Micah Parzen is a nonprofit leader, attorney, and anthropologist. He has served as CEO of the Museum of Us (formerly the San Diego Museum of Man) since 2010, where he and his team are working to develop better practices in what an anti-racist and decolonial museum can look like, as well as how those practices can create a positive ripple effect across the museum sector and beyond. In the past three years, the Museum of Us’ work has been featured in publications including the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Museum magazine, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic.
“Be clear about who you are and what you stand for as an organization,” Parzen told the American Alliance of Museums. “Whatever that may be will connect with some and not with others, but it will invariably lead people to ask themselves who they are and what they stand for. And that’s an invaluable role for any organization to play in its community. For a long time, we were a museum of people pleasers. We tried to make everyone happy, and it diluted our ability to truth-tell, apologize, and hold ourselves accountable for doing better. That lessened our ability to make an impact.”
During his time as an attorney, Parzen was a partner in the Labor & Employment Practice Group and the pro bono legal services coordinator at San Diego’s largest law firm. As a psychological and medical anthropologist, Parzen carried out ethnographic fieldwork on the Navajo Nation, studying a wilderness therapy programme for Navajo adolescents.
In addition to his role at the Museum of Us, Parzen currently serves as the president of the board of the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership, a collaboration of 28 arts and culture institutions in Balboa Park. He has been a trustee at La Jolla Country Day School, and his past board appointments include the Western Museums Association, San Diego Volunteer Lawyers Program, Waldorf School of San Diego, and ElderHelp of San Diego.
Parzen holds a PhD in anthropology from Case Western Reserve University, a JD from UC Davis, and a BA in anthropology from UC Berkeley.