SEMC Leadership Institute: Leading for Today’s Challenges

The Southeastern Museum Conference (SEMC) offers a professional development program for future museum leaders that supports diversity and inclusion. 

Proudly developed in partnership with the Association of African American Museums (AAAM), this program is focused on leadership training for staff of small- and mid-sized institutions.

The 2024 Leadership Institute: Leading for Today’s Challenges aims to equip a new generation of museum leaders with outward-looking skills and strategies that increase their effectiveness as leaders and ability to create a productive and inclusive environment within the museum and among the museum’s board.

OBJECTIVES

The Southeastern Museums Conference Leadership Institute will develop a diverse and inclusive group of future museum leaders who:

• Can identify and build on their existing personal strengths

• Assess how to maximize these strengths internally in an organization and externally as part of a community

• Identify methods to capitalize on their strengths and their environment to move an institution forward

CURRICULUM AREAS

The curriculum, taught by leaders in their fields, covers six areas:

• Reflecting Your Best Self*

• Building Inclusive Cultures

• Strategic Communication and Thinking

• Leadership Challenges

• Adaptive Leadership

• Creating Your Best Self as an Organization

*Using the Reflective Best Self Tool

Meet the Leadership Institute Faculty.

2024 Institute Schedule (TBC)

The Institute will take place April 7-12, 2024 at the The Galt House Hotel in Louisville, KY. A sample schedule is below:

Sunday April 7

1-4pm: Introduction and Reflecting Your Best Self

4-5pm: Reflection Exercise

Monday April 8

9am-12pm: Digging Deeper into Reflecting Your Best Self

12pm-1pm: Lunch Break (lunch provided)

1pm-4pm: Leadership Challenges

4pm-5pm: Reflection Work

Tuesday April 9

9am-12pm: Strategic Communication and Thinking

12pm-1pm: Lunch Break (lunch provided)

1pm-4pm: Building Inclusive Cultures

4pm-5pm: Reflection Work

Wednesday April 10

9am-12pm: Adaptive Leadership

12pm-1pm: Lunch Break (lunch provided)

1pm-4pm: Reflecting Your Organization’s Best Self - Board Governance and Organizational Lifecycle

4pm-5pm: Reflection Work

6pm-8pm: Louisville Museums visit and dinner 

Thursday April 11

9am-12pm: Strategic Visioning and Planning

12pm-1pm: Lunch Break (lunch provided)

1pm-3pm: Reflecting Your Organization’s Best Self - Fundraising

3pm-5pm: Reflecting Your Organization’s Best Self - Guest Panel and reception

7pm: Closing Banquet Dinner 

Friday April 12

9am-12pm: Closing Reflections - Evaluative Thinking and Action Plan

The 2024 Leadership Institute tuition is $1,500 for SEMC and AAAM members and $1,600 for non-members. Tuition included all instruction,  Institute resources, and registration to the SEMC2024 Annual Meeting in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Meals (other than those noted below) and lodging at the The Galt House Hotel are not included in tuiton. The 2024 Leadership Institute room rate is $166 per night + tax. Daily lunch and a closing banquet dinner are included. Restaurants and grocery stores are a short walk from the The Galt House.

The Institute will also include daily coffee, morning and afternoon snacks, a reception with guest panelists (bar/lite bites) and a closing dinner.

Galt House Hotel, Louisville, Kentucky

The inaugural SEMC Leadership Institute - Leading for Today’s Challenges - ran as a virtual program November 8 - 20, 2020.

Meet the inaugural Leadership Institute Class of 2020

2020 Virtual Leadership Institute Cohort 

Read what members of the 2020 Leaderhship Institute cohort had to say about their experience!

"My Institute experience gave me confidence and empowered me. I now have the tools to make my professional challenges work for me rather than against me."

"I feel more confident in knowing what makes me by best self and am also leading my team to have opportunities to be their best selves."

"The Leadership experience gave me the power to think bigger about my working relatioships and be less affected by pettiness."

"I can better diagnose strengths and weaknesses in my organization, understand the phases of wehre we are and identify areas that need to be addressed. I feel better equipped to make positive changes."

"I loved the instructors and they fit perfectly together. They introduced a culture of positivity and lifting each other up. That's not an across-the-board standard."

SEMC is grateful for the support of our generous sponsors and partners for the

Leadership Institute