Since the announcement of the fellowship, I have been researching and working to pull together a work plan for my project centered around board diversity in Virginia institutions.
After conferring with my fellowship mentor Karen Daly, VAM Board Member and Director of Dumbarton House, I decided to narrow the focus of my project. My goal is to work with local historic house museums to survey and understand their board recruitment, succession planning and strategy in the hopes of creating a dialogue surrounding board diversity and inclusion at smaller institutions.
This approach was further solidified after attending a meeting of the VAM Executive Board on January 9, 2020 at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. At the session, I had the chance to sit in on the Leadership and Development Subcommittee meeting and observe "behind-the-scenes" what criteria museum boards look at when working to fill vacant positions, the importance of relationship building, which will all feed into my research into board diversity initiatives in VA Historic House Museums.
