Diversified Search Group (DSG Global) | Koya Partners Retained by The Shaker Museum to Find New Leader
February 26, 2025 – The Shaker Museum has retained Diversified Search Group (DSG Global) | Koya Partners to lead in its search for a new executive director. Naree W.S. Viner and Stephen Milbauer led the assignment for the recruitment firm. The Shaker Museum seeks a dynamic, forward-thinking, and visionary executive director to lead the organization into a new era of growth and engagement. After years of planning, the Shaker Museum is building a 21st-century museum to showcase the world’s most comprehensive collection of Shaker material culture and archives.
With guidance and support from a motivated board of trustees, the executive director will be the prime mover in enhancing the museum’s profile to increase visibility and recognition in the community and among peer institutions. They will guide the museum and expand the existing dedicated staff into a larger team to support the new building, to achieve its mission and ensure a sustainable future.
Diversified Search Group (DSG Global) | Koya Partners explains that the executive director will garner support for the institution’s priorities including serving as chief fundraiser leading the museum’s development efforts, provide skillful oversight of its operations, and serve as a thought leader in planning exhibitions, scholarly publications, and programs that engages the local community and an expanding audience. Key priorities for the Shaker Museum’s next executive director will be to collaborate with the board of trustees to implement the building project, organize and complete the Museum’s capital campaign of $35 million (of which nearly half has been raised) toward growth across all programmatic, operational, and physical aspects of the museum, and develop the museum’s next strategic plan. In 2004, the museum became the owner and steward of the North Family site at Mount Lebanon Shaker Village, consisting of 11 Shaker buildings on 91 acres.
As the face of the Shaker Museum, the executive director will have the gravitas, enthusiasm, and ambition to develop and leverage a range of relationships locally, regionally, nationally, internationally, and within the industry.
The Shakers were guided by core values of conviction, integrity, inclusion, and innovation. They were early advocates of gender equality. Diversified Search Group (DSG Global) | Koya Partners client seeks candidates who embrace this ethos and will bring that to how they lead the organization. While it is understood that no one candidate will bring every desired skill, characteristic, and experience, the following offers a reflection of the ideal candidate profile.
They are seeking candidates with at least 10 years of progressively responsible leadership roles in an art, history, libraries, museums, or other relevant settings. The executive director will reside in the region, given the importance of building authentic and strong ties with the community. An advanced degree in art or art history, history, museum education, arts management, library science, MBA, or other relevant field or research area is preferred; a combination of professional and leadership experience in a comparable setting will also be seriously considered.
Shaker Museum holds the most comprehensive collection of Shaker objects, archives, and books, and stewards the historic North Family site at Mount Lebanon, the Central Ministry of the Shaker Communities. Shaker Museum founder John S. Williams began collecting directly from the Shakers in the 1920s and 1930s.
Diversified Search Group (DSG Global) is a family of recruiting firms serving specialized sectors. The firm was founded almost five decades ago by Judith M. von Seldeneck for the express purpose of placing diverse candidates in client organizations. It is today the largest U.S. female-owned and founded firm in the executive recruitment industry. It is comprised of a combination of specialty practices with deep industry expertise under industry recognized brands, including Alta Associates, BioQuest, Koya Partners, Grant Cooper, and Storbeck Search.
Combined Resources
In 2019, Koya was acquired by Diversified Search. With the combination of revenues and resources, Diversified Search and Koya now represent one of the largest non-profit and higher education practices in the executive search industry. Koya’s specialization in mission-driven search, primarily with non-profit and higher education clients, complements Diversified’s own major education, non-profit, and arts and culture practices, as well as the firm’s healthcare services, board of directors, life sciences, industrial, and digital, media, entertainment, and sports practices.
Ms. Viner is a managing director at Koya Partners. Based in the New York metro area, she has experience in executive recruiting, with an exclusive focus on mission-driven clients. For more than 15 years, Ms. Viner has partnered closely with board members at public and private organizations to identify, develop, and evaluate executive talent, recruiting chief executives and senior team members at regional, national, and international art, education, and social service organizations.
With particular expertise working with art museums and cultural institutions, she has placed many accomplished museum leaders across the U.S. Her clients include: the American Folk Art Museum; Buffalo Museum of Science; the Clark Art Institute; the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum; Harvard Art Museums; Huntington Library, Art Museum & Botanical Gardens; Lucas Museum of Narrative Art; the Menil Collection; the Museum of the City of New York; Phoenix Art Museum; the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, National Museum of American History, and National Portrait Gallery; Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library; and Yale Center for British Art, and Yale University Art Gallery.
Mr. Milbauer, managing associate, serves clients around the country, focusing on the mission-driven and education sectors. In particular, he has deep experience in the field of arts and culture. Mr. Milbauer has partnered with clients on a wide variety of senior-level placements, including CEO, president, executive director, director, COO, CFO, chief information officers, chief communications and marketing officers, country directors and development/fundraising executives. In the field of arts and culture, he has expertise with both curatorial and functional leadership searches.
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief and Dale M. Zupsansky, Executive Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
