Candace Matelic

Candace Tangorra Matelic teaches, consults, coaches and speaks throughout the U.S. and Canada about community engagement, and organizational development, change, and learning. After two decades of successful work and teaching in these areas, she is considered a field expert and thought leader. Along with teaching regularly for Johns Hopkins University and the University of Victoria (British Columbia), and for numerous state and provincial museum associations, she teaches the Arts Leadership and Entrepreneurship minor for Texas Christian University. Her four decades of leadership includes directing National Landmark sites in Maryland and Hawaii, managing the visitor experience and interpretive programs at museums in Michigan and Iowa, leading a children’s museum and contemporary arts organization in Santa Fe, and directing a graduate level museum training program in Cooperstown, NY for a decade.

Dr. Matelic’s consulting/planning work, based on four decades of experience, is distinguished by helping museums, historic sites, arts organizations and educational organizations engage their communities as partners, and then fundamentally transform their vision, assumptions, organizational culture, and work patterns. Candace has presented at over 100 conferences in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, 36 times as a keynote speaker or invited guest. Publications include two co-authored books and 36 articles/chapters, including recent chapters on organizational change (2017, based on her dissertation), sustainability and social entrepreneurship (2016), and community engagement (2011). Dr. Matelic holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Studies from the University at Albany, SUNY, an M.A. in History Museum Studies from SUNY Oneonta, and a BFA (Fine Arts and American Studies) from the University of Michigan.

She is an active member of the Rotary Club of Fort Worth and helped to lead the award-winning yearlong community engagement process to help the club find its next high impact project. She presented on the UN Sustainable Goals at the Rotary International Convention in Toronto in June 2018. She has completed the Rotary Leadership Institute and the Dale Carnegie Leadership course.

Candace was raised in Michigan, but has lived in 10 states, all across the country. Work has taken her to every state except Alaska and to 5 Canadian provinces.