Capacity Building & Team Management

In my various roles at Shedd Aquarium, I consistently needed to wear multiple hats-that of a supervisor to field team members and project manager and stakeholder partner. With a growing demand for evaluation, my department also operated under a mandate to grow a team and our internal evaluation capacity. I met these needs by balancing personal relationships and developing clear systems and processes. To grow a field team, I developed external recruiting tools and resources, authored various standardized trainings, and developed a robust onboarding process for new staff, interns, and volunteers. These tools and processes ensured robust professional development experiences, and conveyed clear expectations and internal best practices. Standard processes and resources also freed my personal bandwidth to connect with team members, understand their needs, and who they were as professionals and individuals. Similarly, to streamline work with stakeholders I developed various project management tools and systems-an evaluation request form and department project gantt charts for instance. Having clear processes and tools in place allowed myself and team members to connect with stakeholders more readily, to understand their programs more fully, and act as collaborators. See the some of the tools below that exemplify this work.

Infographics and presentations like this were useful in contextualizing the department's work for new team members and introducing internal stakeholders to project phases for those that were new to evaluation processes.

The two protocols above are examples of the standardized trainings I developed while at Shedd Aquarium. Following a gradual release model, various activities and practice sessions allowed new team members to grow knowledge and skills under the tutelage of their trainer. Skills-based trainings, like the Interview Training above, included a rubric which outlined expectations and best practices and would be used to assess trainee skills. The Human Subjects Protection & IRB training is an example of a foundational training I developed. During these trainings new team members would engage with various internal resources and external content to grow foundational knowledge about research & evaluation practices.

Associated Presentations & Publications

What Do You Do Again?” Framing Evaluation for Museum Staff
- Round table discussion facilitated at 2019 Visitor Studies Association conference, Detroit, MI

Research and Evaluation Opportunities for Undergraduate Students at Shedd Aquarium
- Panel presentation at the 2018 Visitor Studies Association conference, Chicago, IL

Recruiting, Training, and Maintaining Research and Evaluation Volunteers
- Full day workshop presented at the 2017 Visitor Studies Association conference, Columbus OH
- Full day workshop presented at the 2016 Visitor Studies Association conference, Boston, MA
- Half-day workshop presented at the 2015 Visitor Studies Association conference, Indianapolis, IN

Museum Research Methods as Authentic Assessment in your Context
- Full-day workshop accepted at the 2015 Opening Minds Conference, Chicago, IL

Co-opting an App to Build Capacity
- Paper presented at the 2014 Visitor Studies Association conference, Albuquerque, NM

Telling the Mighty Acorns Story: Using Authentic Assessment to Capture Meaningful Stories
- Mini workshop for Mighty Acorns Spring 2014 Partner Meeting