Amanda’s interest in museums sparked in middle school when she began traveling with her aunt and expanding her knowledge of the world outside her home in Maryland.

Read more below, in Amanda’s words

I grew up in a rural county in Maryland, so museums were not a part of my early childhood (although there were so many high-quality museums in close vicinity being 45 minutes from Baltimore, and 90 minutes from both Philadelphia and Washington, DC).  My interest in museums was sparked when I began to travel with my aunt when I was around middle-school age. I remember visiting the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and the US Mint in Philadelphia with her; I felt excited to expand my knowledge of the world by exploring these places. The opportunity to travel abroad in middle and high school cemented my interest in museums as conduits to learn about places, people, and eventually myself.  I didn’t necessarily foresee museums as a career path until late in college.  I entered college undeclared, but then became a double major in Art History (because of passion for classes) and Mathematics (because it was an area I always excelled within and was feeling pressure to have what others perceived as “actual career opportunities”).  I never finished the Mathematics degree, but I continued to explore career opportunities in art history.  I held many unpaid internships in museums with the financial help of my family supplemented with a wide range of part-time jobs, including teaching tennis and waiting tables at Cracker Barrel.  (Serendipitously/surprisingly, Cracker Barrel actually connected me with a curatorial internship when I waited on a curator I had met briefly through college!)  

Post undergraduate, I was still unsure about the viability of a museum career but applied for and was awarded a paid internship at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (PGC) in Venice, Italy.  The PGC has a large internship program, and as a cohort of interns, we all had many roles throughout the internship.  One day I was a tour guide, another day a security guard, and yet another day a box office attendant.  Experiencing the many reactions visitors had to me depending on my role in the museum that day was quite visceral.  As an educator largely adored; as a security guard largely loathed (especially when enforcing the bag policy for this small museum); and as a ticket attendant everything from indifferent to indignant (at cost, bag policy, etc.).  The differing reactions of me as a person in various roles intrigued me.  

I couldn’t quite articulate these interests or process their significance until I found a great mentor, Dr. David Ebitz ,who I studied under at Penn State.  I eventually undertook thesis research in the effects of security guards on art museum visitors in fulfillment of a M.S. in Art Education.  While writing my thesis and job hunting, I saw an advertisement for a position as a Research Associate at RK&A (now Kera Collective).  I wasn’t familiar with what evaluation was, but I took the posting to my mentor with curiosity.  In another turn of serendipity, my mentor had hired Randi Korn, the founder of RK&A, as an evaluator at the Getty.  Knowing both me and my skills and Randi, he suggested I apply.  I have been here ever since.