November 2025 Update from our CEO – Discovery Museum

Update from our CEO – Discovery Museum
 
November 2025
 
Dear Friend of the Museum,
 
You may have heard (because we’ve been shouting it from the rooftops!): Discovery Museum was featured on the WBZ-TV CBS News Boston's “Levan Out Live” segment this month!
 
Do we seem overly excited? 
 
Let me explain what we were so excited to share with a huge local and national audience. 
 
Discovery Museum has served nearly 250,000 people a year at our museum and in school classrooms all over the state, and have been doing this work for 43 years. Yet I still meet people who think of us as a “local treasure” or a “hidden gem.” We are so much more than that!
 
We have an extraordinary legacy of serving families with children with disabilities, through special no-cost programs and free memberships. Our commitment to eliminating all barriers to visiting our museum goes well beyond the standard in our industry, and thousands of families trust us deeply to serve them in this way. But many people have no idea.
 
We are in 3,000 elementary school classrooms across Massachusetts a year and are striving to raise $1.6 million so we can double that number—bringing hands-on science to 120,000 kids annually—by 2030. Yet even those who visit our museum don’t realize how much we do to reach kids outside our walls, where we can do our most equitable work.
 
And we are a carbon neutral operation, generate all our own electricity through our own onsite array, and are one of the largest nonprofit community solar providers in the Commonwealth—all in service to inspiring kids and families to do what they can to stand up for the natural world. Yet most people I meet are surprised to learn we have made such an investment in sustainability and nature education.
 
So, being on the local and national morning news, with five live segments shot from different parts of our museum and the opportunity to get hundreds of thousands of viewers—and over 2 million on the live stream—just as excited about Discovery Museum as I and our whole team are…YES, it is a thrill!
 
You can watch the whole thing here:  {watch now}
 
 
My sincere thanks to the very gracious and delightfully playful Levan Reid, and talented cameraperson Garth, for being here and helping us share our story about the limitless potential of kids. 
 
We take our responsibility to stand up for kids, stand up for science, and stand up for nature—with optimism and fervor—very seriously at Discovery Museum. If you’ve never been here, or it’s been a long time, please email me at mbeam@discoveryacton.org. I or one of my colleagues would love to show you around, anytime! I guarantee you’ll leave feeling better about the world and will join us in wanting to spread the word.
 
And if you’d like to help our museum and our work, you can do that in two really meaningful ways:
 
1)  Share your personal story about our impact on your family with me.
2)  Make a donation to support our work.
 
 
Thank you!
Marie R. B. Beam
CEO