History institutions are navigating difficult terrain. I help senior leaders find their footing.
The questions landing on your desk right now are not simple ones. How do you interpret contested history honestly when the political environment punishes honesty? How do you grow revenue without compromising the mission that justifies your existence? How do you build a staff capable of delivering the experience your institution promises? How do you make a case to your board for decisions grounded in evidence and not solely instinct?
These are structural problems. They require structural solutions.
I spent more than two decades inside institutions that faced versions of every one of these questions: seventeen years at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello and eight years at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. I managed teams of up to 400 people, budgets exceeding $20 million, and programs operating at national scale. The frameworks and organizational structures I built at those institutions are in place.
I now work as a strategic advisor to history museums, historic sites, and historical societies, partnering directly with CEOs, executive directors, and their leadership teams. My engagements are advisory: I help you see the problem clearly, build the analytical tools to address it, and create the institutional capacity to sustain the work after the engagement.
The Problems I'm Built For
In a polarized society, understandings about the past are disputed because different groups hold conflicting understandings, values, memories, or interests about what happened, why it mattered, and how it should be represented in public life. Interpreting stories shaped by power, conflict, and omission requires more than good intentions. It requires preparation, training, and the ability to hold tension productively, and increasingly, the ability to defend that work publicly under pressure.
Learn how I approach this work.Without a baseline, everyone has a different theory about what needs to improve and why. Building a baseline of evaluation is the first step in creating an evaluation culture. Doing so changes what decisions are possible.
Learn how I build it.Visitor experience improves when staff capacity improves. The hiring standards, training calendars, evaluation rubrics, and management structures that make consistent interpretation possible are what outlast any individual leader.
Learn how I build that architecture.Thin margins, over-dependence on contributed income, program revenue that doesn't reflect the value you deliver: these are common conditions at well-run institutions that have invested in new offerings and growth without yet investing in resilience.
Learn how I approach financial sustainability.My engagements are 3 to 6 months, advisory-led, and designed to produce durable results. I work with a small number of institutions at a time so the work gets the attention it deserves.
If you are facing a problem that requires someone who has seen these challenges at scale and built real solutions to them, I would like to talk.