At the 2024 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo, the outgoing Vice Chair of AAM’s board, Nathan Richie, sat down for a Q&A with our new President & CEO, Marilyn Jackson, to help attendees get to know her a little better. In their conversation, they talked about her priorities for the organization and its members, her leadership style and philosophy, the challenges and opportunities of museums in society, and her interests and hobbies outside of work. Below is an edited and condensed transcript of the session.

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Nathan Richie: One of the things I’m really excited about—and I know others have been as well—is the fact that you are AAM’s first CEO, possibly ever, who actually comes from a museum background.

Marilyn Jackson: In recent history.

NR: So I’m just kind of curious to hear, how do you see some of the needs facing museums today, in your experience specifically?

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MJ: I think this work is incredibly hard. From the outside it looks really easy, but for those of us that work behind those walls, we know how challenging it is. There’s never enough funding, there’s never enough people. You’re trying to balance the needs of your community, the needs of your board, the needs of your donors. And while there are museum studies programs that help prepare people to work in the field, I think a lot of what you learn is on the floor. Behind those doors is how you learn to do the work. And, when you’re working in a small community like Louisville, Kentucky [where I was most recently], there are only four other museums, so when you recruit people to be your membership manager, for example, they’re not coming with experience. You have to train them. You’ve got to teach them how to do membership. And I think that kind of professional development is the type of value that AAM can really be providing.

NR: Absolutely. So you’ve been on the job for less than…

MJ: Today is day twenty-one.

[laughter]

NR: So in your great wisdom that you’ve seen so far and gained, can you tell us a little bit more about what you think your priorities are for the first ninety days or so?

MJ: Well, definitely listening! People have been inviting me out to their institutions and I’ve been meeting with all the board members. And I think that my marketing experience will come in handy in this regard. I really love market research and that’s what I plan to do here, really listen. Listen to what the needs of our industry are and ask them what pressures they’re facing.

Additionally, in my first ninety days we have to start setting our budget. So really thinking about 2025 and what our priority projects are. Some of your organizations face some of the same realities we do, like aging software, aging systems that we need to reinvest in. So figuring out what those priorities are so we can serve our membership, make things easier for you to register for programs, find classes, find training. Finally, looking at our digital strategy and better understanding what investments we need to bring that to fruition. Those are the types of things I’m thinking about.

NR: Is there anything that you really see as an immediate thing that you need to do, or something that really excites you to really jump into?

MJ: I think that there’s so much content on our website and there’s so many learning opportunities. I’m thinking about how we bring that to our membership in some kind of learning management system—that is exciting to me.

NR: That’s great. So, when we’re not seeing you here at, at the Annual Meeting or the AAM office, what are some of the things that you’re passionate about that you do outside your work?

MJ: Well, you know, for a long time I would’ve said “raise my kids.” But my youngest child is graduating from college this year, so I can’t say that anymore. My kids played travel soccer; that was a big part of my life and I’m very happy it’s over.

[Laughter]

Somebody asked me about Mother’s Day and I was like, this is a truth: There is a soccer tournament on Mother’s Day every year. So, my Mother’s Days were spent usually outside in the rain in a field in a slicker with an umbrella, wondering when the tournament’s going to be over.

[Laughter]

I love going to museums. I love music. I played the saxophone in junior high school and high school. I actually attended a performing arts high school, so I really crave live music. I’m excited to be back in the DC area to check out Blues Alley and other live music venues. I love tennis. My uncle was part of the whole Arthur Ashe Black tennis phenomenon. He put a racket in my hand when I was six years old and I’ve played on and off so I really love watching the game. Finally, I love spending time with friends.

NR: So let’s talk a little bit about your leadership style. Can you tell us what are the most important values and principles that guide your leadership?

MJ: I think honesty, transparency, and really helping teams learn to talk to each other, learn to collaborate, and build with each other. And that takes a lot of listening and a lot of guidance. Giving people the room to own their work and giving them a chance to present and grow. I really love seeing my team members present their own work, whether it’s to the team, or to the museum, or to the board, because that is how I think people grow in their field. My boss at United Way once told me, “Marilyn, you’re a player coach,” which I think means I really like to work alongside people.

NR: That’s fantastic. Are there other people you could identify who really helped shape your career or have been a role model to you?

