Areas of Work

Every institution I work with arrives at a different door. Some need to build the internal capacity to tell harder truths. Some need to understand what their visitors actually experience. Some need the professional infrastructure to deliver consistently at scale. Some need to see their financial picture clearly enough to make consequential decisions. Most need more than one of these things at once.

The work is always connected. I rarely operate in just one area.

Interpreting Contested History

Telling difficult, contested history well is not primarily a content problem. It is a professional practice problem. Staff need preparation for the emotional and intellectual demands of the work. Leadership needs to hold the institutional line when challenged. Interpreters need structures that make them feel physically and professionally safe. And the institution needs the ability to hold tension productively in the room, not simply defuse it.

I build the systems that make this possible: interpretive frameworks grounded in research, training curricula for frontline staff using dialogical approaches, security and safety protocols, and programs that make the interpretive methodology itself transparent to visitors. I also prepare institutional spokespeople to represent contested history projects to press and public audiences with clarity and message discipline. Institutions doing this work face real political pressure. I help them navigate it without retreating from the truth.

What this looks like in practice: interpretive framework and content development; facilitation training for frontline staff; strategic communications and media preparation; spokesperson coaching; reputational risk assessment.

Example: At Monticello, visitor participation in slavery and Hemings family interpretation programming doubled from 15 percent in 2011 to 30 percent in 2016, while overall visitor satisfaction held at 81 to 83 percent and guide ratings improved by four percentage points. The data confirmed what the work assumed: interpreting contested history with rigor and care deepens the visitor experience rather than diminishing it.

Building an Evaluation Culture

Without an evaluation baseline, everyone has a different theory about what needs to improve and why. Establishing a baseline begins the process of developing an evaluation culture: one where your team has the disposition and tools to understand what visitors are telling you beyond the anecdotal and the survey score. An evaluation culture changes what decisions are possible. It aggregates feedback to quell the noise of strident anecdotes, grounds investment priorities in evidence, and creates the feedback loops that make ongoing improvement possible.

I build evaluation programs from the ground up: instruments, dashboards, and data systems designed to answer the questions that matter most. Across every dataset I have worked with, two variables show the strongest consistent correlation to overall visitor satisfaction: how effectively the staff made the visitor feel welcome, and how knowledgeable the staff was. That finding shapes everything, because it means staff development is visitor experience work, not a training box to be checked off by HR or department leadership. It is the beginning of creating a culture of curiosity and confidence.

I also assess the operational systems that shape what visitors experience before interpretation begins: ticketing, wayfinding, transportation, accessibility, and safety. Structural problems in these areas create friction that no amount of great programming can overcome.

What this looks like in practice: visitor evaluation design and baseline development; KPI and satisfaction dashboard design; visitor lifecycle and friction point assessment; ticketing, wayfinding, and operational review; risk management planning.

Example: At Monticello, starting from no evaluation program in 2010, I built a pool of more than 100,000 survey respondents used to drive pricing decisions, inform grant applications, develop visitor profiles for marketing, and manage reputational risk. During COVID reopening in summer 2020, when social media criticism of our protocols and our interpretation was loudest, accumulated evaluation data showed overall satisfaction at 74 percent excellent or good and a 98 percent safety approval rating. The data gave leadership the confidence to hold the institutional line.

Developing Staff and Professional Infrastructure

A training program is an event. What institutions need is an ecosystem: the values and ongoing practices that make continuous improvement possible. That means interpretive principles, evaluation rubrics, hiring standards that screen for empathy and intellectual curiosity, revised job descriptions that reflect what roles actually require, annual training calendars, facilitated reflection, and management structures that cultivate leadership from within.

The connection to visitor experience is direct. Staff who are better prepared, better supported, and better led deliver more consistent, more honest, and more engaging interpretation. They gain the confidence to have conversations and engage in dialogues, not monologues of dense description. Every investment in staff capacity is an investment in what visitors experience.

What this looks like in practice: professional development planning and annual calendar design; interpretive competency frameworks and evaluation rubrics; hiring standards and job description development; facilitated dialogue and cultural lens workshops; coaching and performance management; management restructuring and leadership cultivation.

Example: The professional infrastructure I built at Monticello in 2005, the interpretive principles, evaluation rubrics, hiring standards, and training calendar, provides the foundation of the systems in place there today. Many talented people have improved and expanded those ideas. That is the difference between a deliverable and institutional capacity.

Financial Sustainability and Revenue Strategy

Nonprofit does not mean a zero-sum bottom line. Effective planning creates value that can be reinvested in mission. But revenue growth that compromises mission is a short-term trade with long-term costs. The goal is sustainability: revenue models grounded in defining and knowing your visitor constituencies, rigorous cost allocation and projections, and financially grounded scenarios the board can act on with confidence.

I help institutions see their full financial picture: where revenue is being left on the table, where costs are obscured by poor allocation, where the endowment is undersized relative to infrastructure obligations, and where the current revenue mix creates fragility. I build the analytical tools and scenario models that translate financial complexity into decisions. I produce frameworks the leadership team can use independently after the engagement ends.

What this looks like in practice: earned revenue strategy and weighted prioritization tools; audience segmentation and program prioritization; admissions pricing and visitor yield modeling; cost structure and revenue center analysis; endowment adequacy analysis; strategic planning facilitation; grant positioning and narrative development.

Example: At Monticello, audience segmentation and tiered experience pricing grew revenue per visitor from $15.50 to $21.50, a 39 percent increase, with 3 percent of guests generating 10 percent of revenue. At Stratford Hall Historic Preserve, I developed a five-year earned revenue roadmap and weighted prioritization tool the leadership team could use independently to evaluate future opportunities.

These four areas of work are connected. An institution with a fragile revenue model and an undertrained staff is facing the same root problem from two directions. I bring them into the same conversation.

If you want to talk through where your institution is, I am glad to start there.

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