Lisa Sasaki to head Asian Pacific American Center

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Asian Pacific American Center
October 14, 2016

Lisa Sasaki

Lisa Sasaki has been appointed the new director of the Smithsonian’s Asian Pacific American Center, effective Nov. 14, 2016.

Lisa is currently the director of the Audience and Civic Engagement Center at the Oakland Museum of California. She is responsible for the museum’s marketing and communications, public programs, school and teacher programs, community engagement, and visitor services departments. Lisa led the museum’s audience development initiative, which helped double the museum visitation in four years.

Before joining the staff of the Oakland Museum of California, Lisa was the Director of Program Development at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles (2003–2012), where she directed major institutional projects. During her tenure at JANM, she supervised the museum’s curatorial, public programs, web, education and collections departments and managed and led the strategic planning for programs, exhibitions, audience development and fundraising.

Previously, Lisa was a museum curator at the Southeastern Colorado Heritage Center in Pueblo and the Assistant Collections Manager at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Lisa earned her bachelor’s degree in history and archaeology from Cornell University and her master’s degree in anthropology from the University of Denver. She currently serves on the advisory council for the Council of Jewish American Museums and is the board president of the Western Museums Association. She is a guest lecturer for the museum studies graduate program at the John F. Kennedy University and has also lectured internationally for ICOM-China and the Museums & Galleries of Queensland.

She succeeds Jeanny Kim, who has been serving as Acting Director of APAC since December 2015.

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