A life-changing fellowship, on-campus volunteer roles and the desire to make museums accessible to every child helped this alumna discover her career path.
As the access and inclusion program director at Long Island Children’s Museum (LICM), Beth Ann Balalaos ’15, MA ’16, has pioneered the museum’s innovative accessibility programming. She also speaks nationally at conferences to ensure that the museum field sheds light on the barriers facing visitors and staff who are marginalized. Her passion for these causes grew from her personal experiences, lessons learned as an Adelphi student, and her work at the museum when she arrived in 2014 as a junior in the Jaggar Community Fellows Program.
Balalaos, who was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD as a child, was drawn to Adelphi’s 5-year Scholar Teacher Education Program (STEP) because she planned to be a special education teacher. She said she “found her groove” at the University.
“I always felt like there was this big difference between me and the other kids in terms of how my intelligence was perceived when I was in elementary, middle and high school. And then when I went to Adelphi, it felt like everybody was on the same field,” she said. “I didn’t feel like I was always going to be known as the kid who was in special education.”
Academics, Volunteer Work and an Internship Launch a Unique Career Path
She credits her major in psychology with a concentration in child development for preparing her to work with the children who come to the museum, while her graduate degree in elementary and special education helps her with the programming she creates. But for Balalaos, who is a member of the LGBTQ community, it was her gender and sexuality studies minor that “helped me to take a deeper dive into the world of diversity, equity and inclusion. It opened up my eyes to the impact that people can have on the world,” she said.
It was through her Jaggar placement at the Long Island Children’s Museum in Garden City that Balalaos learned about the accessibility aspect of diversity. She quickly realized that she “wanted to have conversations about how we could help the kids with disabilities who come through our museum.” She was still in the STEP program and interning at the museum in 2015 when she helped it launch a museum-wide access initiative called LICM4all.
“The main goal of the LICM4all program is to create a more inclusive and accessible museum by not only making physical changes that exceed compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), but also by considering access in every aspect of the museum every day,” Balalaos said.
Becoming a Powerful Advocate Through Service Work
The organizational skills needed to enact this goal, she said, were nurtured as a busy undergraduate who was a mentor for the Bridges to Adelphi program for neurodiverse students, an Orientation leader, and an employee at the Center for Recreation and Sports. In her sophomore year, Balalaos joined the campus American Cancer Society and was in the first group of students to run Adelphi’s Relay for Life in 2013. The American Cancer Society offered her advocacy opportunities, including traveling to the Capitol to train other college-age people and lead fundraising seminars. She was even invited to speak at conferences.
“Working with the American Cancer Society was a really big part of my college career and it helped me catch that nonprofit bug. I use those skills today to speak at conferences for the museum. That would’ve been a lot scarier if I weren’t already having those experiences throughout my college career,” said Balalaos, who is also a board member of the Museum Association of New York and a peer reviewer for the New York State Council on the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
A month before she graduated, the Long Island Children’s Museum offered Balalaos a job and she suddenly realized she didn’t want to be a teacher. “I always felt like I wanted to have a career that would have an impact and center around social justice,” she said. “At that point I fell in love with museums and the positive change I was making.”
Today Balalaos also uses her advocacy skills as a member of the Huntington LGBTQ+ Task Force on Long Island and in writing about museum accessibility for publications like Museum, the magazine of the American Alliance of Museums, and Hand to Hand, published by the Association of Children’s Museums, and for Able News, which is published by another Adelphi alum, Emily Ladau ’13.