Micah Parzen to Conclude 16 Years of Leadership

Micah Parzen will conclude his tenure as Chief Executive Officer at the Museum of Us in August 2026, after 16 years of leading the Museum through a period of profound change.

Parzen will join the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley as its Executive Director, where he will continue advancing relationally accountable museum practice within one of the world’s leading research and teaching universities. Erin Spiewak, a veteran nonprofit executive who has co-led the Museum alongside Parzen as its Executive Director since 2023, will continue in that capacity, providing strong and seamless leadership.

"It has been the great honor of my life to work in partnership with so many others for so long to transform the Museum of Us into a place for everyone," said Parzen. "The work of returning belongings and ancestors to their homes has been transformative for our passionate staff, our committed board, and for me personally. We are deeply grateful to the many Indigenous communities who have partnered with and entrusted us to participate in this important work."

"The Museum and its California Tower are beloved by San Diegans, and within its walls harbored a complicated past. Under Micah’s leadership, the Museum came to terms with the historical harm it caused, leaned into relational repair, and doubled down on the investments necessary to act on its commitments. This will remain the focus of our work forward.” said Ileana Ovalle, Chief Strategy & Governance Officer at the Qualcomm Institute at UC San Diego, and the first woman of color to chair the Museum's Board of Trustees in its 115-year history. "Micah leaves the Museum a radically different institution than when he arrived. This includes a values-aligned staff, board, and budget, along with deep partnerships that would have been difficult to imagine even a decade ago,” Ovalle said.

The Museum enters this transition from a position of strength, including a recent multi-million dollar bequest that significantly adds to more than two years of operating reserves. Ovalle, who has served as a trustee for seven years, three as chair, said “The Museum is extraordinarily well-positioned to implement the many community-centered initiatives we have underway. Trustees have full confidence in Erin’s leadership as she continues to partner with the Museum’s long-tenured senior leadership team, community partners and our philanthropic community.”

Megan Thomas, the President & CEO of Catalyst of San Diego & Imperial Counties, will succeed Ovalle as the Museum’s next Board Chair in August 2026.

The Museum of Us was founded in 1915 as part of the Panama-California Exposition and was formerly named the San Diego Museum of Man. Its early exhibits used scientific racism to justify the racial hierarchies of the eugenics movement, and its collecting practices through the 20th century caused real and lasting harm to Indigenous communities. Listening to the pain, needs, and requests of those it had harmed has informed much of the Museum’s work over the past decade-and-a-half. Most recently, the Museum launched The Homeward Project, a major institutional initiative expanding staffing and infrastructure in support of community-led decisions regarding the future return, stewardship, and care of cultural resources.

Key Accomplishments

Key accomplishments over the past decade have included:

• Opening the California Tower to the public for the first time in 80 years (2015).
• Passing its Colonial Pathways Policy, providing for the return of any belonging acquired by way of an inequitable colonial pathway back to its home community (2018).
• Receiving the Kaleidoscope Award for Good Governance from the University of San Diego’s School of Nonprofit Leadership (2018) and being named a two-time finalist for the National Medal from the Institute of Museum & Library Services (2023, 2024).
• Successfully implementing an historic name change from the San Diego Museum of Man to the Museum of Us, reflecting both the Museum’s anti-racist and decolonial journey as well as its aspiration to become a museum that is truly for all of us (2020).
• Launching Membership on Us, a values-based program offering free year-long admittance and membership to anyone who enters the Museum as a paid guest (2021).
• Opening Race: Power, Resistance & Change, a new signature exhibit sharing the story of race from the 1700s to the present and centering stories of resistance by Indigenous and other communities of color (2025).

About Micah Parzen, Ph.D., J.D.

Trained as both an anthropologist and an attorney, Dr. Micah Parzen, outgoing Chief Executive Officer of the Museum of Us, has held leadership and advisory roles across the museum field throughout his tenure, including service on the Board of the American Alliance of Museums, the Board of the Western Museums Association, and as Board President of the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership, a collaborative of 28 arts and cultural institutions. He was named a blooloop.com Top 20 Museum Influencer in 2023.

About Erin Spiewak, M.B.A.

Erin Spiewak is the Executive Director of the Museum of Us. She joined the Museum in January 2020 as Chief Financial and Operations Officer. An established leader in San Diego's nonprofit sector, Spiewak previously served as Chief Executive Officer of Monarch School, a K-12 institution serving youth experiencing homelessness. She worked with several foundations including the Gary and Mary West Foundation, WebMD Health Foundation and the Rose Foundation. Erin currently serves on the Board of San Diego ART Matters.

About the Museum of Us

The Museum of Us inspires human connections by exploring the human experience in all of its beauty and messiness. Located in Balboa Park in San Diego’s core, the Museum stewards more than 75,000 cultural resources from 185 Indigenous communities around the world and serves approximately 130,000 visitors annually. It is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, is a Smithsonian Institution Affiliate, and has maintained a four-star Charity Navigator rating for nine consecutive years. The Museum has been nationally recognized in the Stanford Social Innovation Review for its exemplary purpose-driven Board and in ProPublica for its leading-edge repatriation and relational repair work.

For additional informational, please contact: James Haddan, Senior Director of Development & External Communications at jhaddan@museumofus.org.