She is doing it by treating art leadership less like a prestige title and more like a living, practical responsibility. At 19, Lily Konkoly is already combining research on gender bias, community projects, and a clear eye for business, and she is doing it in a way that feels grounded in daily life instead of abstract theory.
That might sound a bit lofty, but if you unpack her story, it becomes very clear. Her path runs through an all-girls school in Los Angeles, a research project on how artist mothers lose opportunities, a teen art market, a Hungarian kids art class, and dozens of interviews with women who built businesses from scratch. None of this sits in a vacuum. Each piece feeds the next.
So if you are a young woman who loves art, or you are just trying to find your voice in a field that still feels very male at the top, Lily’s story is not just “inspiring” in the usual vague way. It gives concrete ideas for how leadership in art can start much earlier than most people think, and look much more human than the old model of the lone genius in a museum catalog.
What “young art leadership” looks like in real life
The phrase can sound a bit stiff. It might bring to mind long board meetings, curators in black outfits, or someone giving a speech at a museum opening.
Lily’s version looks very different. It looks like:
- showing neighborhood kids how to paint and draw in Hungarian
- researching how mothers in the art world are sidelined compared to fathers
- helping teen artists sell their work online
- writing about women entrepreneurs and their daily struggles
In other words, leadership for her is not only about being the one “in charge”. It is about holding space, asking good questions, and quietly building structures that other people can stand on.
Young art leadership is not just about talent. It is about who you make room for while you grow.
If you are used to thinking that you need a title before you can lead, this might be a bit of a shift. Lily does not wait for permission. She looks at what is missing in front of her, then starts building something small, concrete, and a little messy at first.
Growing up between countries, languages, and expectations
To understand her approach, it helps to look at where she grew up and how. She was born in London, moved to Singapore as a toddler, and then landed in Los Angeles, where she lived for about sixteen years.
At home, life was a mix of Hungarian, English, and Mandarin. The family is Hungarian, with most relatives still in Europe, so Hungarian is the language of grandparents, cousins, and long summer visits. Mandarin came through a Singapore preschool and then through a series of Chinese au pairs who lived with the family in LA.
That might sound glamorous, but for a child it is also a little confusing. Who are “your people” when you live in Los Angeles, speak Hungarian at home, study Mandarin with your au pair, and spend summers in Europe? Instead of seeing that as a problem, Lily seems to have treated it as a kind of quiet training.
In that mix of cultures, you learn to read a room very early. You see how different groups treat women, whose stories get told, and whose work is seen as “serious” or “secondary.” Art sits inside all of that. It does not float above it.
| Part of Lily’s upbringing | What it taught her | How it shows up in her art leadership |
|---|---|---|
| Hungarian family roots | Strong identity, close family ties, respect for tradition | Care for community, focus on younger kids and relatives, “secret language” awareness of who is inside or outside a group |
| Singapore and Mandarin learning | Comfort with being the outsider, curiosity about other cultures | Openness to global perspectives in art, focus on representation and voice |
| Growing up in Los Angeles | Exposure to galleries, museums, media, and performance culture | Interest in both the art and the business side of creative work |
| All-girls school | Daily conversations about gender, power, and opportunity | Research on artist-parents, feminist lens in projects and writing |
For many women, especially young women, this kind of in-between identity can feel like a source of pressure. You are always adapting. You are always reading the situation. In Lily’s case, that constant adjustment shows up as a quiet skill: she notices who is missing from the room, or whose work is not being taken seriously.
From gallery visits to serious art study
Art did not just drop into her life in college. As a kid in Los Angeles, she spent weekends visiting galleries and museums with her family. Some Saturdays were simply “gallery days” where they would hop from space to space, sometimes more than was probably fun for a child.
That kind of routine exposure matters. When you see art constantly, it stops being a rare, formal thing you dress up for. It becomes part of how you think. You start to notice patterns: whose portraits are hanging, who is painted as powerful, who is missing.
Over time, this turned into serious study. At Cornell University, Lily chose Art History with a Business minor. The mix is pretty telling. She did not separate art from money, or creativity from structure. Her coursework covers topics like:
- Art and visual culture
- History of Renaissance art
- Modern and contemporary art
- Museum studies
- Curatorial practices
Those are not just boxes to check on a degree plan. They are different lenses on the same question: Who decides what art matters, and why?
