The Holocaust Awareness Museum and Education Center announced at the end of June that it is naming its education director, Fabulous Flores, as its first chief operating officer. Flores will take the reins of an organization that operated 217 Holocaust education events in the 2024–2025 school year.
When the previous leader of the Elkins Park-based organization, Abby Gilbert, retired effective July 1, Flores stepped into the role of HAMEC leader.
“When [Gilbert] announced to us all that she would be retiring, I wanted to step up and be in a more advanced role,” Flores said. “Between the board and [Gilbert], they decided that the organization had grown enough where it was time to have an actual CEO to run the museum.”
The Holocaust Awareness Museum and Education Center has seen an 80% increase in programming since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas. They reached over 22,000 audience members during this most recent school year.
Flores brings experience after previously serving as education director for two years. She also has a background in the field. She has pursued Holocaust and genocide studies and has worked at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York.
She thinks she’s well-suited for this new role.
“I think it falls within my wheelhouse. I’m just a type of person [who’s] structured in terms of how I work, so if anything, it makes more sense for me. It fits within who I am and how I work best,” she said.
As CEO, Flores will transition from working directly with schools on programming to doing more big-picture planning. She said she wants to perhaps incorporate artificial intelligence into programming and prepare for a future without those who experienced the atrocities of the Holocaust firsthand.
“We’re at this precipice right now, where our survivors are dwindling. So what Holocaust education is going to start to look like, and what the mission of our organization is, it’s going to start to change a bit,” she said. “As America’s first Holocaust museum, we want to be one of those organizations that’s going to be leading the charge of what new direction Holocaust education is going to look like.”
The museum used to have 40 different survivors as part of its programs. Now, it only has six. To compensate, HAMEC often uses second-generation Holocaust survivors in school programs.
The programs are free for schools and are often brought in by students who voiced the importance of Holocaust education. Lise Marlowe, who was previously the program and outreach director for HAMEC, will take over Flores’ role.
“These changes mark an extraordinary new chapter for HAMEC,” said board president Chuck Feldman. “Fabulous and Lise embody the spirit, scholarship and strength our mission requires now more than ever.”
With this rising demand for HAMEC’s work, the organization plans to expand its staff. Flores said they just hired a Holocaust scholar. She also wants to bring in enough money at the next annual gala to hire another staff member.
“One of our shortcomings is that people don’t know who we are. We don’t have a marketing team, so we don’t have the marketing components, and we’ve just kind of been getting lost underneath all of these bigger museums,” she said. “So, my long-term goal is to make us more on the stage, in the forefront of people’s minds, to know that we’re here.”
Flores wants the organization to do more than present at schools.
“We’re not just here to go to schools to teach a lesson for a day. We’re also here to help in other capacities, where people need that help, that extra assistance or education,” she said.