Renée Castellanos (fictional sample interviewer)

Director of Exhibits and Learning at Live Oak Discovery Museum · Austin, Texas

Fictional profile written for the MyRound Yale sample. The person and the museums are invented.

About

I build exhibits that make kids (and their parents) ask "wait, why?" Fifteen years of turning science, history and art into things people can touch, break and argue about. I care about how people learn outside classrooms, about making museums free for families who'd never think a museum was for them, and about good questions more than right answers. Yale Alumni Schools Committee interviewer for Central Texas since 2013.

Experience

Live Oak Discovery Museum (Austin, TX) - Director of Exhibits and Learning, Mar 2019 - present - Lead a team of 11 designers, educators and fabricators; 240,000 visitors a year. - Opened "How Water Moves" (2022), a hands-on gallery on rivers, floods and drought in Central Texas. - Started free family nights, now about a fifth of all visits.

Gulf Coast Museum of Natural History (Houston, TX) - Exhibit Developer, then Senior Exhibit Developer, Jun 2011 - Feb 2019 - Developed 9 temporary and 2 permanent exhibitions; wrote labels and visitor research studies.

Brightwater Children's Museum (San Antonio, TX) - Education Programs Coordinator, Aug 2008 - May 2011 - Ran school field-trip programs and a bilingual summer camp.

Yale Alumni Schools Committee - Volunteer interviewer, Central Texas, 2013 - present

Education

• Yale University - B.A., History of Art, 2008 (Berkeley College). Senior essay on how 19th-century natural history museums arranged their collections.
• The University of Texas at Austin - M.A., Museum Education, 2011.

Languages

English (native), Spanish (native).

Volunteering

Board member, a neighborhood library friends group in East Austin (2017 - present).