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The CSU Spur of the Moment Podcast tackles the issues of food, water, health, and sustainability by talking with people making a difference in these fields and exploring the unique pathways that have led them to their current roles. Hosted by the Colorado State University System's new Spur campus in Denver, this podcast builds on its mission of addressing global challenges through research collaboration, experiential education, and a shared vision of inspiring the next generation.
Abby Bysshe:
I think the number one thing for me is that people have fun in our building. In addition to that, I really hope that something sparked an idea or a bit of curiosity that they want to go home and learn more about.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Welcome to Spur of the Moment, the podcast of Colorado State University's Spur Campus in Denver, Colorado.
Abby Bysshe:
I think it's hard to expect that someone will dive really deep into something while they're here. Maybe they came in with an interest in space, but they're like, "Man, that brain exhibit was super cool and I want to learn a little bit more about that." So we're just hoping to spark that curiosity in the people that come here.
Jocelyn Hittle:
On this podcast, we talk with experts in food, water, health, education, and sustainability, learn about their current work and their career journeys. I'm Jocelyn Hittle, Associate Vice President of the CSU Spur Campus. Today, I'm joined by Abby Bysshe, Chief Experience and Strategy Officer at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Abby has been at the Franklin Institute for almost 10 years in a variety of roles. Prior to the institute, Abby worked for several years at National Geographic and at the National Gallery of Art. Abby is widely recognized expert in museums and exhibitions, and I'm thrilled to be talking with her today. Welcome, Abby.
Abby Bysshe:
Thank you so much. So happy to be here.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Okay. Well, let's start with your day in the life. Can you tell us a little bit about the Franklin Institute?
Abby Bysshe:
Sure. So the Franklin Institute is now a 200-year-old institution in Philadelphia. We're in Center City. We are focused on science and technology. We are very much an interactive experience. We have a very strong family audience. We have a lot of school groups that come and visit us, but we really do serve people from across generations.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Great. So if I were to come to the Franklin Institute today, what might be some of the things that I would experience?
Abby Bysshe:
Yeah, it's a variety of different things. So we have really great exhibits on the body, on space, your typical science topics that you would expect to see in a science center, all very hands-on, interactive. We learn about careers in those exhibitions as well, but really just giving guests an opportunity to experiment and experience different phenomena and things in the science world. But that gets layered on with great planetarium shows, live science demonstrations. We like to blow stuff up a ton. We also have a wonderful collection on scientific objects. So we have a beautiful new collections gallery that tells that story. So it's really quite a variety of experiences that you can have over the course of a day, and people stay three and a half hours. It's a long day.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Yeah, lots to see.
Abby Bysshe:
Yeah.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Say more about the scientific objects. What are some of the things that are in that?
Abby Bysshe:
Yeah, we have a classic science center collection, so a lot of cameras, typewriters. We have quite a bit of Ben Franklin objects in our collection. We were lucky enough to be gifted the Wright Brothers collection. So we have a lot of air foils from their prototyping around their first in flight, as well as some fun. They used to strip pieces of wallpaper off the wall and doodle on the back and write formulas and notes and things like that. So we have those pieces in the collection as well. Lots of wild bikes. I think we have an eight-seater wooden bike. So it's a lot of really fun stuff and a variety of different things, but things you would think about as that early invention around scientific phenomenon.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Great. So you mentioned Ben Franklin. Can you say a little bit more about the connection? Obviously you're the Franklin Institute, you're there in Philadelphia, so say more about that connection.
Abby Bysshe:
Yeah. So the Franklin Institute, although was not started by Ben Franklin because it was after his life, but we are inspired by Ben Franklin. We do house the Ben Franklin National Memorial within our museum. So when you walk in the front door, a very large Ben Franklin greets you. So we use him as our inspiration, as someone who was quite a polymath and involved in a myriad of different things. So we think about him when we think about the creation of our museum and all of the varieties and curiosity we want people to come to science with.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Okay. So let's talk a little bit about your actual job then as chief experience officer, what does that mean and what does a day in the life look like for you?