MJ: Oh my gosh. I mean some of the people here are. Lisa Miner. I learned so much from her. She was my peer at the Museum of Science and Industry. I had marketing, sponsorship, market research, group sales, and tourism marketing and she had graphics, communications, and PR. She is one of the best PR people I’ve ever worked with and everything I know about PR I learned from her. Another person is David Mosena from the Museum of Science and Industry. He is one of the most prolific fundraisers I’ve ever met. And he’s somebody that was the city manager. He ran transportation in Chicago and in his stories he said, “I walked into the museum and I thought this was gonna be fun…it’ll be fun to run the museum.” And like probably about eighteen months into it, as the place was literally falling apart around him, he was like, “I either have to quit or raise money.” And he set out on a twenty-year journey to update that museum, which is massive—approximately fourteen acres under one roof. I really respected his commitment. Lonnie Ali, from my time at the Ali Center, she is one of the most gracious people I’ve ever met. She makes people feel important and special, which is why she is able to charm them.

NR: So you talked a little bit about your style as being sort of a player coach. Can you tell us a little bit about how you foster creativity and innovation among your staff?

MJ: Yeah, I really push people to not put boundaries on their thoughts and ideas. I think a lot of people walk into the room start the conversation with, “We don’t have enough people and we don’t have enough money.” If you start there, you cannot be creative. And I think you have to start with, let’s take the constraints off the table and now let’s brainstorm—and then the creativity starts to flow. I’ve worked with really sharp, bright young people and I gave them the space to dream. Then we figure out how to find the money to fund it. In my experience, if you stick around long enough, you’ll see your idea come to fruition. It sometimes takes time to find the money.

NR: I love how, when we were in a general session, you had your own little cheering section there!

[Laughter]

You could just tell and know that your former staff really appreciate you as an individual. Really great sign. So, can you tell us how you handle stress and maintain a healthy work-life balance, and how you encourage your staff to do the same?

MJ: I’ve given this advice to my kids—find something you love to do, because if you love what you’re doing, it’s much easier to find that balance. When you are filled up professionally, it’s easier to find that balance. So that’s first, and the second thing is to know when you need to disconnect and take a day off.  I really encourage people to go on vacation. I encourage people to take all their vacation days. If you worked over the weekend, take Monday and Tuesday off. That’s fine. I also encourage people to be honest and share how much they’re working. And that’s why I’m transparent about what I’m doing with my team and encourage them to be as well.

NR: Absolutely. Well, when you’re working, you’ve got the needs of lots of different stakeholders and staff members to consider. I’m curious about some examples of how you balance needs and interests of different stakeholders in your decision-making process. How do you weigh each of those and give voice to them?

MJ: You know, I think people are often scared to ask, “What are your interests?” When I started at the Muhammad Ali Center, they never had a real strategic plan. I started there in January of 2022 and kicked off the strategic planning process in March or April. And we did what we called a community-led planning process where we went out to the community, we went out to our stakeholders, our donors, all our staff, former board members. What amazed everybody was how aligned they all were on the mission of the center, what its role was in the community, and what the community wanted from the center. So I believe if you put all of the opportunities, challenges, and feedback on the table, stakeholders then have the data to shape the future together.

Part of the mission of the Muhammad Ali Center is mobilizing Muhammad’s legacy to advance justice.  Justice meant different things to different people. I had a board member who really wanted the center to act as an advocacy organization. I had to school him on the realities of the center and say, “We’re not the NAACP. We don’t have the staff to do that type of work. We have ninety-six-thousand-square-foot building that we need to take care of. We host hundreds to thousands of people at the center a day.” So I had to help him see how we deliver on that mission through our unique programming and our unique institution. I believe that you can usually bring people into the fold once you hear them out.

NR: Somewhat related to that, can you tell us a little bit about your approach to promoting diversity, equity, access, and inclusion as a leader? And how have your views on that evolved?

MJ: One of the most important things to fostering diversity is making sure that our hiring plans are really equitable and that we’re giving candidates a fair shot. Really being able to look at their experience and look at what they’re bringing to the table [is essential]. It’s teaching people how to hire to make sure that we’re getting the most diverse candidates that are the best fit for the role. Because I think that we all have our own biases that come out time and time again. Educating hiring managers to align their evaluation of the candidate around the skill set and the experience needed to be successful [is important]. Also really valuing everyone’s unique perspective. I’ve worked with some folks on different teams that are neurodivergent, and that’s a form of diversity which we have to embrace too. I believe in embracing everyone’s differences and celebrating what they bring to the table. That is my approach.

NR: AAM has really been a big leader of DEAI work in museums, but we’re seeing more of a backlash to that nationally. Do you see an evolution of practices here?

