Joanna Ruth Marsland: Managing a nonprofit
By Kim Spurr

iring a kiln requires careful concentration and perhaps a bit of luck as well." Those words on the wall of an exhibition at the North Carolina Pottery Center in Seagrove illustrate that the art of making pottery is not unlike the art of finding the perfect job.

Joanna Ruth Marsland (MBA '01) has found her career passion as executive director of the North Carolina Pottery Center in Seagrove, N.C. The mission of the museum is to promote public awareness and appreciation of the history, heritage and tradition of pottery-making in North Carolina through educational programs, public services, collection and preservation. Pottery-making has gone on in Seagrove, uninterrupted, for 250 years.

Marsland was a math major and chemistry minor at Hollins University near Roanoke, Va., when a teacher in an Early American furniture class noticed her interest in art.

"I chose math because I've always enjoyed it. It's very black and white. You know exactly where you stand - you either prove a theory or you don't. It's not like life, which is shades of gray," Marsland said. "This professor said, 'With your grounding in the sciences and your love of the arts, you should think about art conservation.'"

Marsland took a job at Colonial Williamsburg before getting her master's in art conservation at the University of Delaware/Winterthur Museum. She then became head of preservation at Tryon Palace in New Bern, and later decided she wanted to go back to school to get an MBA.

"As much as I love conservation, I became increasingly interested in arts education and economic development issues," she said. "For example, the decline of manufacturing is an issue of concern for North Carolina, and cultural tourism may be able to fill some of those gaps."

Although a job in the nonprofit world might not be a traditional career path for an MBA grad, Marsland said getting the degree made perfect sense for what she wanted to do.

"You have to operate nonprofits in a fiscally responsible way. You just have a different set of stockholders," she said. "As a director of a museum, you spend a predominant amount of time fund raising, dealing with traditional business owners. I wanted to be able to show them why investing in us was good for their business."

It's a tough economy now for nonprofits, and that means "thinking smarter, looking at new funding sources you might not have thought of before," Marsland said.

When her initial job offer after graduation from Kenan-Flagler fell through, Marsland debated leaving the world of nonprofits. But she embarked on a series of information interviews and found that they clarified and affirmed what she should be doing with her career.

"If the things we're working on are meaningful, that makes a huge difference. It's very easy to put all your energy into something if you love what you do."