While Marsha built her career and scholarship primarily in the museum space, she applies her practice of border bending across disciplines. Knowing that the principles of partnership, coalition building, and public innovation apply to many fields, Marsha offers consulting services to organizations and individuals committed to community empowerment, social justice, and forward progress.

Marsha’s experience spans the public, private, and non-profit sectors. She has served as Special Initiatives Advisor to the National Endowment for the Humanities; Senior Adviser to the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement; and Senior Adviser to the Noyce Leadership Institute.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services benefitted from Marsha’s leadership from 2003 to 2013. She nurtured and supported public programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities for more than a decade prior. Marsha held executive positions at Conner Prairie, “Indiana’s Living History Museum,” and the Women of the West Museum in Denver, eventually steering that organization through a successful merger with the Autry Museum of the American West. From 2015 to 2022, Marsha served as Adjunct Faculty for the Bank Street College Graduate program in Leadership in Museum Education Program.

Now, Marsha serves as a founding faculty member of the Southeastern Museum Conference Leadership Institute — a professional development program supporting diversity and inclusion, which was developed in partnership with the Association of African American Museums. She is also faculty for Arlington County Virginia’s Center for Leadership Excellence. Marsha is doubly engaged with the Smithsonian Institution: she contributes training and facilitation services to the Smithsonian Affiliations through its Visiting Professionals program, and is part of a team developing and implementing career development support for emerging museum, archives, and academic professionals working in HBCUs through the National Museum of African American History and Culture/HBCU History and Culture Access Consortium.

Marsha’s current board service includes the Council for American Jewish Museums, the Planet Word Museum in Washington, DC, the Jewish Museum of Maryland in Baltimore, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Arlington, Virginia.

A longtime member and recognized “positive turbulator” of the international Association for Managers of Innovation, a nonprofit comprising individuals who foster and leverage creativity in organizations and society, Marsha remains an active, imaginative, and curious learner. She stays current with trends in cultural organizations, philanthropy, leadership, and workplace practice and feeds her passions for public innovation, racial justice, and equity for all people.

Marsha’s neighbors know her as a familiar face outside of their local polling place and in attendance at many local cultural events. She takes seriously her own community participation, valuing Arlington County’s commitment to creating a just and equitable community for all residents.

Learning to ask questions is far more important than acquiring answers.

- Marsha Semmel in Partnership Power

Marsha Semmel is a powerhouse in the world of museums, libraries, national cultural policy and program development, philanthropy and the development and implementation of strategic public/private partnerships. Marsha is opening a door to a new way of thinking about museums and museum experiences. In doing so she’s signaling that the cultural changes we are seeing in the world are going to force us to change how we do a lot of things. Through effective partnerships to support, broaden, and evolve our approaches for how we learn, Marsha sees big opportunities for libraries and museums to play in the education space.

-Rob Brodnick, Ph.D., Founder of Sierra Learning Solutions and Host of Positive Turbulence Podcast