We’re excited to introduce our #AAM2017 Social Media Journalists. You may recognize each of them from their ongoing contributions to conversations around race, LGBTQ rights, and gender issues in museums. They’ll be important contributors in engaging discussions around the Annual Meeting theme,  Gateways for Understanding: Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion in Museums.

If you’re coming to St. Louis and you see them running around Tweeting, Facebooking, and Instagramming stop and say hi! If you can’t join us in person, follow them on social media using #AAM2017 #AAMSMJ to follow discussions around the theme and don’t forget to add your voice to the conversation.

#AAM2017 Social Media Journalists

Dr. Suse Anderson

Follow Suse @shineslike.

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Dr. Suse Anderson is assistant professor, museum studies at The George Washington University. Prior to joining GW, Anderson was director of audience experience at The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), where she was responsible for creating a seamless and positive experience of the BMA for visitors to the museum and across its digital platforms. For close to a decade, her research and professional focus has been on the intersection of technology and culture, and particularly the impact of digital technologies on the museum. She has explored these topics through her blog, and on the Museopunks podcast–the podcast for the progressive museum (Winner 2014 Best of the Web – Museum Professionals). Since 2014, Suse has also been co-editor for CODE | WORDS: Technology and theory in the museum, an online experiment in online publishing and discourse (now a book, and in its second iteration).

Anderson holds a PhD (Creative Arts) and a BFA (Hons – 1st class, Faculty Medal), both from The University of Newcastle, Australia, and a BArts (Comms – Journalism) from Charles Sturt University, Australia.

Aleia Brown

Follow Aleia @CollardStudies.

Dr. Aleia Brown holds a joint appointment at the Michigan State University Museum and the Michigan State University Department of History. She is also the co-founder of two digital humanities projects #museumsrespondtoferguson and #BlkTwitterstorians.

Janeen Bryant

Follow Janeen @1Facilitateher.

Janeen Bryant is an inter-sectional educator, facilitator and non-profit consultant. She presents across the country on topics ranging from authentic community building, creating relationships across difference, attracting new audiences, empathy in museums and critical conversations for internal development. Janeen also conceptualized and implemented the Listening Sessions model used by Levine Museum in projects including the reconceptualization of Without Sanctuary, LGBTQ Perspectives on Equality and most notably on the Latino New South Project that ultimately became NUEVOlution.

Susan Ferentinos

Follow Susan @HistorySue and @ncwhs.

Susan Ferentinos is a public history researcher, writer, and consultant specializing in project management for historical organizations and inclusive interpretation and historic preservation. Her clients include the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH); Blithewold Mansion, Gardens, and Arboretum (Rhode Island); Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site (New York); Indiana Historical Society; the Woodlands
National Historic Landmark (Pennsylvania); and various programs of the National Park Service, among others.

In 2016, she served as the acting Executive Director of the National Council on Public History (the major professional society in the field of public history) while their permanent director was on leave. Prior to opening her own consultancy in 2012, Susan served for nearly ten years as the public history manager at the Organization of American Historians (OAH), the largest professional society dedicated to US history. She is the author of Interpreting LGBT History at Museums and Historic Sites (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), which won the 2016 National Council on Public History book award.

Gretchen Jennings

Follow Gretchen @gretchjenn.

Gretchen Jennings has worked in or with art, science, and history museums since the 1980s. She has been an educator, exhibit project director, and administrator. She edited the Journal of Museum Education in 1990s and Exhibitionist, the NAME‘s magazine, from 2007-14. Gretchen is active on Twitter and Facebook, and she also enjoys blogging.

Julia Kennedy

Follow Julia @msjskennedy.

Julia Kennedy works with the marketing and audience development teams for Museum Hack. She also moderates the #EMPchat hashtag on twitter to provide resources and a place for discussion for Emerging Museum Professionals. Julia has an MA in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester where she focused her research on how policy and perception influence museum-school collaborations.

Mark Masuoka

Follow Mark @markmasuoka.

With nearly 30 years of leadership experience, Mark Masuoka has successfully led non-profit art organizations and businesses in achieving exceptional performance, profitability, and sustainability. As the executive director and CEO of the Akron Art Museum, he utilizes his three decades of arts management, marketing, and community development experience to transform a 95-year old institution into a 21st-century organization.

Originally from Honolulu, Hawaii, Mark Masuoka earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Hawaii in 1983 and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan in 1987.

Mark is a member of the Association of Art Museum Directors and has served as an advisor and panelist for the Alliance of Artists Communities, Joyce Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, USA Artists, and National Endowment for the Arts. He has also served on the board of directors for the Las Vegas Arts Commission, Omaha Chamber of Commerce, Alliance of Artists Communities, Omaha Public Art Commission, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and the Akron Round Table.

Margaret Middleton

Follow Margaret @magmidd.

Margaret Middleton is an independent exhibit designer based in Providence Rhode Island, working at the intersection of design and social justice. She has a background in industrial design and has worked in the museum field for over 10 years. Margaret volunteers with the New England Museum Association and is on the board of directors for the Museum Education Roundtable which publishes the Journal of Museum Education.

Saleem Hue Penny

Follow Saleem @huedotart.

Saleem Hue Penny oversees a range of access and inclusion programs as the associate vice president of community & educational partnerships at Chicago Children’s Museum. Saleem is also a Chicago-based ‘rural hip hop blues’ artist, with strong ties to Pisgah Forest, North Carolina, and deep roots in Monck’s Corner, South Carolina. On weekends, he is a volunteer hospital magician with Open Heart Magic providing 1-on-1 therapeutic
bedside magic to hospitalized children on Chicago’s South Side.

Adrianne Russell

Follow Adrianne @adriannerussell.

Adrianne Russell is a museum educator, writer, nonprofit consultant, and co-founder of the digital humanities project #MuseumsRespondtoFerguson. She has written about the intersections of art, race, gender, equity, and culture for Temporary Art Review, Fusion, Smithsonian Magazine and her blog Cabinet of Curiosities.

Aletheia Wittman

Follow Aletheia @AletheiaJane.

Aletheia Wittman cofounded and coordinates The Incluseum, a project and blog that advances new ways of being a museum through critical discourse, community building and collaborative practice related to inclusion in museums. Aletheia is currently collections interpreter for the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle, Washington. From 2012-2016 Aletheia worked as exhibit and public programs manager for the Seattle Architecture Foundation (SAF).

She is on the advisory team for MASS Action (Museums As A Site for Social Action) with the Minneapolis Institute of Art and is a chair for the American Alliance of Museums Diversity Committee. She has worked on projects with the Museums & Race Initiative and All Rise Seattle among others. Aletheia has an MA Museology from the University of Washington where she researched emerging curatorial practices in art museums and their relationship with social justice. Aletheia uses she/her pronouns.