MJ: You know, I think that we have to be cognizant of what’s going on around the country and figure out how to work around it. I came from a museum in Kentucky, and our state legislature had proposed anti-DEI bills. So we at the Ali Center were cognizant of the words we used to describe a program, but we never changed the content. And I think that’s, unfortunately, one of the things we had to do to survive. But to thrive, I believe that our sector needs to become more active more vocal in supporting candidates who are supportive of cultural institutions. I don’t know if you guys know this, but the House of Representatives for the second year in a row said that museums could not qualify for earmarks. So we have to be politically astute and active and make sure that we’re getting involved in places that we can get involved, from school boards to local, state, and federal government.

NR: When we talk about omitting museums simply because they are museums, what do you see as a part of the challenge there?

MJ: I think that when we celebrate diversity, one of the things we need to talk about is that there’s a museum for everybody in every state and for all kinds of topics, and make sure that we are presenting ourselves as a sector that is inclusive of diverse thoughts. And figure out how to activate the people who love museums. We know that museums are some of the most trusted institutions in the country and that more people go to museums in a year than go to sporting events in person. How do we take that collective who attend museums and think that museums are important and bring them to the forefront and make sure that they have a voice in this country?

NR: I think sometimes museums sort of end up as a volleyball in a way, where they get to be used as a pawn for whatever political purpose. And I’m just kind of curious if there’s a way that we should be, in your view, talking about the work that we do differently or framing it differently?

MJ: I think people don’t really understand the impact of museums, that they’re not just what you do on a Saturday afternoon once in a while with your child. It’s the educational programming that goes into schools. It’s the programming that gets kids excited about different topics and helps them figure out what they want to do and what interests them and supports them. It is senior programs, right? It’s adult programming and after-school programming. I think that people just don’t realize the deep, deep impact museums have on the communities that they serve.

NR: I totally agree with that. That’s one of the things that we always are trying to talk about with our community and leaders too, is that the museum is so much more than just the brick-and-mortar walking in the door. You know, there’s probably 60 to 80 percent more happening behind the scenes. That’s, you know, our sector.

MJ: At the Museum of Science and Industry, they started a teacher training program because the museum realized that only 30 or 40 percent of middle school science teachers had a background in science and they were forced into teaching science. They didn’t have a clue what they were doing. So we started a teacher training program with funding from a foundation. For ten months, teachers would come to the museum once a month and learn how to teach science. They learned how to do experiments in their classrooms and they were given the tools and equipment to make science education engaging. That is such a huge educational service that one museum was providing for teachers in the Chicago metro area.

NR: Well, the theme of this year’s Annual Meeting is health and wellbeing, which touches on some of the ways that museums impact our communities. What role do you think that museums play in society?

MJ: I think they’re really big community assets. I think each institution plays a different role, whether it’s cultural preservation or exploration of arts or science. I think that museums are community anchors and we need to celebrate that more. We really started working on that at the Ali Center because we really wanted the community to be part of his institution. So we changed how we operated locally. You know, I say to museum directors, you turn on the lights every day, whether there’s ten people in the building or there are ten thousand. So on the days that you know that there’s only going to be ten, how else can the community use the space in the building? And I think there’s a lot of creative ways to make your institution more deeply embedded in your community, which helps to generate the support needed to raise money.

NR: I remember earlier on in your hiring process you were talking about a great example of exactly what you’re talking about, where sometimes we as museum folks get fixated on charging for things and [extracting] value, and we’re not necessarily very fluid. And you gave an example of a time where you opened up the Ali Center to groups for free, but then were able to make much more of that. Could you give that example?

MJ: We had a stakeholder and donor who is dyslexic, and her son is also dyslexic. She got involved with an international dyslexic organization that provides free training for parents and teachers to identify and help students who are dyslexic learn to read. Muhammad was dyslexic. He didn’t realize until he was an adult, which is why high school was very, very challenging for him. So we got involved in this program with them. A few months later, I was at a university football game and I started talking to this woman who started a nonprofit that provides free one-on-one tutoring for children who have been identified as dyslexic and can’t afford private services. And I asked her, “What’s your biggest impediment to growth?” And she said, “Space.” And I was like, “Well, we’ve got lots of space.” So I’m very proud to say that today, Monday through Thursdays from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., kids get tutored at the Ali Center in classrooms that were previously empty. She’s doubled the number of students that she’s serving.

NR: And you also were able to raise some funds.

MJ: Yes, so the local dyslexic education program was supported by the community foundation, and we eventually were able to secure support from them. In addition, this particular donor that asked us to get involved with this international dyslexia program made a three-year commitment and tripled her gift.

NR: I just love that example so much, because I feel like we sometimes get really frozen at what we think that we can or should be doing with our spaces or allowing things to happen. Really just living your mission and being a community space, the dollars can follow when people see the really great work.

This is a really broad question, but can you tell us some of the biggest trends and challenges that you see facing our field?

