Job Description

Position Overview

The Vice President of Exhibits is a critical position for GLSC in this time of growth. The organization is in the middle of a comprehensive campaign that includes the renovation of flagship galleries. The Vice President will lead the way in developing new exhibitions and improving exhibit experiences in ways that are mission-centric and field-leading. This position gives the ideal candidate a platform to help set the organization’s direction and deepen its impact for generations to come, positioning GLSC as a leader among science centers. The ideal candidate is an experienced creator of audience-focused interactive STEM exhibits, with a proven track record in the field, and a positive approach to team-building and collaboration. The candidate should value working and leading in an environment that fosters a sense of fun, community service, and data-driven decision making. This is an opportunity to join a mission-oriented, experienced, and passionate leadership team that is successfully completing a comprehensive campaign, and actively envisioning the opportunities ahead as Cleveland transforms its downtown lakefront. Application details are available at (url removed)

Responsibilities:

The Vice President of Exhibits leads and develops a passionate team of exhibit professionals that maintain, repair, improve, and develop a compelling range of interactive exhibits in strong alignment with GLSC’s guiding principles and mission. As such, the ideal candidate will have experience with, and will be enthusiastic about, creating exhibit experiences that are open-ended, require persistence, and reward collaboration. These exhibit experiences should focus on helping children and their families see themselves as people who can do STEM, as a future career pathway or as an important way to enrich their lives. These exhibit experiences should be robust enough to inspire family conversations and change behaviors.

The Vice President will be called upon to inspire, develop and manage an excellent team. The ideal candidate will be an effective coach. They will communicate clearly with staff, inspiring them to do good work, stay within budgets, grow as a professional, collaborate effectively with all other departments, and to meet deadlines. The Vice President must lead the team in effectively and creatively project managing across constant maintenance and improvement of existing exhibits, creating new exhibitions, and collaborating with partners and experts on the long-term vision.

The ideal candidate is expert at developing and growing partnerships internally and externally. The Vice President of Exhibits will work closely with the Vice President of Education in order to ensure that exhibit experiences are connected or relevant to programs for families, students, and teachers. Identification and development of important content for learning experiences across the organization must be a collaborative and flexible process across the departments.

The Vice President must lead the way in creating a collaborative process. Exhibit development teams will include educators, science communicators, and science experts from the organization as well as external content experts. The exhibit development and design process will prioritize early prototyping and ongoing evaluation in collaboration with the education team, and one that also keeps in mind the needs of the marketing, operations, and development teams. The ideal candidate will be an effective communicator at every level of the organization and with external partners. The ideal candidate will also be comfortable being directly involved in the development team’s fundraising efforts, and will have had prior experience with raising revenue for exhibits.

Reporting Relationships

The Vice President of Education will report to and work closely with the President & CEO, Dr. Kirsten Ellenbogen. For almost thirty years, she has been in the business of researching, developing, and leading learning experiences in science centers and other informal learning environments. In her work as the third President & CEO of GLSC, she has launched transformative strategic partnerships with education and corporate leaders to change the community’s narrative around advanced manufacturing and technology through STEM education for diverse middle-school youth and families. She began her work in museums at the Detroit Science Center as a Demonstrator and has worked at five museums and consulted for more than thirty. Her career is marked by extensive national collaborations and field-building activities with the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Foundation. Her service in the community includes appointments to the North Coast Development Corporation and the Cleveland Water Alliance, where she serves as board chair.

The Vice President’s peers include the Vice Presidents of Development, Operations, and Education, as well as the Director of Finance, and the Senior Manager of Human Resources. The Exhibit Department includes positions in production, development, maintenance, and design.

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice.