Keynote Address

Joy Bailey-Bryant is the President of the U.S. office of Lord Cultural Resources and a specialist in municipal engagement around culture. A certified interpretive planner and outreach facilitator, Joy works with city officials, institutional leaders, and developers, in global municipalities like Chicago;  New York; Dhaka, Bangladesh; and Dharan, Saudi Arabia to creatively plan cities and bring people to public institutions.

Joy has been an integral part of the development of identity museums where people of color are engaged in telling and interpreting their own story. Joy led the teams for planning on remarkable projects like the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., reaching more than 1,000 stakeholders across the country to learn their expectations for the new museum; the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center, directing citywide engagement in locations as large as Dallas and Chicago and small as Decatur, Georgia - speaking with thousands of individuals in meetings and on social media - to assess, project, and plan for their cultural needs; and planning and opening the expansion of the Albany Civil Rights Institute in Albany, Georgia—unearthing thousands of untold stories of the Southwest Georgia Civil Rights Movement.

Driven by the engagement philosophy of "meet people where they are," Joy has authored several articles on community engagement including, Planning for Community Needs, in the third edition of the Manual of Museum Planning. Following her mantra, Joy is willing to "follow the crowd," holding meetings at festivals, conferences, on social media, churches, community centers, schools, and even bars. Other projects of note include:

• National Education Center, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
•  Visionary Strategic Plan, The New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture,   New York
• Institutional Plan, National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center Institutional Plan, New York
• National Museum of African American History and Culture, Stakeholder Consultation, Washington, D.C.

An advisor to the Kresge Foundations' Initiative for Sustainability in the Arts at Harvard University and the leadership advisory board of the Girl Scouts of Greater New York, Joy has spoken on numerous international and national professional panels. Before joining Lord, Joy was on the transition team at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) evolving the General Operating Support (GOS) grant to the Museums for American grant, the agency's leading award for museums. Joy began her cultural career at the Braves Museum at Turner Field. Joy completed her MA in Arts Management from American University in Washington, D.C. and her B.Sc. in Public Relations from Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida.