Featured In: Mentoring Up, Down, and Sideways: Reciprocity and Care in the Museum Education Field

Thank you Ashley Mask for interviewing me and Sierra Van Ryck deGroot about our peer mentorship relationship. Our interview alongside others, provide a wonderful reflection on what mentorship can look like to meet a variety of needs. Ashley’s article Mentoring Up, Down, and Sideways: Reciprocity and Care in the Museum Education Field can be found in the Journal of Museum Education, Volume 48, Issue 4 (2023).

Featured In: The “Passion Tax” is History

“As more and more history sector workplaces unionize, the “Passion Tax”—the price a worker in history pays in exchange for the privilege of working in the field—might become a thing of the past.”
— Elizabeth Blasius

A huge thank you to Elizabeth Blasius for amplifying the work of labor advocates in the cultural resource field. It is an honor to be included in The “Passion Tax” is History article on MAS Context. I hope you will take a moment to read the full article.

Featured In: House Calls by Anya Davidson

Carla Bruni has been a consistent catalyst for positive shifts in historic preservation - in Chicago, and beyond. She is OFFICIALLY a comic super hero. “House Calls” by Anya Davidson takes us on a short journey as Carla gives a compelling argument for preservation as an affordable housing tool. It’s an honor to be featured in the comic alongside Tonika Johnson and Shermann “Dilla” Thomas as an innovative preservationist.

You can buy a digital or physical issue of Newcity October 2023 Issue: Chicago Architecture Biennial on newcityshop.com.

Quoted In: Pay Transparency - Does mandatory disclosure of salaries reduce inequity? REPORT

It was a pleasure to be interviewed by Urooj Naveed for her report co-written with Tasmiha Khan about compensation transparency.

“Companies are facing a crescendo of calls for greater transparency about their pay levels, as local, regional and national governments enact laws designed to increase the visibility of salary rates. Pay transparency laws typically fall into three categories: prohibiting companies from banning salary discussions among ...” Click link to continue reading

Sick of Unpaid Internships?

Looking to advocate against unpaid internships? Here are some materials I’ve found to help people understand the importance of compensating interns; I’ll be sharing more information and advocacy strategies soon.

  • Unpaid internships benefit those who can afford to work for free, which means they benefit the few instead of the many (Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions)

  • Perpetuates wage gap (Washington Post)

  • Depreciates ALL cultural heritage workers at all levels - the work we do and our wages (Harvard Business Review)

  • Unpaid interns are not protected by labor laws, specifically ones for sexual harassment/gender discrimination. Even if an intern is getting credit, if the position is unpaid they are not protected by labor laws. (National Council on Public History)

  • An unpaid summer internship for credit costs a student on average $6,000+. The student loan crisis impacts cultural resource workers and many have to take on additional debt to do unpaid labor. That $6,000 with interest can quickly increase. (Money.com)

  • "Unpaid internships also raise issues of fairness, equity and potential exploitation simply because most college students cannot afford to forgo a paying job or go deeper into debt simply to burnish their resumes." (Forbes)

  • The data does not lie! Here is what Pay Our Interns have found in their research! 

    • "2 Million: The estimated number of people who intern in the U.S. each year."

    • "6% to 8% of Black and Latinx students have paid internship experience, compared to 74% of their white peers."

    • "50% More Job Offers: Paid interns received 50% more job offers compared to unpaid interns or those who have never interned"

    • "6 out of 10 employers prefer hiring a candidate with work experience such as internships. In the 1970s, 3 out of 4 jobs required a high school education or less."

    • "80% of students in college are working part-time jobs to pay for their living expenses."

  • The January 19, 2023 Memorandum for Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies sent by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and the Office of Management and Budget. "Agencies are encouraged to expand their overall number of interns while increasing the number of paid interns and reducing reliance on unpaid interns, consistent with applicable laws."

House where King planned Alabama marches moving to Michigan

Athena F. Richardson, M.A. and I believe that it it is a privilege to support someone's dream and we have been honored to support Jawana Jackson's. Since 2021, I have worked alongside Athena F. Richardson to support Jawana Jackson as she explored how the Jackson Home and her family’s story should/could be preserved. We examined every option possible to achieve Jawana’s goals of using the home and its contents as an international educational tool for social innovation and civil rights history.

Jawana spoke, shared, and maintained laser focus on her dream. Athena and I listened, researched, and worked with Jawana to create “the blueprint” to find the next caretaker of the Jackson Home. We reached out to Katherine White*, Curator of Design at the Henry Ford to start a conversation and now we have made history. Please take the time out of your busy schedules to learn about the Jackson Home's history and its future.


*+ a fellow alumni of Eastern Michigan University’s Historic Preservation program.