Sarah is a builder of: ideas, teams, resources. She has an incredible ability to identify the unique talents and potential of each person and develop those individual contributions toward the betterment of the whole. Through a combination of creativity and project management skills, she is able to lead both a vision and a concrete map to achieve it.
Tiffani Emig
Deputy Director, American Institute for Conservation/ Foundation for Advancement in Conservation
Services Provided
• Facilitation, learning and development
• Building authentic networks and partnerships
• Frameworks for equitable mentorship practices
• Teaching and guest lecturing
• One-on-one coaching
• Strategic planning
• Resource mobilization
• Development, prospect research, grant writing
• On-site conservation work (paintings)
Want to learn more about our work?
Here are some examples from key programmatic areas including: mentorship, resource mobilization, leadership, teaching, facilitation and coaching.
Mentorship
Learning and Unlearning:
Redesigning Mentorship in Cultural Heritage.
Project included equity-based training + practice, across all career-stages, for the full conservation department (conservators, collections care specialists & technicians, administrative staff, scientist, and interns). Sessions on topics such as Giving and Receiving Authentic Feedback, Inclusive Mentorship Practices, and Building a Success Profile. Outcomes included shifting belief systems and providing multi-layered systems of support for students and teams.
Collaborators: Indianapolis Museum of Art, Becoming Better Together, Work Hype, and Granite Peak Advisors.
Resource Mobilization
Resource mobilization blends traditional philanthropy with community organizing, to leverage the power relationships and build both financial and non-financial resources (ex: time, skills, knowledge).
LH::EP supports individuals, teams, and organizations in building networks to get the resources they need to support their work. Through research, focus groups, and one-and-one conversations with key stakeholders, we help clients tell their stories of impact and deepen their ability to fulfill their organizational mission and strategic goals.
Examples of this work include: prospect research and grant writing for climate resilience in cultural heritage, donor cultivation, and clarifying mission and vision.
Collaborators: Foundation for Advancement in Conservation, Balboa Art Conservation, Materia Journal of Technical Art History.
Sarah created the space and provided insight I needed to be able to identify where my skills and gifts connected with opportunities before me. This allowed me to carve out my next professional steps from a place of confidence.
Joelle Wickens
Assistant Professor of Preventive Conservation, WUDPAC
Leadership
Conservation Leadership Collective (CLC)
LH::EP is part of ongoing work with national, regional, institutional, and independent partners, inside and outside the field of cultural heritage, to create a new conservation leadership program for the field of cultural heritage. The CLC defines leadership as the ability to create the conditions that allow individuals and teams to do their best work–to communicate a vision that inspires others and the ability to bring them along through collective actions. Our purpose is to hold space for an emerging leadership shift in the field of cultural heritage preservation, to ensure the legacies of many instead of a few, and catalyze responsive succession planning
Collaborators: American Institute for Conservation, Balboa Art Conservation Center, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Becoming Better Together, Anisha Gupta (independent contractor).
Teaching
Getty Conserving Canvas Connoisseurship Workshop
Collaborated, with two co-leads, to create a workshop for12 participants primarily for curators from educational-based museums on building blocks for visual literacy. The group viewed more than 25 case study paintings, across two collections, during a one-week workshop. Through close-looking exercises and facilitated dialogue participants gained tools to be informed decision-makers from object-based study, in addition to strengthening a regional network and pathways for resource sharing.
Collaborators: The Getty Foundation, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Hood Museum of Art, Mark Tucker and Lucia Bay (conservators).
Additional LH::EP teaching and guest lecturing experience includes:
• “Creative Team Dynamics,” invited speaker for Dr. Sarita Rene Guillory’s class, Ringling College of Art and Design.
• “Physical Analysis of Artworks,” co-taught with Elise Effmann Clifford and Jane Williams, Hideo Mabuchi’s Physics of Artworks class, Stanford University.
• “Community Engagement Through the Arts,” invited speaker for Stacey Kamehiro’s class on Arts and Civic Engagement, University of California, Santa Cruz.
• Breakthrough Collaborative Career Day, invited speaker to introduce career pathways in conservation.
Facilitation and Coaching
Both facilitation and coaching include methods of listening and reflecting back key ideas that empower individuals and teams with frameworks to move forward with increased clarity and direction. Through processes of co-creation and trust building, these tools foster opportunities for new ideas and creative solutions to emerge.
Third-Year Graduate Seminar,
Winterthur University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation
Professional development curriculum designed to support graduate students in the transition from student to professional (ten students, 1.5hr sessions, virtual meetings on a quarterly schedule). Students are provided with tools for self-advocacy and guided through exercises to explore and articulate their unique skills from their lived history. The cohort model fosters confidence and camaraderie, as students began to define their own practice of conservation.
Collaborator: Anisha Gupta (PhD candidate, independent contractor)
LH::EP also provides one-on-one individual coaching for professionals at all career stages in cultural heritage preservation, primarily through virtual sessions.