About

I am an award-winning planner, curator, and designer with over twenty-five years of experience devoted to creating engaging and transformative experiences for visitors.

I believe in the power exhibits and interpretive experiences to shape who we are and how we see our world and each other. These experiences are rooted in human wonder, curiosity, and empathy. They are articulated through rich stories and fleeting encounters, charged with meaning, and felt most profoundly during those moments when our perspective of ourselves and the world shifts and expands in our hearts and minds and beneath our feet.

My approach to exhibit design is a strategic one that is guided by my experience, personal sensibilities, and a devotion to creating engaging and transformative experiences for visitors. My practice is built around defining and refining goals through careful listening and thoughtful questioning while leveraging my own creative and technical expertise to deliver innovative and impactful interpretive solutions.

Experience

Principal, Designer

emDESIGN, New Market MD / 2008 to Present

• Providing creative, curatorial, and consulting services to a variety of museums and other cultural institutions.

• Reserarched exhibition content, developed interpetive themes, and wrote exhibition copy

• Select clients include:

• Paleontological Research Institution’s Museum of the Earth

• Alusiv Inc / Penn Museum of Archeology and Anthropology

• National Museum of Industrial History

• The Mutter Museum

• Da Vinci Science Center

• Please Touch Museum

• Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota

• Great River Children’s Museum

• The Doseum

• St. Luke’s Hospital

• Hugh Moore Historical Park and Museums

Exhibit Designer

National Park Service, Harpers Ferry Center for Media Services

Harpers Ferry WV / 2020-2025

• Provided creative and contract leadership (FAC COR Level II)for NPS interpretive media projects.

• Lead in-house project teams to develop engaging interpretive solutions for media projects.

• Served as project advocate and primary liaison between NPS clients and contractors.

• Provided technical expertise and championed improved  programmatic and physical accessibility across NPS projects.

• Collaborated with NPS staff, subject matter experts, and park stakeholders to develop interpretive goals and themes, review and edit exhibition copy.

• Advised NPS client leadership on interpretive media strategies.

• Developed project briefs, scopes of work, and project solicitations to meet client needs.

• Assessing contractor deliverables from schematic design through production and fabrication to ensure quality and exceed client expectations.

• Lead staff and contractor orientation and training programs.

• NPS entities served include:

• Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

• Haleakalā National Park

• Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park

• Klondike Goldrush National Historical Park

• Stika National Historical Park

• Kenai Fjords National Park

• Joshua Tree National Park

• Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument

Design Director, Experiences / Director, Exhibition Design/ Exhibit Development Manager

National Geographic Society, Washington D.C. / 2017-2020

• Lead a multi-disciplinary team to envision and produce exhibitions and experiences that communicated National Geographic’s mission, highlighted the work of NGS explorers, and compeled people to act.

• Collaborated with a broad array of internal and external partners and stakeholders.

• Coordinated project schedules and budgets across multiple creative disciplines and project conributors.

• Projects include:

• Once Upon a Climb: Stories from Everest

• Becoming Jane: The Evolution of Dr. Jane Goodall

• Women: A Century of Change

• Photo Ark, Southampton Art Center, Southampton NY

• Day to Night: In the Field with Stephen Wilkes

• Queens of Egypt

• Photo Camp, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

• Titanic: The Untold Story

• Photo Ark, Annenberg Space of Photography, LA

• Spinosaurus, Burg Dankwerode, Braunsweig, Germany

Exhibits Production Director

The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA / 2016 to 2017

• Responsible for conceptualization, design, and documentation for temporary and permanent exhibitions.

• Projects include:

• Think Music

• The Franklin Institute Virtual Reality Initiative

• Escape Rooms at the Franklin

• The Elaine and Peter Levitt Gershman Education and Conference Center

Visual Information Specialist (Media Designer)

Contracting Officer’s Representative

National Park Service, Harpers Ferry Design Center

Harpers Ferry WV / 2015 to 2016

• Served as designer and design consultant for a variety of interpretive media projects for NPS sites across the Northeast and National Capital Regions.

• Managed contracts awarded for design and fabrication of interpretive projects.

• NPS entities served include:

• The Elaine and Peter Levitt Gershman Education and Conference Center

• Cape Cod National Seashore

• New Bedford Whaling National Historic Park

• Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River

• US Marine Corps War Memorial

• Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial

Curator  of Exhibitions / Director of Exhibitions

Hugh Moore Historical Park and Museums

Easton, PA / 2004 to 2008

• Served as principal investigator for a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to design and install new interactive science and history exhibits at the National Canal Museum.

• Developed exhibition content, and wrote copy for exhibitions, video, and marketing materials.