AMESBURY — After months of searching, the Amesbury Carriage Museum is welcoming a new executive director to the organization.
Holly Babin was recently named the nonprofit’s new leader after the departure of Kelly Daniell last fall.
Babin said she is glad to join the organization.
“I’m honored to be named executive director. It’s an amazing organization and incredible community,” she said.
Juliann Clark, president of the museum’s board of directors, said Babin was highly recommended and is the right person for the job.
“Holly comes from a very strong communications and development background. She is a go-getter,” Clark said. “She is comfortable meeting new people, getting involved in the community.
“And, the biggest thing for us is she has a lot of new and fresh ideas as far as fundraising,” Clark added. “And that is something that we were searching for, is someone who is comfortable fundraising, comfortable asking for money, comfortable meeting new people and sometimes hearing, ‘No’.”
Tom Pendergast, the museum’s treasurer, praised Babin and said she has an “engaging personality.”
“We’re very excited to have Holly on board. She is an excellent individual. She has a great resume and experience, and I think she’s going to bring us great success in the future,” he said.
Previously, Babin served as executive director of the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications in Manchester, New Hampshire, and also has a background in art, Clark said.
“She’s worked in local galleries, she’s an artist. So, she has set up exhibits and things like that before, so she has knowledge on exhibits,” Clark said.
Clark also said the organization is glad to have an executive director again.
“We are certainly very excited to have Holly join us. It has been almost five, six months now without an executive director,” she said.
In the interim, Clark said the museum’s executive committee has risen to the occasion and can now transfer its responsibilities to Babin.
“There’s five members on the executive committee that have been giving more time than they have in the past. We’ve been holding weekly meetings with the staff, just making sure that they’re getting the support that they need,” she said. “So, it will be nice to let the executive committee take a step back and let Holly really dive in and get to know the staff, get to know the town, get to know our current collections.”
Clark said while the role differs from Babin’s previous jobs, the board is confident she will be a strong leader of the museum.
“So, it is a little out of the box. But it was something that we were willing to risk because we have two great employees who come from museum backgrounds,” Clark said.
“So, we feel comfortable that those two current employees, Melissa and Kaylee, are capable of having the museum knowledge where Holly doesn’t necessarily have that,” Clark added “But she’s eager to learn and so we’re really hoping that she’s going to take us to the next level with that out-of-the-box thinking.”