The Steering Committee of the Woods Hole Historical Museum is pleased to welcome Sally (Sara) Piccini as its new Executive Director. Ms. Piccini comes to the Museum with a breadth of experience working in nonprofits. She has served as a consultant to historic museums and properties for many years, writing grants and doing other fundraising work. She was a longtime board member at White Hill Mansion, a nonprofit historic site in New Jersey where she was responsible for raising over $100,000 in grant funding for the restoration of the site. In addition to this work, she has been a freelance writer and editor for 30 years. Her jobs have included editorial services for a variety of magazines, books and other print publications; editorial management of a 1-million circulation health newsletter; project management of an alumni magazine for the College of William & Mary; and creating fundraising and donor stewardship materials for Georgetown University. She has a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University and a master’s degree in history from the University of Virginia.
Sally is no stranger to Woods Hole, or to the Museum, having grown up visiting her cousin photographer Dottie Crossley on Bigelow Street. On a recent tour of the Museum grounds, Ms. Piccini pointed to a large Hinoki cypress tree outside the Museum entrance, observing that it was her own mother, Betty Crossley Ketchum, who had planted it many years ago in memory of Dottie’s mother, Dorothy F. Crossley. Only the third director in the Museum’s nearly fifty-year history, Sally brings to the position, according to Steering Committee Chair Chris Polloni, “a keen sense of the past, an enthusiasm for what makes Woods Hole a special place, and a deep appreciation for the Museum as the community’s local treasure.”
With the Museum’s summer season beginning Friday, June 16, with the members’ party and opening officially to the public on June 17, please stop by and introduce yourself!