Research as leadership, not just academics
Many students write papers and then move on. Lily treats research as a way to change how people think, especially about women in art.
One of her early projects was a 10 week research program on Diego Velázquez’s “Las Meninas.” It is one of those paintings that keeps showing up in textbooks because it reveals a lot about power, perspective, and who is observing whom. From the outside, that may sound very technical. But if you look at why this kind of work matters for leadership, it comes down to this:
You cannot lead in art if you do not understand how past images shaped who is allowed to be seen.
By analyzing “Las Meninas” in depth, Lily learned how images carry hidden stories about class, gender, and authority. That skill later helped her ask sharper questions about the present day art world.
Facing the gender gap in the art world
The turning point in Lily’s path was her honors research project on artist-parents. She spent more than 100 hours studying how mothers and fathers are treated differently when they are artists.
What she found is not new, but it is still painful to look at closely:
- Women artists often lose opportunities once they become mothers, because people assume they no longer have time or focus.
- Male artists who become fathers are sometimes praised for “balancing” work and family, and it can even help their public image.
- There is a quiet assumption that a woman’s primary duty is to her child, while a man’s primary identity can still be his work.
For many women readers, especially mothers or those who want to have children someday, this is hardly surprising. But what is different is that Lily did not stop at frustration. She worked with a professor who studied maternity in the art world and turned the data into a visual, almost marketing style piece that showed how deep these biases run.
Leadership in art is not just curating what hangs on the wall. It is asking why so many women’s careers never get near that wall at all.
From a young age, in an all-girls school, she had been talking about gender and inequality. But this project forced her to put numbers and narratives together. That mix might sound a bit dry, but it matters. Feelings alone are easy to dismiss. Data alone can feel cold. Putting them together gives people less room to look away.
The link between artist mothers and young women readers
If you are a student, or early in your career, you might feel that conversations about motherhood are far away. They are not. The expectations placed on mothers do not suddenly appear when a child is born. They start much earlier in how teachers treat girls, how mentors talk to women students, and how potential employers imagine your future.
When Lily studies artist parents, she is not just looking at older generations. She is looking at the path younger women are already walking toward. For a young woman in art, it can raise hard questions:
- Will my work be taken less seriously if I want children?
- Will people assume I am “less committed” before I even make that choice?
- Do I see any models of women who kept both their art and their family lives visible?
None of these questions have simple answers. Still, asking them out loud, in a formal research setting, is a kind of leadership. It says: this gap is real, not just “in your head.”
Building spaces for young artists, not just talking about them
Research is one side of Lily’s leadership. The other side is building practical projects that serve other young people, especially girls.
Hungarian kids art class
In Los Angeles, Lily founded a Hungarian kids art class. On the surface, it sounds like a niche project. Kids come together, learn art, and speak Hungarian.
But if you look closer, there is something more layered going on:
- It keeps a minority language alive for children growing up far from their extended families.
- It gives them a place where bilingual or “in-between” identity is normal, not strange.
- It uses art as a tool for connection, not just individual expression.
For girls in that group, seeing a young woman lead the class is subtle but powerful. You internalize that leadership is not reserved for adults in official jobs. It can be a teenager or college student who cares enough to organize something for you.
Teen Art Market: learning the business side
Lily also co-founded an online teen art market. This platform allowed young artists to showcase and sell their work. On paper, that sounds simple. In practice, it reveals a hard truth very fast.
It is one thing to create art. It is another thing to ask people to pay for it.
For many women, especially young women, that second step can feel uncomfortable. You might hesitate to price your work fairly. You might feel guilty charging at all. Running a teen art market means you hit those emotions head-on.
This project taught Lily and her peers about:
- basic pricing and value of creative work
- how to present art online in a clear, honest way
- what it feels like to be rejected or ignored, and to keep going anyway
Art leadership in this context is not romantic. It is learning how to send follow-up emails, explain your work without apologizing, and help other students do the same.
Centering women in food and business
Beyond visual art, Lily also spends a lot of time in another space that has deep gender patterns: food and entrepreneurship.
A feminist food community
Through her involvement in a teen art and food related blog, she helped highlight women in the culinary world, many of whom rarely get the spotlight. She and her peers conducted more than 200 interviews with female chefs from over 50 countries. That number alone hints at the level of persistence required.