Abby Bysshe:
So I am in charge of the building experience, and that includes our exhibitions, our wonderful and talented staff that do all of our live science shows, also our theater space. We have quite a large business around traveling exhibitions. So those are temporary exhibitions that we will host somewhere around the six-month range. So that's a whole business model that sits within the museum industry, a big part of our business model. So I oversee the development of those or the rental of those. And yeah, it's really just thinking about the experience that the customer is going to have when they're in our building. That's what I spend a lot of time thinking about. And my day, it varies greatly depending on the day. We have a ton of projects. We're also in the middle of redesigning most of our exhibitions in our building right now.
Abby Bysshe:
So a lot of my time is spent with our outside design teams and working through those projects and making sure the right people internally are being connected depending on the project that we're working on. I have quite a large role with our board, so there's that piece of my job as well. So it's a mixture of the day-to-day things like how's a new live science show going to bigger, more strategic thought processes to dealing with the senior leadership and the board leadership at our organization.
Jocelyn Hittle:
So how many visitors come to the institute on a given day? I'm just trying to think about your job is to manage the visitor experience in the building. So how many folks are you all welcoming?
Abby Bysshe:
It really depends on the year. So since the pandemic, we had a blockbuster year in 2022 and did 820,000 people. On a more average year, we're in the 650 to 700 range. We are the most visited museum in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. So we see a lot of, we do about 150 to 170,000 school kids a year. So it's big numbers and it really depends. Saturdays are really big days. When we have our peak school season, we're doing 2,500 kids in a day. A busy Saturday could see somewhere in the realm of three to 4,000 people in a day. So it's quite a lot of people.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Yep. That sounds very busy. When those visitors walk through the doors, what is it that you hope they... For you, when they're walking back out again after their three or so hours that they've spent visiting various parts of the institute, what do you hope they leave with? What's success for you as you're thinking about the visitor experience and the exhibition design?
Abby Bysshe:
I think the number one thing for me is that people have fun in our building. I think in addition to that, I really hope that something sparked an idea or a bit of curiosity that they want to go home and learn more about. So I think it's in a museum experience like ours, because it's so active and there's so many things to do, I think it's hard to expect that someone will kind of dive really deep into something while they're here, but they get this really broad range. And the hope is that they're going to come across something. Maybe they came in with an interest in space, but they're like, "Man, that brain exhibit was super cool and I want to learn a little bit more about that." So we're just hoping to spark that curiosity in the people that come here.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Okay. So let's talk a little bit more brass tacks about how you do that. And most of us, we go to a museum, we go to a science museum and we have experiences, we do hands-on things, we maybe talk to some of the staff and aren't necessarily thinking about what was the thought process that went into designing this space or this experience. So break that down a little bit for me.
Abby Bysshe:
Sure. We spend a lot of time asking people that aren't us what they're interested in experiencing here. I think one of the key things to staying relevant and really making sure you're delivering on people's expectations is really to start outside your organization when doing design development. So if we're doing a new exhibit, we're going to start with school kids. So we'll meet with about 150 kids between 4th and 12th grades. We'll come with a huge idea like space and try and get them to help us narrow that down into the things that they're interested in. So when we did our space exhibit development, we heard a lot about black holes, we heard a lot about phenomenon. That was a really big thing and a lot of curiosity around exploring space and what the future of space exploration was going to look like. And that really helped us start somewhere.
Abby Bysshe:
And then we bring in content advisors from across the industry to help us really build out those interests. And then from there it's like, "Okay, what's going to be fun? In this area, let's think about what's the interactive moment that's going to be a great touchpoint." So we really think about the experience and the content story in parallel. So we're making sure not every content story makes a great experience, so we want to make sure that we're really thinking about things that are going to be hands-on, that are going to be full body, that are going to be things that really stick with people and are memorable experiences.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Yeah, I could see you said that not every content piece or content story is that fun of an experience. So that's interesting. When you think about what the interactive piece is or what the full body experience is, can you give me some examples of what those look like and how do you determine what the interactive moment is going to be?
