David Janssen

At Johns Hopkins, David A. Janssen serves as a lecturer in the MA in Museum Studies program were he draws on more than 33 years of experience in nonprofit leadership.

Since January 2012, Janssen has served as Executive Director/CEO at Brucemore, a 26-acre estate in the heart of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that has amassed regional, state, and national recognition for excellence in historic preservation, organizational culture, collaboration programming, and economic impact under his leadership.

He previously served as Vice President of the Detroit Historical Society; Vice President of Edsel & Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan; Assistant Director of Brucemore; and as Curator of the Smith-McDowell House Museum in Asheville, North Carolina. Janssen was the 2019 recipient of the Nonprofit Leadership Excellence Award from the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation. In 2021, the Iowa Museum Association recognized him for his “outstanding contribution to the museum field through visionary leadership.”

A seventh-generation Iowan, Janssen earned a BA in history from Dartmouth College, an MA in history from Duquesne University, and an MBA from the University of Iowa.