I am Managing Partner at Museum Operations, museum and non-profit consultancy. Museum Operations provides consultant teams with decades of experience in the museum and non-profit sector. We assist clients who run world-class institution or who want to start a new institution, launch a new service or simply change the world. We don’t do cookie cutter. Ideal clients are looking to move beyond existing operational models and who seek innovate in unique and important ways, that not only improve their own operations, but which aspire to create best in class models for the museum field. We provide strategic planning, leadership and management, policy development, system design, implementation, data modeling, restructuring, transformation, start-up and cross-institutional collaboration support in all areas of museum operations. Areas of specific expertise include information technology, exhibition design, management and production, content development and cross platform publishing, visitor experience, user experience and interface design, museum design, construction management and startup, collection management, marketing, communications, retail, food service, event management, intellectual property management, finance and budgeting, and human resource management.

Museums and the Web (MW) hosts an annual conference exploring the social, cultural, design, technological, economic, and organizational issues of culture, science and heritage on-line. Taking an international perspective, the MW conference reviews and analyzes the issues and impacts of networked cultural, natural and scientific heritage – wherever the network may reach. The conference has been meeting for 16 years, imagining, tracking, analyzing, and influencing the role museums play on the Web, and having fun doing it.

As the deputy director of The Broad, a new contemporary art museum in downtown Los Angeles, as well as the Broad Art Foundation, Rich oversaw Marketing, Operations, Visitor Services, Collection Management, Information Technology, Finance, Retail, Library and Archives, Security, HR, parking operations and Facilities. He managed the planning, design, and more than $200 million in construction including The Broad museum, a parking structure and outdoor plaza and streetscape updates. Designed by world-renowned architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the museum is a 120,000 square foot, three-level facility, and includes 50,000 square feet of gallery space on two floors, a lecture hall for up to 200 people, and a public lobby with display space and a museum shop. The museum welcomed more than 200,000 visitors in the first 16 weeks. In addition to opening a new museum, he initiated and launched several innovative projects including mobile ticketing (no admission desk), mobile retail, Mobile App with contextually aware content, an innovative online training program that trains all Visitor Service staff in security, education and customer service, and he implemented custom designed LED lighting.

As the Director of the Balboa Park Online Collaborative(BPOC), a collaborative of 27 museums, cultural institutions, sciences centers and performing arts organizations Rich facilitated collaborations and acted as a CIO at large for a diverse group of museum professionals, from executive directors to technical staff and curators. Building BPOC from an idea to a reality over the last 3 years, he managed operating and project budgets of more than $4,000,000, and raised more than $1,500,000 in direct and indirect funding for the projects BPOC is executing. These various cultural heritage technology projects include website redevelopment and content management, collections management, digitization and digital asset management, networking and wireless, technical support, intern and mentoring programs, and mobile app and game development. BPOC’s ultimate goal is to create sustainable communities around each of these project areas and to engage and educate the members organizations in the use of technology to achieve their mission related activities.