Abby Bysshe:
Yeah, it's a really dynamic back and forth, I think, between our exhibit design team and our content team and our outside developers. And it's a little bit of a balance between what we're trying to talk about, the kind of experience we want people to have and the technology available to us to deliver on that experience, right? So we have to think about digital versus physical. So I'll use an example. In our space exhibit, we really wanted to talk about gravity and the gravitational pull. So we ended up coming up with an experience where when you stand on a surface, you're recognized and around you is your gravitational pull and planets and asteroids and things start passing through the space and you go and collect them. And when somebody else gets too close to you, then there's a gravitational moment that happens there and you can steal other people's things.
Abby Bysshe:
So from a words and content perspective, there's not a lot explaining it. It's really getting explained through what you're doing. And then we'll have a graphic panel if somebody is interested in diving a little deeper or a parent is there and wants to learn about that topic to then connect with the kid afterwards, that's the mixture of things that really trigger a good experience. So if you're learning by doing as opposed to reading, that's really where the magic is.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Yeah, I can imagine that that sticks in people's brains a lot more. Do you have a favorite exhibit or experience right now?
Abby Bysshe:
Oh, it's so funny. We have a Giant Heart that came to our building in the 1950s as a plaster of Paris temporary exhibit, and we have had it here ever since. We got it fiber glassed over. It's just, I look at it all the time and I'm like, "It is the iconic thing that we have in our building." It is one of those, it's not really a mystery why it's so fun. It's huge. You get to literally walk through the arteries of heart and be the path of blood. And it's just one of those very dynamic, memorable experiences that you want all your experiences to be like, right? It's the north star that when you're thinking about things, how can I create these moments more often? So that's the one that always sticks in my brain because it's so tried and true and it's what we're known for and it never gets old, right? It's lasted the test of time as far as experiences go. So that one has always been my favorite.
Jocelyn Hittle:
That makes sense. I have been through it myself. I remember it well. So I'm just one more data point there for that being of.
Abby Bysshe:
It's the thing I hear about the most when I travel, "Oh, the Giant Heart."
Jocelyn Hittle:
The iconic experience in your institute.
Abby Bysshe:
Yeah.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Yep. So let's talk a little bit about the work that you do and what you love about it and maybe don't love about it. So you've told us a little bit about your day is really varied. You get to think about really interesting things. What's the visitor experience going to be like? How are you going to design both temporary and permanent? What's that interactivity? So all of that sounds like it is really fun. What are some of the things that are really fun that track with that description? And what are some of the things that you find tedious and you wish someone else would do?
Abby Bysshe:
I think there's plenty of both. I mean, I think-
Jocelyn Hittle:
We all have plenty of both.
Abby Bysshe:
Yes. I think the job that I have is fun. I mean, I think about that a lot, right? It's definitely not boring. We are lucky in that we have a lot of fun things going on. We have a lot of new opportunities to design exhibits. I know how rare that is in the museum business and how lucky we are in the position that we're in. I also just love making something and being able to walk downstairs and physically see somebody enjoying it. You have direct feedback from the audience you're serving and sometimes we get it wrong and we have to fix it and sometimes it's great. And you have such an ability to learn on the spot with anything you're designing. And I think that's rare in a lot of cases. I think as far as things that are tedious, I mean, I think nonprofits in general are usually pretty, I won't say understaffed, but we ride the line between being very resource strapped and having too much.
Abby Bysshe:
So I think since the pandemic, we've all been operating on a pretty tight resource ability. So it does get tiring sometimes because you want to try and find a balance between keeping that energy up and doing all these great new things and then trying to balance like, "Ooh, maybe it's too many things and this is getting a little much and I need to pare back a little bit." So when you are that busy, sometimes it's hard to sit back and be strategic because you're constantly trying to chase getting things done, you're on those timelines. And so sometimes I do miss the ability to just sit back a little bit and take a breath and think about the next move and have a little bit more time. Sometimes time is very precious when we're trying to do as much as we're doing.