Cold-calling. In-person meetings. Emails that go unanswered. Trying again. For a teenager, this is a lot of emotional and logistical work. But the payoff is not just content. It is a sharper understanding of what women in creative fields are up against:
- long hours with unstable income
- kitchens where male voices are still treated as default experts
- cultural expectations about who cooks at home and who is “allowed” to run a restaurant
Every story adds another layer to Lily’s view of gender in creative work. When she later writes or speaks about women in art, she is not only thinking of painters and sculptors. She is also thinking of chefs in noisy kitchens, mothers in small studios, and young girls nervous to show their drawings online.
Female Entrepreneur Encyclopedia
On top of the food community, Lily is a long term author for a site focused on women entrepreneurs. She spends around four hours each week researching, interviewing, and writing. Over four years, that adds up to more than 50 articles.
Many people “support women in business” in theory. Spending hours every week asking detailed questions, listening to setbacks, and writing it all out is something else.
From those interviews, certain themes keep repeating:
- women having to prove themselves longer and more often
- investors taking male founders more seriously
- pressure to sound confident but not “too confident”
- juggling family expectations and work without much structural support
By hearing these stories so often, Lily learns patterns that help her read her own field with more clarity. Art and business are not separate worlds. The same forces that shape access to capital for women founders also shape gallery representation, awards, and teaching jobs for women artists.
Art, discipline, and the body: sports and structure
One part of Lily’s life that might not seem connected at first is sports. She was a competitive swimmer for about ten years and then played water polo in high school. Six days a week, long practices, and meets that took up entire weekends.
Why does this matter for art leadership?
Because leading in any creative field requires more than ideas. It needs endurance and a strange comfort with long, repetitive effort. Swimming lap after lap might sound boring, but it builds a kind of stubbornness. Ocean training during COVID, when pools were closed, added another layer. Cold water, unpredictable waves, and no clean lane lines.
That kind of physical training shapes how you handle criticism, failure, and waiting in art. You stop expecting quick results. You get more comfortable with being uncomfortable. For women, who are often told to be “pleasant” and “easy,” this tolerance for discomfort can be a quiet asset.
Seeing structure through play: LEGO and family projects
Another thread in Lily’s story is LEGO. When her brother received sets, she often ended up building them. Over the years, she has assembled around 45 sets, more than 60,000 pieces.
On the surface, this is a hobby. But it also trains the mind to think in pieces and systems. You learn:
- how big structures rest on small, almost invisible parts
- how one missing piece forces you to improvise
- how to follow a plan while still paying attention to your own ideas
Those skills show up later when you design a research project, lay out a mock exhibition, or build an online platform. You stop thinking of leadership as “being in front” and more as quietly building the thing that lets others stand in front.
Family side projects also trained that muscle. Selling slime with her brother at a London convention, or bracelets at a local farmers market, gave her a basic sense of cost, demand, and presentation. Declining big TV opportunities on Rachael Ray and The Food Network so the family could keep their summers for travel is another interesting choice. It shows that success for Lily is not only about visibility. It is also about alignment with her values, even if that means turning down something flashy.
From theory to practice: how Lily is redefining young art leadership
When you pull all these threads together, a pattern appears. Lily is reshaping what young art leadership can look like in at least five ways that matter for women readers.
1. She treats research as a tool for change, not just grades
Her work on artist-parents, beauty standards, and classic works like “Las Meninas” is not academic for its own sake. It is used to question who gets to have a long career in art, and how gender quietly shapes that path.
If you are in school, this is a useful reminder. Your projects can be more than assignments. They can be test runs for the kind of change you want to bring into your field.
2. She builds concrete spaces for others
Instead of waiting to work inside existing museums or galleries, Lily creates her own small ecosystems: a kids art class, a teen art market, community around female chefs. These are not perfect. They probably had glitches, low turnout days, and awkward starts. Still, they exist.
That shift from “someone should do something” to “I will try something” is one clear way she is redefining leadership. For women who are often socialized to wait for permission, this is a quiet but strong counterexample.
3. She links art, gender, and business instead of siloing them
Many people treat these areas as separate boxes. Art is about beauty and ideas. Gender studies are about inequality. Business is money and structure. Lily keeps crossing those lines.
