Ed is an award-winning experience designer and lifelong museum lover with over twenty five years experience in envisioning, creating, and implementing visitor-focused projects for cultural organizations large and small. He is a passionate believer in the informal learning that is at the heart of the visitor experience. Ed loves the creative tension of the design process, be it for a performance, exhibition, or application.

Before starting TEA with Annie and Jim, Ed was Associate Director of Integrated Media at Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts where he was part of the team that won a MUSE Award for Immersive Experiences from the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). Prior to that he was Senior Exhibit Developer at the Museum of Science in Boston, Massachusetts where he worked with companies such as Lucasfilm/ILM, Disney/Pixar, and National Geographic. Ed has also consulted within the cultural sector for organizations such as the National Park Service, North Carolina Museum of Life and Science, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.

Incorporating emerging technologies into museum practice has been a theme throughout his career. As a thought leader in the digital transformation of the cultural sector, Ed frequently speaks at conferences and special events around the world. He was named one of Blooloop’s 50 Museum Influencers for 2021. Ed teaches museum experience design at the Harvard Extension School and is an active writer. He is currently working on a book on museum experience design for Routledge titled “Designing for Playful Engagement in Museums” due out in 2024.

His most recently published works appear in Museum magazine, The Routledge International Handbook of New Digital Practices in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums and Heritage Sites, Humanizing the Digital: Unproceedings from the 2018 Museum Computer Network Conference, CODE | WORDS: Technology and Theory in the Museum, and Mobile Apps for Museums: The AAM Guide to Planning and Strategy. Ed holds a BA in Anthropology from UMass Amherst, and a MA in Historical Archaeology from UMass Boston. He’s happy to talk about weapons curation practices of 17th century Atlantic pirates if you’re so inclined.

Ed has been writing the popular Thinking About Museums blog since 2011 and was one of the hosts of the American Association of Museum’s Museopunks podcast. He is also the founder of the Boston edition of Drinking About Museums, one of longest-running informal meetups for museum-interested people in this global movement.