Elaine Grogan Luttrull

Elaine Grogan Luttrull is the luckiest CPA ever. Through Minerva Financial Arts, a company she founded in 2009, she works to build financial literacy in creative individuals and organizations through education and coaching. Her work focuses on empowerment above all else, connecting financial decisions with creative goals. She serves just over 1,000 people per year through workshops and one-on-one coaching sessions, and her goal is to make all creative individuals both financially empowered and creatively free.

Elaine’s direct client service is characterized by education. She leads workshops, boot camps, online learning, and college courses in business, finance, accounting, governance, and strategic planning topics. She also works one-on-one with both individual artists and arts organizations. Her methods draw upon Solution-focused Financial Therapy techniques as well as Narrative Financial Therapy techniques.

Hosts of Elaine’s workshops and master classes have included the Kennedy Center’s DeVos Institute of Arts Management (now based at the University of Maryland), the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the Foundation Center, the Arts & Business Council of New York, Americans for the Arts, the Ohio Art League, the Ohio Arts Council, the Indiana Arts Council, the Juilliard School, the New England Conservatory of Music, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Lark Play Development Center, Playwrights of New York, Theatre Communication Group, the ARTrepreneur Workshop Series, Creative Control Fest, the City of Bloomington’s Entertainment and Arts District, and the Greater Columbus Arts Council.

Elaine has developed business and entrepreneurial curriculum for institutions as varied as St. Lawrence University, the Columbus College of Art & Design, and the Ohio State University. Her courses focus on personal finance for creative freelancers, strategic planning for creative businesses, and revenue diversification for non-profit and social enterprise business models. Elaine is an instructor at CCAD and she served as the Department Head for Business & Entrepreneurship at CCAD from 2014 through 2018. As Department Head, Elaine was responsible for building the department to serve 43% of CCAD’s population each year through seven undergraduate courses and one graduate course. She also authored a MOOC (massive online open course) called “Money Matters” that was released in 2017.

Her first full-length publication, Arts & Numbers, a financial guide for creative entrepreneurs, was released by Agate Publishing’s B2 imprint in 2013, and her contribution to the AICPA’s publication, Save Happily, Spend Wisely: Real Stories About Money and How to Thrive from Trusted Financial Experts, was released in October 2012. Much of Elaine’s curriculum development work is built around Arts & Numbers, and she makes her instructor guide to the work available upon request.

Elaine’s ability to explain complex finance and accounting topics to both experts and non-experts has created an incredible demand for both her writing and presentations. She contributes regularly to Professional Artist magazine, the Clark Hulings Fund’s Perspectives series, and a variety of other publications.

Elaine serves on the board of directors for the Short North Alliance, a group that advocates for the unique Short North neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio; Social Ventures, a group that provides education, community-building opportunities, and access to capital for socially-minded businesses; and the Financial Therapy Association, a group that is establishing a formal credential to those who support the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral elements of financial health. She is a member of the AICPA and the Ohio Society of CPAs, where she has volunteered for FETCH, a program that brings practical financial education to children in Central Ohio’s under-served public schools.

Until June 2011, Elaine served as the Director of Financial Analysis for The Juilliard School where her work included accounting for the investment of the endowment, managing the tax-exempt bond issuance, budgeting at both the organizational level and for specific grant proposals and special initiatives, completing entity-level tax returns, and modeling complex financial hypotheses. Previously, she worked for Ernst & Young in its Tax and Transaction Advisory Services practice in New York from 2003 through 2007.

From 2007 through 2012, Elaine was a member of the Arts & Business Council of New York. She has chaired three fundraising events in support of professional volunteerism, and she served on the BVA Steering Committee of the Arts & Business Council in 2010 and 2011. In 2009, the Arts & Business Council recognized Elaine’s work with its Creative Business Volunteer of the Year award, and her work with The Puppetry Arts Theatre was featured as part of President Obama’s 2009 United We Serve campaign on volunteerism.

Elaine graduated magna cum laude from the University of Missouri. She holds a master of accountancy, a bachelor of science in accountancy, and a bachelor of science in business administration with an emphasis in economics. She is a Certified Professional Accountant in Missouri and Ohio with a Personal Financial Specialist designation in Ohio. She also holds a designation from the AFCPE as an Accredited Financial Counselor(R). She also completed a graduate certificate in financial therapy from Kansas State University.