Carole Charnow

Carole Charnow, the President and CEO of Boston Children’s Museum, is one of the foremost early education and cultural leaders in the region and serves in many notable leadership roles both locally and nationally. As CEO of Boston Children’s Museum since 2010, she has transformed the Museum’s early childhood research and curriculum program. She also founded the region’s first museum access program for families receiving benefits, the EBT Discount initiative, which is now being replicated in 160 museums and cultural institutions across the state. During her tenure at the Museum, she instituted a science and engineering division, which encompasses a STEAM lab, multiple national grant programs, including a program funded by the National Science Foundation, and curriculum materials which are used in 55 state school districts. She procured the Museum’s first grants from NASA. The recent pioneering exhibition, You, Me, We, tackling the complex subjects of race, bias and empathy, has won acclaim, and the Museum’s groundbreaking program on Religious Literacy, funded by the Lilly Endowment, is a first for a children’s museum. Alongside then Mayor, Marty Walsh and the Richard Family, Charnow led efforts to establish the Martin Richard Park adjacent to the Museum, a 1.5 acre accessible park and playground. Under her leadership the Museum won the IMLS National Medal, the nation’s highest honor conferred on museums for extraordinary service to the community, presented by First Lady, Michelle Obama, at the White House in 2013.

Charnow is a member of the Community Services Board of the Dimock Health Center in Roxbury, serves on the executive committee of the Boston Arts Academy, and is on the Board of the American Alliance of Museums. She is Vice-Chair of the Boston Arts Leaders Coalition and serves as Vice Chair of both the Green Ribbon Commission Cultural Group, and the Boston Chamber of Commerce Climate and Energy Committee. She is a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Non-Profit Practice at the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University and was named a Barr Fellow in the class of 2015. Charnow is a recipient of the Emerson College Distinguished Alumni Award, the Berklee College Urban Service Award, the New England Museum Association Excellence Award, and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Pinnacle Award, and holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Emerson College and a Masters of Arts from the University of London.

Prior to coming to the Museum, Charnow was the founder and General Director of Opera Boston, where she produced 50 original opera productions at the Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston, including the world premiere of Madame White Snake, jointly produced with the Beijing Music Festival. The opera toured to China in the fall of 2010, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2011, the first Pulitzer for an opera in 49 years.