Open Forum

In this second step in our series, Micah Parzen, CEO of the Museum of Us (San Diego, California) will lead a webinar/workshop combo to share his recent work on the creation of a human-centered workplace. In the first part, he will share his vision and what he has learned through several recent workshops on this matter. In the second part, he will lead a conversation with participants based on his evaluation of the questions that matter as they emerged through these workshops.

This workshop will focus on, 1) the need for a human-centered workplace turn in the museum field; 2) how some museums are already making that turn; and 3) examples of what that looks like in practice. Attendees will have an opportunity to share human-centered shifts their organizations have made (or that they wish they would make!) as well as the main obstacles for doing so.

Micah Parzen is an experienced museum leader, anthropologist, and attorney. He has served as CEO of the Museum of Us (formerly the San Diego Museum of Man) since 2010, where he and his team are focused on developing better practices in what an anti-racist and decolonial museum can look like. The work of the Museum of Us has been featured in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Museum magazine, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic, among other high-profile media platforms. In addition to practicing employment law for many years, Dr. Parzen is a psychological and medical anthropologist. A frequent keynote speaker on human-centered work in museums, he holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Case Western Reserve University, a J.D. from UC Davis, and a B.A. in Anthropology from UC Berkeley.

In addition to developing a more human-centered workplace at the Museum of Us over the past few years, he has presented a variety of workshops on how other organizations can do the same. The Museum of Us also recently submitted an IMLS National Leadership grant application designed to catalyze a human-centered workplace turn in the museum field.