New CEO aims to make locals appreciate EdVenture

During a conversation with new EdVenture CEO Karen Coltrane, topics jump abruptly from education to nonprofits to finance to family.

That’s no coincidence, since expertise in all of those fields is critical for someone running a children’s museum.

Coltrane was recruited from the Children’s Museum of Richmond, Va., last year by the EdVenture board to replace the museum’s original CEO Catherine Horne. Three months into her new job, she is still learning the landscape.

Like many who come here from outside the state, she has been surprised at the lack of appreciation for the positives in the area. When people hear she moved here from Virginia, they seem amazed.

“They say, ‘You came down here to work for EdVenture?’” Coltrane said. “When I say it’s one of the top five children’s museums in the country, they say, ‘It is?!’

“They think that’s what everybody has. They don’t realize what a resource this is in the community. … This is one heck of an impressive children’s museum.”

Coltrane sees one of her roles is making sure people appreciate what they have in EdVenture, the 11-year-old facility on Gervais Street in Columbia. The museum building itself is “just the tip of the iceberg” for a nonprofit that also conducts after-school programs, teacher education programs and even a nutrition and healthy cooking effort through the Columbia Housing Authority, Coltrane said.

“There’s a lot of really rich programming that, unless you’re directly involved, you don’t know about,” said Coltrane, 50. “We’ve got a story we need to do a better job of telling.”

The daughter and granddaughter of journalists, she knows a thing or two about spreading the word. However, she was an economics major at the College of William & Mary and started her career in banking. She hated it from day one.

She found her groove through a bank program that loaned executives to help the United Way. Immediately, she realized she loved the concept of nonprofits. She also discovered she was good at fundraising, a task many executives work to avoid.

She landed at her alma mater, leading a major fundraising campaign for the Williamsburg, Va., college. A few years later, when her son was born, she took a marketing job with a hospital because it would require less travel. In 2004, she moved to the Richmond children’s museum as vice president for development. She took over as executive director there in 2007.

“I always joke I started out in higher ed and I’ve worked my way all the way to the bottom,” Coltrane said. “But quite frankly, in education the bottom is the top. And people are just starting to wake up to that. If they don’t get their brain wired up correctly in the beginning, you’re always fighting an uphill battle.”

EdVenture tries to make those connections by encouraging play that teaches. Children have fun sliding through the body structures of Eddie, the 40-foot-tall boy that is the museum’s centerpiece. They leave knowing there’s a heart, a stomach and intestines inside their own torso.

“You don’t put them behind a little desk and put a teacher in front of them,” Coltrane said. “Young people learn by playing, and (children’s museums) are the only voice for that.”

As passionate as Coltrane is about the education aspect, she suspects one of the reasons she landed the EdVenture job was her financial acumen. Under her leadership, the Richmond museum expanded from one location to four. With scant help coming from local taxpayers, the museum had to find other ways to raise money, Coltrane said. The expansions helped the museum raise 80 percent of its budget from earned income rather than taxes or donations.

EdVenture covered 46 percent of its budget with earned income last year. While Columbia, Richland County and other local entities have been big supporters of the museum – that was one of the attractions of the job for Coltrane – any expansion likely will have to rely heavily on private donations or earned income. (Raising admission fees is not being considered, Coltrane said.)

The new CEO took the job because she was ready for a new challenge.

“I turned 50 the same week I had my 10-year anniversary at my last job and the same week I sent my only child off to college,” Coltrane said. “So if there was ever a point of reflection, that was it. I knew I wanted to switch things up; I wasn’t quite sure how I wanted to do it.”

Then EdVenture came calling, and it seemed like fate was leading her to Columbia. Her husband Rick’s job with the federal Department of Education allowed him to live anywhere he could catch a quick, direct flight to Washington. Their son, Sam, had considered the University of South Carolina before enrolling at College of Charleston. That was just far enough away from Columbia that his parents wouldn’t feel like they were hovering, but close enough for them to visit for a weekend lunch.

The family often had vacationed in South Carolina and loved the slightly warmer weather and the palmetto trees. Their major experience in Columbia had been during youth baseball tournaments played in the area.

“The families with younger siblings are always looking for places to go, and I remember they were impressed with EdVenture,” Coltrane said. “When they were deciding which tournaments to travel to the next year, they said ‘Oh, that was the place with the great children’s museum.’”

In a city that many residents only half-jokingly say is an hour-and-a-half from everything, Coltrane aims to make sure people recognize EdVenture is one of the reasons to stay home.

This story was originally published April 9, 2015 at 11:42 AM with the headline "New CEO aims to make locals appreciate EdVenture."