Biography
Ellen M. Rosenthal, President and CEO
Ellen M. Rosenthal became President and CEO of Conner Prairie, Interactive History Park, Fishers, Indiana, in 2006. Prior to coming to Conner Prairie, Ellen worked at a variety of museums the past 30 years including the Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, and the John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center. She earned her first master’s degree in Early American Culture from the H.F. DuPont Winterthur Program and her second master’s degree in public management at Carnegie Mellon University.
For the past decade, Ellen has pursued a special interest in museum learning and visitor behavior. Under her direction, she has led Conner Prairie through the transformation from a living history museum to an interactive, guest centric history park. Ellen also guided the creation of the award winning “Opening Doors to Great Guest Experiences,” a training DVD-CD ROM now used by more than 1,200 museums world-wide impacting an estimated 26 million guests. Most recently, Conner Prairie was one of five national museums awarded the 2010 Institute of Museum and Library Services National Medal presented by First Lady Michelle Obama at a White House ceremony.
As a well-known advocate of “active learning,” Ellen has spoken widely on the changes at Conner Prairie and is the author of several articles about improving the visitor experience, including, “Serving Children When Parents Come Along” in New Thinking: Rules for the (R)evolution of Museums”, MuseumsEtc, 2010 and “Conversations Across Time: Family Learning at a Living History Museum”, in Learning Conversations: Explanation and Identity in Museums, Eds. G. Leinhardt, k. Crowley and K. Knutson, Laurence Erlbaum associates, 2002 (with Jane Hetrick).
Rosenthal resides in Indianapolis and is married to Dr. Theodore Logan, a medical oncologist at the Indiana University Medical Center. They have three sons: Daniel, an immunology researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, Sam, a senior at Indiana University, and Paul, a senior at North Central High School. She serves as chair, Fishers Economic and Community Development Commission, co-chair, Indianapolis Cultural Consortium, and is a member of the board of the Institute for Learning Innovation, Annapolis, Maryland, and the editorial board of the Indiana Magazine of History.