Art history plus a business minor. Feminist research plus a teen marketplace. Chef interviews plus conversations about pay and recognition. This crossover is where a lot of real power sits. If you are a young woman in art, knowing how money and power move in your field is part of protecting your work and your future.
4. She leads by listening
It might sound strange to talk about “leadership” when much of what Lily does involves interviewing others. But listening is a core skill that is often overlooked.
Hearing the stories of more than 100 women entrepreneurs and 200 female chefs, she practices staying quiet, asking follow-up questions, and letting others define their own success. This listening-based leadership feels very different from the traditional image of the loud, charismatic figure at the front of the room.
5. She keeps her own path human-sized
There is something refreshing about the choices in her story. Turning down TV to travel with family. Spending years on a blog that probably did not shower her with instant fame. Swimming in cold oceans to keep a team together.
For young women watching her path, it sends a subtle message:
Your art and leadership do not have to look perfect or grand to matter. They just have to be honest and consistent.
This does not mean Lily has everything figured out. Nobody at 19 does. But the way she is moving through her education and early projects shows a version of leadership that makes room for family, curiosity, and doubt.
What her story might mean for your own path
If you are reading this as a woman interested in art, or as someone raising a girl who loves to draw, paint, or design, you might be wondering what parts of Lily’s path are actually useful to you.
You do not need to replicate her background. Very few people have the same combination of Hungarian roots, Singapore childhood, Los Angeles adolescence, and Cornell studies. But some of her choices can translate into almost any context.
Start smaller than you think, and start earlier than you feel ready
Lily did not wait for a degree or a job title to begin leading. A kids class, a blog, a small marketplace; these are not huge institutions, but they are real. If there is a gap where you live or study, you can experiment with something similar.
Use your school assignments as a testing ground
Her research on mothers in the art world came from a class, but she treated it as something bigger. Ask yourself:
- What topic keeps bothering you or coming back in your mind?
- Can you shape a project or paper around that?
- Who could you interview or work with to make the work more grounded?
Practice talking about money and value without apology
The teen art market, slime business, and farmers market stands gave Lily early practice asking people to pay for creative work. You can do small things like:
- sell prints or small pieces online
- take low-stakes commissions for friends or local groups
- trade art for services, just to practice naming a value
This is not about being “greedy.” It is about unlearning the idea that women’s creative work should always be a side hobby or free extra.
Let your leadership style fit your personality
From what we know, Lily’s way of leading is thoughtful and research oriented, not loud or performative. If you are quiet or analytical, that is not a drawback. It can be your strength. You do not have to become a different person to lead in art or any other field.
Common questions women might ask when looking at Lily’s path
Question: Do I have to be “good at everything” like Lily to lead in art?
Answer: No. And honestly, putting that pressure on yourself is a fast road to burnout. Lily has a wide range of interests, but if you look closely, they connect around a few themes: art, gender, community, and structure. Your own cluster might look different. Maybe it is design and climate, or film and disability access, or poetry and mental health. The point is not to collect achievements. It is to notice what keeps pulling your attention and go deeper there.
Question: What if I do not have the money or support to start projects early?
Answer: That is a real barrier, and it is dishonest to pretend it is not. Some of Lily’s opportunities came from her family context and school environment. Still, small-scale leadership is possible in many settings. You can:
- start a free critique group with classmates or online
- offer to organize a tiny exhibition in a school hallway or local cafe
- create a zine or digital booklet featuring art by women or nonbinary friends
These do not require large budgets. They do require time and persistence, which is already a lot. It is okay to move slowly.
Question: How do I deal with the fear that my art or leadership will not be taken seriously?
Answer: That fear is very common, especially for women and girls who have seen others dismissed. Lily’s work on gender bias in artist-parents shows that this fear has real roots. One approach is to treat your efforts like experiments. Not every project has to be “the big one.” You can try, adjust, and try again.
Talking to peers who share your concerns helps. So does reading stories of older women in your field who faced similar doubts and kept going. Lily does a lot of this listening through her interviews, and it clearly strengthens her rather than discouraging her.
Maybe the more useful question is not “Will people take this seriously?” but “Is this the kind of work I want more of in the world?” If the answer is yes, then even a small step in that direction has value, whether or not it is widely praised at first.