LESLIE BEDFORD

Leslie Bedford specializes in professional development for museum staff. She collaborates with senior management and experts from various fields to develop the requisite skills and habits of thought that can move an institution forward.
Selected projects include:

• Planning and facilitating with senior staff a seven-session professional development program for mid-level managers at the Boston Children’s Museum. The BCM Institute focuses on strategic thinking, internal and external collaboration, creative problem solving and other skills for the 21st century professional.

• Helping to design a museum professional development institute, spearheaded by the Smithsonian Institution, for the Abu Dhabi Agency for the Development of Cultural Heritage and located in the Middle East.

• Collaborating with senior management team at Old Sturbridge Village to identify new visions and strategies for programming.

• Co-facilitating two years of in-service training designed to turn selected Philadelphia-area history museum staff into expert exhibition developers.

• Working with Facing History and Ourselves to first create and then redesign Choosing to Participate, an award-winning traveling exhibition that vastly expanded this educational organization’s national outreach. 

• Advising the Dutchess County Historical Society and Mid-Hudson Children’s Museum on their new partnership for innovative family programming.

• Managing and mentoring the cross-divisional team at the American Museum of Natural History charged with creating a new Family Discovery Center.

Dr. Bedford’s commitment to continuous organizational learning reflects her rich staff experience at the Boston Children’s Museum and Brooklyn Historical Society, twelve years as a senior consultant with The Museum Group, and ten years as director of the Leadership in Museum Education Program at Bank Street College. A graduate of Vassar College and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she attended the Getty Leadership Institute and received her PhD in Museum Studies from Union Institute and University.

Leslie Bedford
52 Charles Street
New York, NY 10014
212 242-9189 phone
lesliebedford@earthlink.net

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