Consulting Services
Marsha offers a few broad consulting categories from which to start, then customizes every engagement to meet the specific needs and desires of each client. As Marsha has said, “Challenges are complex and multi-dimensional; people are too.” Through her teaching, facilitating, and speaking, Marsha strives to equip people to leverage each of their best selves for the greater good.
Through-lines of Marsha’s consulting practice include thriving in the midst of our VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) environment, maximizing personal potential to strengthen impact in an organization and in a community, and the importance of listening, exploring, and experimenting. She adeptly integrates with client teams, contributing her competencies and complementing those of organizational staff, volunteers, and participants.
Having served in leadership roles within government agencies, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations, Marsha appreciates the essentiality of a healthy financial picture. She firmly believes that adaptive leadership, a long-term investment in responding to the needs and interests of community members and staff at every level, combined with authentic and consistent efforts toward change, can ensure financial stability.
-
Rising leaders — no matter how naturally gifted — flourish when provided with opportunities to strengthen their sense of agency. Marsha’s customizable leadership development programs enable employees who desire growth to improve their self-awareness, to identify and sharpen their strengths, and to gain resources and community that will support them as they seek to support others.
Marsha develops curricula for cohorts within or across organizations, and facilitates flexibly to suit the ever-evolving chemistry of each group. After the completion of each leadership development program, Marsha strives to stay in touch with participants on an as-needed basis as a resource for continued support.
-
Marsha offers instruction on subjects central to her books and experience — starting from the framework below and customizable to apply to any sector or situation. Students are invited to bring real-life challenges to class for reflection and workshopping.
Partnership & Collaboration: Explore the ways that partnerships and collaborations can both support an organization’s mission and purpose and provide greater public value to its audiences and publics. Special emphasis is given to the ways that current societal trends and recent research on problem-solving and impact call for more of a systems approach and a focus on collective practice among diverse public and private organizations, including but not limited to museums, libraries, and other cultural institutions. Participants also explore elements of successful partnerships and collaborations.
Fundraising & Development: Gain an overview of the philanthropic sector and its relationship to cultural and other nonprofit organizations. Course material includes current trends in philanthropy and fundraising, categories of public and private funders, creating a case for support, evaluation and metrics, and a comprehensive introduction to grant writing.
Leadership Development & Managing Change: When change is the only constant, the ability to manage and lead through it will differentiate the leaders of the future. Combining inward-facing reflection and outward-looking skills and strategies, curriculum equips professionals to maximize their strengths, identify and address adaptive challenges, and move organizations forward in positive and inclusive ways.
-
Marsha brings her insights to audiences at conferences, retreats, association meetings, educational institutions, and community gatherings — through keynotes, as a panel participant, or as a discussion facilitator. Common themes include the relevance of cultural organizations, the primacy of managing change, flexible strategy and adaptive leadership, empowering staff, and forging successful partnerships and collaborations.
Semmel’s work since 2002, when she became the first director of strategic partnerships for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, has been characterized by a seemingly inexhaustible curiosity about the future of our field and an ability to consume and synthesize reams of data. She gathers ideas across disciplines and cross-pollinates as she goes.
-Ben Garcia, Executive Director, American LGBTQ+ Museum