Abby Bysshe:
And I also love spreadsheets. I like data and I like thinking about attendance and numbers. And when I'm very busy, I run out of time to really do that work. So that's one of the things that I wish I had more time for.
Jocelyn Hittle:
I love it. I love a good spreadsheet. They are so helpful in pulling a story out of some data that you either were hoping to see or maybe didn't expect and helps put you on a different path. So super powerful tool. So talk a little bit about some of the challenges of what you do or maybe what people might be surprised about. What's a misconception about working in a museum or in museums in general and particularly where you are?
Abby Bysshe:
So I'll answer those two separately. So I think one of the challenges is competition. So we have just seen the competition for people's time get exponentially harder over the last decade, I'll say. And that comes in a variety of ways. I think the experiences business in general, just like everybody's in it. So there's new popup experiences. Philadelphia is a very popular market to bring experiences, whether it's the F1 Arcade. I think Netflix is opening a new place about 30 minutes from here. This is just a very popular market because it sits squarely in between New York and D.C., and we have a lot of success from an attendance perspective. So that's constant, right? There's always somebody who has more money, moves faster than you, and here we are for 200 years trying to sustain attendance and interest in that very active market. We're also a huge sports city, which is another thing.
Abby Bysshe:
So there's that landscape. There's also the landscape that people are just doing more with kids and how stressed everybody's time is and being able to make time to go to museums or dinner or anything outside of the house. And then people have become much more insular since the pandemic. So just getting people to go do experiences is a lot harder than it used to be. So that's the swirling industry side of what we're always up against. I think from a misconception perspective, I think a lot of people assume that museums are very well funded by the city, the state, the county, grants, things like that. In this economy, it's definitely shifted, but I will say we've always been very revenue dependent. So ticket sales are a very important and large part of our business model. So that is usually something people do not associate with the museum.
Abby Bysshe:
They think that they're doing okay financially because they're cultural institutions that are supported by the cities and the states that they're in. And we have a lot of cultural institutions that require support in this city. So we have always been quite dependent on more traditional for profit revenue thought processes and goals when it comes to our business model.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Yeah, that makes sense that people come to a museum, it feels old and permanent and supported by all of the other old and permanent things like governments or longstanding foundations or philanthropic sources. And I hear you say that we all should be going to museums and supporting them with our ticket purchase dollars because it is not that way in most cases.
Abby Bysshe:
That is very true. And it's becoming less and less that way.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Right. And we would hate to see these things, these institutions that are anchors in our community go away. So just my plug for everyone to go to their cultural institutions in their cities.
Abby Bysshe:
I appreciate that.
Jocelyn Hittle:
I'm here to help. It's so important. And I do, I hear also, and we experience it somewhat here, the kids are coming here to Spur on field trips and we have every second Saturday we're open for kid and family experiences. So we have a lot of folks who are coming, and particularly if the weather is not great to have an experience with their kids that is educational and fun and hands-on. And we know we're competing with on good weather days are mountains and all of the kids' sports ball practices, all 10 different things that parents are being pulled in all the different directions. So I hear that for sure. So let's talk a little bit about how you find a support system. So if you, for example, come up against a challenge, a problem you're trying to solve, do you have folks that you call? Who's your phone-a-friend network?
Abby Bysshe:
So I do have a network. It just depends on the problem. I definitely have a wonderful network within the organization, but I've been in this industry for, dare I say, over 20 years now, which just feels crazy to say. And I just have a lot of wonderful people across the industry, not even necessarily in science centers. Maybe it's botanical gardens, maybe it's art museums on the for-profit side. So depending on what the issue may be, I just have a lot of great people to talk through ideas and what's being able to call someone up at another museum and was like, "I saw you did this membership program. Is that working? How did it go?" There's just a nice... I mean, that is the nice thing about the cultural space is everybody is very open and honest and forthcoming about what is and isn't working and is very willing to share data. So there's a nice community there to be able to reach out to.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Great. And I think it's so important to identify it and talk about it that all of us as working professionals lean on networks of people who know more about a specific thing than we do or have experience with a challenge that we're coming up against that it feels like as you're looking at a person doing a job that they're doing it alone, but that's almost never the case. There is.
