Fellow Spotlight: Aragon Burlingham

Aragon Burlingham is the Executive Director at CuriOdyssey, a science museum and zoo in San Mateo, California, and an alum of the Nexus Fellowship. 

Aragon and Equity Lab founder Michelle Molitor at a Nexus Fellowship dinner

As he took on the Executive Director role at CuriOdyssey, a science museum and zoo in San Mateo, Nexus alum Aragon Burlingham took stock of his new organization’s approach to racial equity. However, since CurioOdyssey didn’t have much data on who they were reaching with their programming, he realized that it was difficult to assess. One of his first steps was to set up location monitoring software, using geo-fencing technology, around the museum to begin to roughly track the demographics of museum visitors. While not a perfect measure, it allowed them to norm on a baseline and start to set goals. “If you want to change something, you’ve got to measure it,” Aragon explains. 

“If you want to change something, you’ve got to measure it.”

CuriOdyssey has been a participant in Museums for All, a federal program to promote broader museum access, for quite a while. Last summer, CuriOdyssey reduced the ticket and membership price to $0 for eligible families in order to make the museum more accessible to families across socioeconomic demographics. As a significant financial commitment for CuriOdyssey, this was not a decision Aragon made alone. He credits his colleagues on the JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) Leadership team he set up at the museum with wrestling with equity issues and coming up with recommendations to shift the museum’s demographics over time. 

Inspired by his Nexus experience and the coaching around equityXdesign, Aragon has also been experimenting with shifting power dynamics within the museum. For example, over the past two budget cycles, he focused on intentionally ceding power over financial decisions to individual departments. By giving department leads more autonomy and ownership over budgets, he is working to develop a more collaborative culture and decision-making process.