MJ: Funding. Unless you’re an institution that has some five-hundred-million-dollar endowment, you struggle. We’re all struggling to raise the funds to do what we want do. And our mission is telling us that we should be delivering to our community.

Training is also a challenge—I didn’t really see that until I went to a smaller city where I didn’t have the luxury of hiring people who had museum backgrounds. And so every person that came into a new role, I had to say, “I know you are a fundraiser at a social services organization, but this is different.” “I know that you were a marketer at a different organization, but this is different.’” Really providing training so that people can understand the nuances of the work that they need to do in a museum setting [is essential].

NR: So what are some of the main challenges and opportunities you see for AAM?

MJ: It’s growing our membership. It’s making sure that we are providing the best possible value proposition to our membership. We’ve learned that our membership is looking for training and professional development. And I think we have the resources and the experienced volunteers to be able to offer that in a real way. Not like in an academic way, but boots on the ground. I want to see how we can galvanize and collect our community to be able to help support each other. And I know that that’s what people love about coming to this conference.

NR: Absolutely. So, AAM is 118 years old, which is pretty amazing. When you’re leading a long-running organization like AAM, how do you foster innovation? How do you get that continued change and refresh?

MJ: I think it’s keeping up with the trends and also opening ourselves up to critique. That’s what I plan to do over the next six months is really hear from you all about what we can be doing better and then figuring out how we deliver on that. And I think the organization has done a really good job moving a lot of our learning and content development online. But I think that there’s probably ways that we can deliver it with new digital platforms.

NR: You probably haven’t had much time to really think about it, but [in the museum field] there’s a large national organization, there’s state organizations, there’s regional organizations. What’s the difference that you see [between them], and how can they also work together?

MJ: I’m starting to meet with some of those organizations, like the Association of Science and Technology Centers and the state associations and regional associations. But I’d like to see if AAM can provide an umbrella and work with these organizations to lift the sector. These organizations are great at what they do. They’re serving the specific needs of their specific audience, but there’s a lot of things that as an industry we can do together. We have to raise our profile in this country and put museums on the platform that they deserve to be on.

I’m happy to take questions from the audience if you have any.

Attendee 1: Yesterday in your talk you mentioned an upcoming strategic plan. Have you started to think about that?

MJ: What I’ve been thinking about is the process, not what the plan looks like. Because I think that the strategic plan should really be not what we think that you guys need, but what you say your needs are. I really would like it to be a community-led, a membership-led, strategic plan process. And that’s the process that I’m hoping that we are able to undertake to really get the feedback from you all, because that’s the way it’s going to resonate with the entire sector.

Attendee 2: Our question has to do with us being a conservatory. There’s not a big conversation [in the broader field] around the environmentalist aspect of being a green space or nature center. Do you all see that getting entered into the chat, just in terms of the sustainability [issues] that I feel like all museums and institutions are going to be facing?

MJ: Elizabeth Merritt on our team is doing a lot of work around the future of museums and the climate crisis. And I think some of that is coming into play. Better understanding the responsibility of museums to be green spaces, to be as energy-efficient as they can be—these are questions that a lot of our institutions are grappling with right now. I’d liked to see if we can partner with other organizations like the American Public Gardens Association and give them a platform to share their knowledge while we focus on the common themes of fundraising, membership, and exhibits, and that’s where I think that our strength as an organization is.

But you know, the best way to ensure that what you want is presented by AAM is to volunteer. Submit an Alliance Blog or Museum magazine pitch, start a Museum Junction thread, propose an Annual Meeting session, or apply to be on the Content Advisory Committee that shapes the content that is presented at the conference the next time we do an open call.

Attendee 3: I’m with Every Museum a Civic Museum and what I’m hearing is sometimes the word “museum” is a block, so that’s one thing. As a former member of EdCom, we want so much for you to succeed, so finding those former leaders where there is positive hope for the future, please reach out to us.

MJ: Thank you, I will.

Attendee 4: I have a comment related to what everyone else is talking about, but this time focused on small museums, which are the majority category for museums in this country. So I’m just urging you to think about how you can be inclusive to small museums when it comes to price point, training, annual meetings as well. There’s myself and others who are happy to have that conversation.

MJ: Ok, awesome, thank you!

Attendee 5: I’m with MuseumHue and we’re offering fellowships to arts organizations of color in New York City and capturing the data to understand how arts funding in New York is really inequitable and supporting them to get more funding. Right now we’re also embarking on museum colors starting in the Northeast, so I think similar to how we were talking about small museums, it’s important to focus on them as well. I don’t have a question, I just want you to be aware of it in the larger field.

MJ: Thank you.