Abby Bysshe:
No, having a network is very important.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Absolutely.
Abby Bysshe:
And I think it's being a lifelong learner in whatever you're doing and making sure you're constantly trying to figure out what the next trend is or going to see things. I mean, I love to see experiences. Put me in front of everything and anything, because even if it's not a museum experience, there's always something to learn. Even if a mall's under construction, sometimes we go because we like to see the wayfinding. There's just lots of different entry points in the keeping up with what's going on in the industry.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Okay. So we're going to talk a little bit about your career journey, but first I have my first Spur of the Moment question for you.
Abby Bysshe:
Sure.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Which is, is there another cultural institution, maybe we say outside Philly that you go back to again and again?
Abby Bysshe:
Wow. I mean, if you're asking me what my favorite museum is personally.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Well, I can rephrase the question if you'd like me to say what your favorite museum is. I assume it's the Franklin Institute, but maybe your second favorite museum.
Abby Bysshe:
Yeah. Me personally, I mean, I'm an art museum person from the beginning of my career and being so close to New York, going to the Met and MoMA are two of my top. I would say outside of the Mid-Atlantic, the Cleveland Museum of Art is one of my favorites. Inside the science center world, places that I'm constantly looking at to see what they're doing and comparing notes. The Griffith Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is definitely one. I talked to Denver quite a bit, so that is definitely on my list. And we have a very cool botanical garden close to here called Longwood's Gardens who very different business, right? The outdoor space, they just deal with different things, but they're a place I like to go because there's just things they're doing in the membership space and it's a beautiful garden and that's a place that I love to continually go back to.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Okay. So I'm regretting my Spur of the Moment question because it's a little bit too much of a work and professional question. So I'm going to throw another one at you.
Abby Bysshe:
Okay.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Do you have a dish that you are really good at cooking?
Abby Bysshe:
Ooh, I love a Bundt cake. It's not really a dish, but it's a dessert.
Jocelyn Hittle:
It's a food stuff. I should have been more precise in my language.
Abby Bysshe:
Yes.
Jocelyn Hittle:
There you go.
Abby Bysshe:
I like Bundt cake and bolognese. Bolognese is my Christmas gift to my family every year. I'll make a huge batch of sauce every holiday and fill everyone's freezers, and that's usually my gift.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Amazing. I love that. I love a large batch of something that gets distributed to a lot of people. We do that with... We make meatballs quarterly with a group of friends and everyone goes home with many pounds of meatballs to go put in the freezer.
Abby Bysshe:
Yeah, yeah.
Jocelyn Hittle:
That's great. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about how you got where you are. Just walk me through broad brushstrokes. What were some of the big steps that led you to being where you are?
Abby Bysshe:
Yeah, so I don't have a traditional pathway to museums. I was a liberal arts kid. I was an English lit major. I've always had a passion for photography, both personally and just as a subject matter. So in the back of my mind, that was always trying to figure out how to make that part of my career. I think what ended up happening was usually when you're heading towards a museum, it splits into two pathways. There's the curatorial pathway, which tends to be the more obvious one. It's like, "I'm going to get a PhD in a specialty and I'll go become a curator at a museum." I didn't want to go to school that long. So I was like, "This is not going to be my pathway." I instead, at the National Gallery of Art, there used to be a generic administrative assistant role that you could apply for, which is what I applied for out of school and ended up having an interview in two departments.
Abby Bysshe:
One was the design department and one was the curatorial department. And the design department, I don't know, it just felt like a great fit for me, and that's where I ended up. And that drove my career direction from there, to be honest. I learned a lot on the job, and that kicked me into this design. And then when I got to the National Geographic Society Business bifurcation that is my role now.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Okay. Say more about your chapter at the National Geographic Society. How did that come to be?
