Agency is intentionally built as a collaborative practice. Led by Hillary Spencer, EdD, Agency brings together trusted strategists, researchers, facilitators, designers, educators, and other specialists based on the needs of each project. Rather than asking every challenge to fit a predetermined team, we build the team around the challenge, bringing together the expertise, experience, and perspectives the work requires.
For more than two decades, Hillary has built relationships across museums, cultural organizations, professional associations, and communities in the United States and internationally. That network allows Agency to think expansively about who should be at the table and bring the right people together for each challenge.
Hillary Spencer, Chief Instigator
A few years ago, I asked myself the same question I ask every Agency collaborator: If I could do anything, what would it be?
My answer wasn’t complicated. I want to create beautiful spaces, and I knew I wasn’t just talking about physical spaces. I meant intellectual spaces, organizational spaces, and the conditions that allow people and ideas to flourish. Agency is how I work with others to create beautiful experiences, transform communities, and disrupt the status quo.
Every career tells a story. Mine isn’t just about museums, exhibitions, organizational development, or research. It’s about co-creating spaces, both physical and intellectual, that challenge, intrigue, transform, and expand what people believe is possible.
I’ve pursued that purpose from many perspectives: leading museums, designing exhibitions, facilitating strategy, conducting research, developing international collaborations, and studying how play, belonging, learning, and place shape our lives. To me, these experiences have always been connected. Each has been another way of exploring agency: how people move from reacting to circumstances to intentionally shaping the future.
Agency grew out of that practice of listening, learning, questioning assumptions, and helping others imagine what is possible. For years, I called it #takingrisks. Later, I called it disruption. Today, I understand both as part of something larger.
Agency.