AACA Museum begins search for new executive director

Photo courtesy AACA Museum.

Since 2012, Mark Lizewskie has been the executive director of the AACA Museum in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and as a board member for The Elegance at Hershey, he's been a familiar face to those exhibiting at (or attending) the concours. After four years of service to the AACA Museum, Mark has tendered his resignation, prompting the facility to kick off a search for a new executive director.

Mark came to the AACA Museum from the John W. Rich Automobile Museum in Frackville, Pennsylvania, where he served as an automotive restorer and historian until the founder's death in 2011. With 25 years as an ASE Master Technician and a plethora of concours judging experience on his resume, Mark was well suited to his role with the AACA Museum. After four years, however, Mark has decided that it's time to move on to the next challenge, creating a vacancy that will be challenging to fill.

We reached out to Henry "Hank" W. Hallowell III, president of the AACA Museum, to see what the search committee had in mind for the ideal executive director candidate. While a passion for (and a knowledge of) automobiles of all shapes, sizes, vintages and origins is a key component, Hank tells us that experience managing (or at least working within) a 501(c)(3) corporation is equally critical. Non-profits have their own unique challenges and rules, which is why it's critical to have someone at the helm who understands this from the beginning.

In other words, the ideal executive director should be as handy with fund raising and cost containment as he (or she) is with a timing light or dwell meter. It's a safe bet that interaction with The Elegance will play a role, too, so having concours d'elegance experience would be a further plus. As the museum community is a tight-knit group (of which the automotive museum community is just a small subset), having a familiarity with museum operations would be beneficial as well.

The AACA Museum's Board of Directors has already begun its search for Mark's replacement, but in the interim, Dennis Beck, the museum's accounting manager, will don an additional hat as the acting general manager.  Beck joined the AACA Museum in 2015, bringing with him extensive experience in accounting, finance and business management.

For additional information on the museum and its exhibits, visit AACAMuseum.org.

from Hemmings Daily – News for the collector car enthusiast http://ift.tt/2bD9FZl