Abby Bysshe:
Yeah, I was lucky because I was at my role at the National Gallery for about seven years, and because I didn't have a traditional degree that made sense with what I was doing, so I was doing model making and working in AutoCAD with building exhibits and doing graphic production and all of this wide variety of museum design things. National Geographic was looking for someone to upend their traveling exhibition business, and they were looking for somebody that had a graphic design background and could do a lot of the material prep and sales and all of the stuff required to handle that business on their own basically. And the woman who was hiring me had worked with the National Gallery before on an exhibit, so we knew each other. She knew where I was coming from. It was just a very lucky next step in my career that was pulling through my broad range of experience into a job that made sense.
Abby Bysshe:
Once I was there, it was like opening a whole new world because I think the National Gallery of Art surprised to no one. I mean, it is top tier. It does not spend a lot of time looking outward at what is going on in the industry because they do what they do and they do it well. When I was at National Geographic, my whole job was learning about what was going on across the industry, small museums, large museums, natural history, science center, art museums. So that was my day-to-day was just trying to take in as much as possible about what these museums were looking for, what kind of content they needed, what their struggles were. So that really opened my mind from an industry and business perspective on what was going on in the museum world.
Jocelyn Hittle:
That sounds amazing.
Abby Bysshe:
I have been very, very lucky in my career. I recognize that my timing has worked out. I've gotten some great opportunities. I try and make the most of any place I'm in. I don't say no a lot. I'm like, "Give me more things. Let's keep it moving." So I don't know, I've been pretty lucky.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Yeah. I mean, you've already mentioned being a lifelong learner, so a job where you're out learning what everyone else is doing to help support lifelong learners themselves. It's very meta and very cool. So then what took you to the Franklin Institute?
Abby Bysshe:
I think similar situation. So when I was at National Geographic, I became very versed in the traveling exhibition business. I was on the sales side, so I was trying to place product within museums. And the Franklin Institute was looking for director of business development to bring content into the museum from a traveling exhibit perspective. I was really, look, I'd been in DC for a long time at that point, and Philly was always a fun city where I was like, "Oh, of all the close mid-Atlantic places that are still affordable, Philly seems like a good one." And science centers have this very interesting place that sit in the middle of traditional museum philosophy and entertainment. So it's pulling from both sides because they tend to be more revenue-driven. They have to think more commercially in some instances. So it's an interesting balance that I really like.
Abby Bysshe:
It's one that I learned a lot about being at Nat Geo because they were doing things in the cultural space, but also thinking about theme entertainment and location-based entertainment. So it's a space I like to occupy being able to pull both of those sides into an experience. So I'm always interested in moving to a science center after being in Nat Geo. And I love traveling exhibits. I love the business. It's a small community of people that have moved around to different companies and you just know everybody and I'm just interested in it. So it was a good fit for me to come in here and help bring great content into the building.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Great. Wonderful. It sounds like one recurring theme is right place, right time, right people, right skillset, and you don't say no to things. You step into an opportunity.
Abby Bysshe:
I've also been very... I mean, I am single. I have a very flexible life. I'm not tied to a specific city. I'm able to move around a lot, so I recognize that as a nice thing that I've been able to do, and it just allows for me to be a little bit more global in my choices and my opportunities.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Thanks for this overview of these big steps you've taken and how your career has evolved. Any people that have been particularly influential in there, bosses, teachers, mentors?
Abby Bysshe:
Yeah, I think my first two bosses at the gallery were incredible. And I say that in that they really allowed me to excel in things, which is just take on more stuff. They really saw my interests and were able to feed that. And I think I learned so much on the job at that place. And it was really because they saw my energy and were able to just help me come build on that. I've kept in touch with both of them throughout my career and one's still my really good friend. So she's been a friend and mentor for quite some time. And then I think coming here to the Franklin Institute, I have both from the board and senior leadership, I've just learned so much about what it takes to run a museum. That was not a place that I occupied in either of the former institutions I was in.
