With an undergraduate degree in American government, Lou DiGioia, MBA ’07, always assumed his career would be in the political arena. While in high school, he had participated in a civic education program operated by the nonprofit Presidential Classroom, which convenes students from around the country to the nation’s capital to teach and get them excited about government.
DiGioia even interned with Presidential Classroom during college and after graduating continued to work there full-time, when he started to realize that he “wanted to focus on the nonprofit side of that organization and not as much on the government side.”
Two other nonprofits later (MATHCOUNTS Foundation and Colorectal Cancer Alliance) and now armed with an MBA, DiGioia is the chief operating officer of the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO).
“When you tell people you work at a math foundation, all people want to tell you is how much they hate math, and when you work for a colon cancer alliance, people want to tell you about their last colonoscopy. So now, finally, I work at NATO and folks want to talk about the last movie they saw, which is great,” DiGioia joked.
He joined NATO in 2022 as the CFO, just as the theater industry was slowly recovering from pandemic closures. “Fewer industries were hit harder, and movie theaters went through a very tough time,” he recalled. Although attendance had not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels, good progress was being made at the box office. Then, the SAG-AFTRA strike halted movie and television production from July 14 to November 9, 2023, “just as we were getting our momentum back,” DiGioia noted. “The first part of 2024 was a challenge for our members, but once again we’re seeing an amazing recovery this summer.”
NATO advocates for theater owners—large chains as well as “small single-screen theaters owned by families for generations,” according to DiGioia—35,000 screens in all 50 states and 101 countries worldwide. The organization focuses on four major areas: government advocacy to create an environment that supports theater owner success; theatrical content advocacy, addressing issues like movies’ duration in theaters before moving to streaming or video on demand; moviegoing promotion to encourage attendance; and community building. “We want our members to know that they are not alone and we are stronger when we work together,” DiGioia summarized.
“Movie theaters are a place for everyone,” he said, “you’re all there for the same happy reason—to laugh together, to cry together, and it’s a cultural cornerstone of communities.”
While at MATHCOUNTS, DiGioia realized that he would need an advanced degree if he wanted to further his career in the nonprofit sphere. He enrolled in George Mason University’s MBA program in 2005 and said that the things he learned in the classroom, “have guided my career trajectory ever since.”
It was the curriculum’s focus on collaboration that sold him on the program. “A large part—90 percent—of the work I did at Mason was group work. You had to learn to work as a team and that has served me well every single day. That’s how we operate as a trade association, collaborating to get the best out of all the elements.”
As a graduate student, those elements included different work experiences and positions, diverse backgrounds, and different stages of careers and life. “To have that mix of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives translates well to a trade association. You really have to think through that lens of perspectives and understand diverse viewpoints everyone brings to the table to figure out the best way forward,” DiGioia said.
DiGioia brings the lessons of inclusion, diverse points of view, and innovation to work for the nation’s theater owners every day, and he looks forward to working more closely with the university’s students. After recently returning to the Fairfax Campus for his son’s high school graduation—the son who was born while DiGioia was in the MBA program—he sees this “full-circle moment” as a reminder of the importance of sharing his own life and work experience with the next generation of George Mason graduates.
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