Rachel Ropeik is a cultural catalyst and pirate who works with equal parts wisdom and whimsy. From navigating the halls of the Guggenheim, Brooklyn Museum, and MoMA to charting her own course as a consultant changemaker, she blends thoughtful disruption and playful innovation to work with cultural organizations and individuals.

Rachel coaches curious people to dance with uncertainty and change. She leads adaptively, empathically, and with refreshing directness and humor. Working with her promises to surprise you.

Many kinds of nerd, Rachel fuels her practice with dance, baking, and global adventures—Antarctica remains her only unvisited continent... for now.

Start as an undergraduate Print Room Assistant at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College.

Head south to New York City to work in various art world jobs as an appraiser and a researcher and a gallery director.

Continue until you pass Rika Burnham’s Conversations with Art program pilot with staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art where you spend whole lunch hours with single works of art.

Turn right and head east across the Atlantic Ocean until you reach the Courtauld Institute of Art for grad school.

Cross the archway to the Courtauld Gallery for freelancing with various audiences.

Continue through London with stops at Dulwich Picture Gallery and Westminster School.

Detour south to the countryside to lead historic house tours about the Bloomsbury Group at Charleston.

Carry on with southern detour until you are leading groups of American teenagers around Paris and throughout France for ACIS.

Turn left and head west across the Atlantic Ocean until you reach the Brooklyn Museum Education department.

Continue straight at Brooklyn until you have held all jobs in the School Programs Department and learned a great deal about museum teaching and social justice.

Head north across the East River into Manhattan until you find other museums including MoMA to freelance at alongside your full-time job.

Fork slight right to working with adult audiences at the Guggenheim.

Continue running the Guggenheim’s Public Engagement Department until you have brought new approaches to all the adult programs that are free with admission.

Turn left and follow signs for points west and Colorado until you arrive in Aspen.

Merge into Aspen Art Museum as Learning Director.

Veer sharp left and right and detour to lead a department through COVID-19 closure, digital learning, socio-political reckoning, and cautious reopening. WARNING: unpaved road.

Take the exit for resignation after irreconcilable differences with circumstances in Colorado.

Drive east to Massachusetts until you reach a base for independent business that equips you for the work you want to do with clients who inspire you.

You have arrived at your current destination.

My whole life I’ve been a curious and stubborn Aries. ♈️

Snapshots of my childhood are full of outfits made from scraps of sequined fabric and tin foil, engrossing visits to the local Audubon Society working farm, and as many books as I could get my hands on. A family-favorite piece of lore holds that at age 3, after an early life of overalls and non-gender-coded toys, I came downstairs and decreed I would only wear pink dresses from then on. Which I did. For years. 🎀

I put mustard on my pancakes. I went trick-or-treating as a candy bag for one meta-style Halloween. I started ballet lessons with a load of other little girls, and then kept dancing for the rest of my life. 🩰

I was the nerd kid who made up games and wrote poems to get bonus points on her homework AND the rebel kid who organized all the girls in her middle school social studies class to start intentionally interrupting the boys as much as they interrupted us. 💪🏻

I came to awareness of my privilege WAY later in life than should be the case for anyone, and I’m committed to do what I can as a cis white woman to share and make and give up space for marginalized folks. 🤜🏻🤛🏾

And the whole time, I’ve loved pirates. From animated Captain Hook and the Dread Pirate Roberts to Jack Sparrow and Jack Shaftoe; from Firefly and Black Sails to Be More Pirate and a whole shelf of dry academic books on piratical history. 🏴‍☠️

I’ve worked in so many institutions that have been mired in traditional, fear-based systems, with people in power afraid that if things change, they’ll lose that power. And yes, there will be power shifts, but they’re coming no matter what, because the world doesn’t stand still. 🌍

So who better to help tackle that change and be alongside it than someone who’s spent a whole lifetime figuring out ways to bend and break and change the rules that didn’t work? For that, you need a pirate. ❤️‍🔥