Abby Bysshe:
It's not a lens I ever had. So getting that, being close with our CFO and our CEO, just really learning about board management and the finances behind, keeping an institution like this going, it's been a great learning experience.
Jocelyn Hittle:
So the flip side of that question of people who've been positively influential, have you ever gotten any bad advice? How did you know it was bad? And you don't have to out who it was, but...
Abby Bysshe:
I've had plenty of interesting experiences in my career, which I probably won't detail on this podcast, but I think one of the hurdles actually happened more in high school, to be honest, and college. I think I heard a lot from teachers and professionals about figuring out what you want to do and concentrating on a super specific thing. I wanted to be a marine biologist for a hot second, and I was like, "This feels like a very narrow pathway." And also I think, "Oh, if you want to work in a museum, you have to have a PhD. It requires a ton of school," et cetera, et cetera. I'm like, those just aren't correct. And it took a while for me to find my own path and try and actually get a degree that was a little bit broader and gave me a lot of touchpoints. And understanding that if you're willing to take a circuitous route to get into the institution that you're interested in working in, then there's a growth pathway there.
Abby Bysshe:
So I spend most of my time talking to people who are interested in the museum business to be like, "You don't have to be a curator. You don't have to be a collection specialist." There are so many jobs in a museum from finance to exhibit design to operations to security. I mean, it's endless.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Yeah, it's a great point. And I, myself, as more of a generalist have also come up against the impression, expectation that it's necessary to really get specialized in something and be an expert in something. And that's necessary for success in a professional space. And I think it is very helpful in certain career paths.
Abby Bysshe:
Correct.
Jocelyn Hittle:
And that deep expertise is really valuable to a lot of situations, but everyone brings something to the conversation and to the work. So sometimes that thing that we bring is breadth and connection.
Abby Bysshe:
Yes. And there's a lot of jobs where that's helpful. It's very helpful in my job to understand where other parts of the organization are coming from and what their needs may be. They may not be a design need, but understanding how building operates or understanding what the financial implications are, that makes me a better colleague and a better cross-platform person in an organization like this.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So if you were going to give a 15-year-old, so someone who's a sophomore, junior, and well, I guess a sophomore in high school, what would you say to them?
Abby Bysshe:
It's such a hard question because I think the job market has changed so much since I first got into it, but I think my suggestion always is you don't have to have it all figured out at 15. If you're heading into extended schooling or if it's a trade school or whatever the direction is post-high school, you are not locking yourself into a lifelong career because you made a decision at 15. I think life is full of twists and turns. And the best advice I can give is just to know what you enjoy and try and keep your eyes open for the opportunities that may present themselves throughout your life and your career. I think it's really just about trying to be open and not close yourself off too much into, again, that narrow that unless you want to be a doctor.
Abby Bysshe:
There are plenty of things, engineer, there's plenty of things that fall into that long-term specialized direction, but I think the pressure of being in your junior, senior year of high school and like, "Oh my God, I don't know what I want to be or what I want to do." That's okay. There's plenty of opportunity to grow into your interests and your path.
Jocelyn Hittle:
So what's the advice you would give to someone then who is 25 and follow up is yourself at 25? What would you have said?
Abby Bysshe:
So myself at... I think the only advice I would've given myself, and I wasn't able to do this based on the economy during the 2000s in which I was working, but I really feel like trying to move around a bit in your early career is helpful. Especially in the museum business, people don't leave a lot. So it's hard sometimes to get upward mobility within an institution. I find that people who are the most successful every three to five years are bouncing around, right? You're looking for the opportunity across a multitude of organizations because I think the danger is, especially in this industry, is that you get stuck and being stuck then makes you unhappy.
Abby Bysshe:
And then it's like there's a little bit of a downward spiral there. So I think I ended up staying seven years in the institution in the gallery. I think that was probably about three years too long, but 2008 happened and I stayed because I was employed and there was nowhere to go when that's what that was.
