisciplinary artist. Outside of Pillsbury United Communities, she co-founded the Subversive Sirens, a Minnesota-based synchronized swimming team committed to equity, body acceptance, queer visibility and Black liberation. She is also a founding collective member of Rootsprings, a creative sanctuary for BIPOC artists, activists and organizers.

As a child, she dreamed of being a fire truck. “I think it is actually kind of like a little bit true about me throughout my entire life,” she said. “Don’t tell me what I can do. I’m going to show you what we can do.”

Her new role, she said, is a win for artists. “We’ve been saying for so long: We need artists as leaders in the right places, and we need people who are connected to the work to lead the work.”

Harriday graduated from St. Olaf College before earning her Master of Fine Arts in acting from the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training – a joint program, currently on pause, of the American Repertory Theater, the Moscow Art Theatre and Harvard University.

“I just finished paying off my graduate student loans,” she said. “People tell me, ‘Oh you have such a great voice.’ I’m like, I paid for this.”

After school, she worked at Mixed Blood Theatre doing audience development and public relations alongside acting with the company.

PUC board chair Kaori Yamada said Harriday excels at casting a compelling vision and bringing people together around it. She watched Harriday’s work to expand the Pillsbury House + Theatre campus on Chicago Avenue, which culminated in the $5.7 million Pillsbury Creative Commons building. The new hub houses KRSM Radio and the theater’s specialized technical workforce development programs.

“I think she will continue to bring this organization into what it always has done, which is to innovate and be creative and listen to the needs of the moment,” Yamada said.

Harriday also helped Pillsbury United Communities navigate decisions surrounding North Market, a community grocery store in North Minneapolis, currently on hold. “We’re still working through what exactly it looks like, but obviously it takes a lot of strategic planning,” Yamada said.

As local arts groups manage ongoing financial challenges, Pillsbury House + Theatre’s home within a larger nonprofit organization has “helped us weather this tumultuous time,” Harriday said. “Our ability to radically pivot when we’ve needed to, both during COVID and during the global uprising, and Operation Metro Surge, and even during this moment of leadership transitions, that kind of longevity has allowed us to have nimbleness and agility.”

Still, she doesn’t expect the arts sector to emerge unchanged.

“I think that the arts ecosystem and the nonprofit sector will look different, and so will Pillsbury in the future,” Harriday said. “I couldn’t predict exactly what that will be, but I think it would be naive to think that with all the pressures and all the things that make this moment hard and challenging and difficult, that we will somehow be the same on the other side.”

Pillsbury House + Theatre is one of several local theaters participating in an upcoming roundtable about arts funding, press coverage, loss of venues and more. The event will be organized in the format of Frank Theatre’s “Frankly Speaking” series and held at Mixed Blood Theatre on July 8, 6-8 p.m. (free). More information here. 

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