AVP, School & Youth Engagement

WHO WE ARE

Opened in 1914 and welcoming over 1.3 million visitors annually, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is Canada's most-visited museum, ranking among the top 10 cultural institutions in North America. At ROM, we are dedicated to building and sharing global collections, sharing knowledge, inspiring learning, and fostering community engagement. As a globally recognized field research institute, ROM houses an impressive collection of over 18 million artworks, cultural objects, and natural history specimens, showcased in over 40 galleries and exhibition spaces.

We are committed to creating a space where art, culture, and nature intersect, connecting people and communities to the past, present and shared future.

As we continue to work toward our goals to transform and evolve as one of the world’s foremost 21st-century museums, we seek passionate and dynamic team members who embody our mission and values.

We are seeking a strategic, people-centred, and highly collaborative leader to serve as AVP, School & Youth Engagement. Reporting to the Vice President, Learning & Public Programs, this role provides vision, leadership, and operational oversight for ROM’s school-aged and youth audiences, with a focus on children and teens.

The AVP is responsible for shaping and delivering high-quality, inclusive learning experiences across school visits and programs, ROMKids camps, care-based and youth-serving group programming, digital and virtual learning, and the stewardship of the Teaching Collection. This role also holds accountability for the end-to-end welcome experience for these audiences from booking and arrival through program delivery and departure, ensuring experiences are safe, seamless, and engaging across physical and digital environments.

This is a senior leadership role that blends educational expertise, visitor experience design, people leadership, and financial stewardship. The successful candidate will lead multidisciplinary teams of educators, program managers, administrators, and seasonal staff, while working collaboratively across the museum to advance ROM’s mission and 21st-century learning goals.

In this role, you will shape how tens of thousands of children, youth, and educators experience ROM each year. Your leadership will directly influence learning quality, visitor experience, workforce culture, and earned-revenue performance across school, camp, and youth programming, including:

• Set the strategic direction for school, camp, and youth-focused learning programs, including in-person, digital, hybrid, virtual, and asynchronous experiences, ensuring alignment with ROM’s strategic priorities and Ontario curriculum expectations.
• Lead the design, delivery, evaluation, and continuous improvement of innovative, inclusive, developmentally appropriate, and trauma-informed programs that reflect diverse learning needs and lived experiences.
• Provide oversight of the end-to-end school and group welcome experience from booking and client support to arrival, program delivery, departure, and post-visit engagement, ensuring experiences are safe, seamless, and welcoming across physical and virtual environments.
• Steward the Teaching Collection with integrity and care, ensuring its ethical, safe, and effective use in on-site and digital learning while supporting innovation in object-based and multimodal learning.
• Inspire, lead, and develop multidisciplinary teams of managers, educators, facilitators, administrators, and seasonal staff, promoting a culture of accountability, collaboration, professional growth, and care-centred leadership.
• Champion staff learning and development in areas such as inclusive education, youth engagement, trauma-informed practice, object-based learning, and digital facilitation.
• Oversee operating and project budgets exceeding $500,000, balancing fiscal responsibility, earned-revenue generation, and high-quality program delivery.
• Use data, evaluation, and reporting to monitor attendance, revenue, learning outcomes, and engagement, translating insights into informed planning and continuous improvement.
• Build and sustain strong partnerships with…