Jocelyn Hittle:
It's not a time for risk taking in the...
Abby Bysshe:
It wasn't. It wasn't. So I just stuck around. But I think from just a growth perspective, I got a little stymied in my career just taking that little bit of longer time to sit in a entry level job and not being able to grow into that next. So I definitely had some catching up to do in my 30s.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Yep. That resonates with me as well, just thinking about when you can, when the economy has not just nosedived. Think about where's the next... You should always be looking for what the next big thing is, even when you've just landed somewhere, just keeping your eyes open and your perspective broad, I think is really helpful. And getting a breadth of different experiences and having different bosses and colleagues, I think really, really helpful. And that resonates a lot with me as well.
Abby Bysshe:
There's so many different cultures within different organizations. I've had horrible working experiences. I've had great working experiences. I think I've learned more from the horrible ones, to be quite frank, because I've learned a lot about what I don't want to be when I grow up.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Exactly.
Abby Bysshe:
Or I don't want to treat people or how I want to reframe things. I think you learn how to speak up for yourself in a lot of those instances, but I've been able to do that because I've moved to three large organizations that are complicated and full of personalities. So that has been a journey.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So we are going to wrap up, but I wanted to ask one more Spur of the Moment question. This is actually one I ask a lot of people because I really like it. What is your favorite pair of shoes and why?
Abby Bysshe:
So I have Adidas. I have lots of Adidas.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Great. Adidas, we are open to sponsorship, just so you know.
Abby Bysshe:
I have a myriad of different kinds, but I love an Adidas. It's funny because I spent a lot of time on my feet, so it has taken me a long time to find a shoe that I can walk around in all day and still looks cute and could look professional if I need it. So it's Adidas in many, many, many colors. Nike's a close second.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Okay. Nike, we also will take sponsorships from you here on Spur of the Moment. So yeah, and I personally love also that sneakers have made their way more into the professional attire, what's acceptable for people to wear to work. So thank you COVID for...
Abby Bysshe:
For sure. We were definitely much more on the business casual side before COVID, and I've now entered back. That was not the case at Nat Geo. I was a blazer jean, sneaker and/or boot, depending on the season.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Yes. Right. Well, that might take us to a different piece of advice, which is maybe look at the dress code of the sector that you're interested in and see if it matches how you want to be dressed every day of your professional life.
Abby Bysshe:
That is a great point. I've lucked out in the museum industry because most of the time, unless you know that there's a meeting or something that you need to be a part of, it's been a pretty casual, business casual with jeans, I guess.
Jocelyn Hittle:
There you go.
Abby Bysshe:
So yeah, when I came here, I was like, "Oh my God, we can't wear jeans. I don't even have a wardrobe for this job."
Jocelyn Hittle:
Right. That is an important moment in a career path. Those wardrobe transitions can be rough and expensive.
Abby Bysshe:
Yes. Jeans are back, so we're good.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Okay. All right. Well, Abby, it's been an absolute pleasure talking with you today. Thank you so much for your time.
Abby Bysshe:
Yeah, of course.
Jocelyn Hittle:
And we'll encourage our visitors to check out your website. Can you tell us how they would find you online?
Abby Bysshe:
Sure. So our website is fi.edu.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Great.
Abby Bysshe:
I'm on LinkedIn.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Great. Yep. Find Abby on LinkedIn and do check out the institute's website. And I think, of course, encourage folks if you're in the Philadelphia area to go and walk through the Giant Heart and have the gravity experience. It sounds really fun. I look forward to visiting myself again next time I'm there. So thanks again for your time. Really appreciate it.
Abby Bysshe:
Thank you so much.
Jocelyn Hittle:
Take care. The CSU Spur of the Moment podcast is produced by Kevin Samuelson, and our theme music is by Ketsa. Please visit the show notes for links mentioned in this episode. We hope you'll join us in two weeks for the next episode. Until then, be well.