QUALIFICATIONS

WHO WE ARE

Adam J. Lerner, Ph.D., Executive Director
Adam first came to Denver in 2001 in the role of master teacher at the Denver Art Museum. He was the youngest member of the Brooklyn Squares, Square Dance Club, at age 9 and, in the fifth grade, he won first prize for his diorama “The Tumbling of the Walls of Jericho” at the Solomon Schechter School of Queens, New York. He was curator at the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore and a fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Adam received his doctorate from the Johns Hopkins University and his masters from Cambridge University.

Kathie Kramer Ryan, Deputy Director
Before joining The Lab in June 2007, Kathie Kramer Ryan was featured on The Today Show, where she gave away her Winter Park restaurant to the most articulate writer of a 200-word essay. She has worked as the manager of major gifts at the Denver Art Museum and the director of marketing and public relations for metro-Denver’s Rape Assistance and Awareness Program. She has a BS degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MS from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Sarah Kate Baie, Assistant Creative Director
Sarah comes to The Lab from the Denver Art Museum, where she cut her professional teeth as the coordinator of informal learning programs. She has a BA from the University of Colorado. Following college, Sarah spent several years struggling to become a Nicolas Cage completist, a pursuit she eventually abandoned for grad school. She is completing her masters at the Bank Street College in New York City.

Erin Lantz, Manager of Development and Operations
Erin came to Denver with AmeriCorp from Towanda, Pennsylvania. She spent her first four years in Colorado managing the women and girls’ empowerment program at RAAP and later joined the Academic Internship Program at Regis University. Erin has a BA from West Chester University in West Chester, Pennsylvania and an MA from Regis University. Erin spent most of 1982 and 1983 in a Spider-Man costume; she joined The Lab in 2007.

Katie Aiken, Membership Assistant
Katie came to Denver to finish her masters degree at the University of Denver after an idealic childhood chasing grasshoppers on Colorado's remote Western slope. She has two degrees in anthropology. We suspect her furious notetaking at Lab staff meetings is providing fuel for a future dissertation on the dysfunctional life inside a small contemporary art center.

Laura Ann Blum, Program Assistant
Laura is a student at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, a school she expects to graduate from in just eight short years. We found her working at The Lab one weekend, and although no one could remember hiring her, she seemed to know where everything was, so it made good sense to keep her on. She hails from Pennsylvania and was featured as a child actress on the television program Sunny Farms. YouTube, anyone?

Noah Parman, Design Assistant
Noah grew up in downtown Denver, just ten short minutes from Villa Italia mall, the neo-renaissance shopping mecca that was torn down to build Belmar. He has a degree in design from the Metropolitan State College of Denver, and when not at The Lab, can be found peddling fish at one of Denver's fine dining establishments, or snowboarding among the majestic Rocky Mountains.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Cindy Abramson, executive director, Denver Scholarship Foundation
Steve Burkholder, executive director, Colorado's Future
Mark Falcone, managing director, Continuum Partners LLC
Myles Mendoza, director of development, Denver Scholarship Foundation
Eliza Prall, director of marketing and community building, Continuum Partners LLC
Dean Prina, M.D., Partners in Pediatrics
Lewis Sharp, Ph.D., director, Denver Art Museum
Mark Tompkins, director of public finance & accounting, Continuum Partners LLC

ADVISORY BOARD
Carlos Basualdo, curator, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Iwona Blazwick, director, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
Patrick Charpenel, independent curator, Guadalajara, Mexico
Lisa Corrin, director, Williams College Museum of Art
Darby English Ph.D., professor, University of Chicago
Isaac Julien, filmmaker and artist, London
Helen Molesworth, curator, Harvard University Museums of Art
Michael Rush, director, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University
Gary Sangster, executive director, Headlands Center for the Arts