About us

Since 2007, Audience Focus has worked with leading museums and cultural organizations to plan and evaluate unique, life-enriching experiences for diverse audiences. We believe that museums and cultural organizations impact individuals and communities in profound ways. Our goal is to empower institutions to articulate and measure this impact so they remain relevant to their audiences in the 21st Century and beyond.

Audience Focus provides a range of services including strategic and interpretive planning, professional development in evaluation and evaluative thinking, concept development, grant proposal and logic model development, audience research, exhibition and program evaluation, and basic and applied research.

OUR TEAM

Jeanine Ancelet, Principal

Washington DC Metro Area Office

Ms. Ancelet has over 15 years of experience directing  a variety of research and evaluation projects for museums and other cultural organizations across the country. Jeanine’s primary interest is to advocate for visitors and program participants and effectively communicate their needs, interests, and values to the organizations that serve them. Ms. Ancelet specializes in projects involving families and teens, museum-school partnerships, and studies focused on the use and value of new media and technology in museums. Current interests include exploring new ways to effectively measure museums' impact on visitors' creativity and empathy. Ms. Ancelet also teaches both in university classrooms and within museums, helping students and practitioners to better understand the role evaluation can play in their day-to-day work.  Her degrees are from the University College London, Institute for Archaeology (M.A. Museum Studies) and Indiana University Bloomington (B.A. Anthropology and English). In her spare time you can find her out in nature, serving as a Maryland Master Naturalist and Audubon Habitat Advisor.

Marianna adams, principal

Dallas, TX office

Marianna Adams, Ed.D., founded Audience Focus Inc. in 2005, to provide evaluation, interpretive planning, and professional development services for museums, cultural organizations, and other informal learning environments. Prior to forming Audience Focus Inc., Dr. Adams was a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Learning Innovation for twelve years, designing and implementing a wide range of research and evaluation studies across the country. In July 2013 she was invited to spend the summer as the education fellow at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA. While on this mini-sabbatical she took time to think and write about intergenerational learning in museums. In the past she headed education departments at the Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL, and Museum of Art, Ft. Lauderdale, FL. She served as National Principal's Initiative co-coordinator for the summer 1995 Teacher Institute at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. She taught public and private school K-12, high school literature and composition, middle and high school art, middle school social studies, and has worked with elementary-level emotionally disturbed children. 

Jessica Luke, Contributing partner

Jessica Luke, Ph.D., regularly partners with Audience Focus on projects. She is the Director of the Museology Graduate Program at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA, and Principal of JLuke Consulting. She has more than 20 years experience studying learning in museums, and focuses her research primarily on children and families, investigating impacts such as socio-emotional development, empathy, and critical thinking in museums. Jessica teaches graduate courses in research design and methods, evaluation, and informal learning. Prior to joining the UW faculty, she worked for 15 years as an evaluator at the Institute for Learning Innovation. She has a master’s degree in Museum Studies from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Christina Talbert, Senior Evaluator

Christina Talbert has supported senior research associates on multiple projects since she began in Summer 2018. Before her work with Audience Focus, Christina received her master’s degree in museum education from the George Washington University and her bachelor’s degree in art history from the University of North Florida. She has worked with multiple museums and organizations on program and exhibition evaluations. She is passionate about better understanding how visitors can be engaged while learning in museum environments.