CEO - Revs Institute

REVS Institute

Mission

Revs Institute advocates for the meaningful and historical automobile as a lasting human legacy by connecting the past to the present through objects, events, and practices. Supported by creative research that aspires to presenting authentic and faithful narratives, the institution will be a global resource for reconstructing, reactivating, contextualizing, and respecting the historical automobile as active matter.

Vision Statement

Revs Institute will be the most useful resource worldwide for the historical and meaningful car community. Through research-based programs, both virtual and actual, Revs Institute will address pain points and aspirational goals of the historical and meaningful car community through innovative contributions to practices, care, and use; to authenticity, originality, and intellectual/aesthetic contexts; history and effects of the automobile, and, finally, through advocating to the public for the importance of the automobile as important cultural legacy.

Revs Institute, located in Naples, Florida, is an internationally recognized and respected thought leader and resource for research and innovation in the field of collecting, restoring, experiencing, and appreciating historical automobiles. The institute seeks an entrepreneurial and visionary chief executive to lead its development as the globe’s most useful resource for developing enhanced praxis (innovations in care and use protocols); supporting connoisseurship (the focus on originality, genuineness, and historical, social, aesthetic and technological value); preserving legacy (expanding the appreciation of the automobile as historical artifact and change agent for both good and ill); and informing society (educating the public, through media, events, and programs).

The chief executive will develop and oversee the institute’s strategic direction and implement its operating plan under the oversight of a visionary founder and an experienced board, expert staff, and a committed volunteer cadre. The chief executive will create partnerships with academic institutions and with business and industry focusing on leveraging Revs Institute’s resource base, intellectual property, and assets to further its ongoing mission. These initiatives will consist of both pain point relieving and ambition advancing programs that will benefit such stakeholders as the world’s top 200 collectors, automobile restorers or the transactional community of buyers and sellers and more. 

Revs Institute’s chief executive will establish and maintain sound fiscal management through balanced budgets, asset and revenue growth, effective fund raising, and fee-based programs. The Chief Executive will create, lead, and direct the creation of an “A player” institutional advancement and development capability through a working partnership with the Vice-president of Development. 

Competencies: 

• Strategic mind set and vision.
• Ability to develop and nurture teams, and to attract, hire, and retain A players.
• Outstanding oral and written communication. Able to “sell” the institute and its mission. 
• Action oriented, mission driven, and results motivated.
• Excellent listener.
• Accomplished at synthesis and analysis of complex issues.
• A minimum of 10 years senior executive experience.
• Successful experience collaborating with major donors.
• Competence with IT and digital program creation and management.
• Excellent financial manager and planner.

Qualities:

• Honesty, integrity, and openness.
• Team player with an under control ego.
• High standards, detail oriented. Dissatisfied with the status quo.
• High energy with strong work ethic.
• Socially adept, enjoys people.
• High IQ and EQ.
• Adaptable and flexible, comfortable with change.
• Fun to be around, enthusiastic.

To Apply, please send a cover letter and CV to: mbisset@kezarconsulting.com

What is Revs Institute? 

Overview Revs Institute is more than a car museum – it is a place to view the evolution of modernity through a different lens. Located in an 80,000 square foot facility, Revs is a working research and educational institution dedicated to the preservation, care, activation, and understanding of historically significant automobiles. The organization has an annual operating budget of $6.7 million with an endowment of $80 million and currently employs 29 staff and has more than 120 active volunteers. Revs houses one of the world’s great automobile collections consisting of more than 130 automobiles curated for historic, aesthetic, technological, and societal significance. All cars are operational or capable of operation. Revs Institute presents them to the public in its galleries at home, as well as on loan to other institutions. Revs Institute’s mission keeps its collection alive in the world through shows, operation, and even motor racing competition at national and international venues. 

Revs Institute Operations  Revs Institute has five operating departments: the museum; the archives and library; the conservation and maintenance lab; RevsEd; and a biennial marketing and fund raising conference, the Revs Institute Symposium on Connoisseurship and the Collectible Car. 

The Automobile Museum Automobiles are distributed among four themed galleries: Automobility: The Car and the Road; Vitesse: the High Performance Sports and Sports Racing Automobile; Revs: Racing Cars and Racing Men, the story of Grand Prix and Indianapolis Racing Cars, and Porsche: Driven to Excel, a chronological display of Porsche’s most important and iconic models from 1949 through 1971.

Revs Institute’s Library and Archives: The library and archives have the mission to be the most useful automotive research facility in the world. To that end, work is continuously underway, adding new materials, improving cataloging and metadata, and facilitating access to these collections. Holdings consist of more than 26,000 books which comprise most of the available English language bibliography on automobiles. Periodicals represent one of the collection’s strongest holdings, with complete runs, several starting before 1900, in the major car-building languages: English; German; Italian; and French. Automobilia, related ephemera, constitutes another archive of 130 collections. The library holds about 1.5 million photographs, of which 700,000 are searchable online at the Revs Digital Library. There is also an extensive film library of archival footage. 

Revs Institute Library and Archives is planning to form a consortium with other research libraries to leverage its scope and breadth.

CH Motorcars is the Revs Institute subsidiary established to care for the automobiles in the collection. CH Motorcars is staffed with expert conservators, technicians, and support personnel.

RevsEd is a for-profit educational outreach program owned by Revs Institute. It is designed for teenaged to adult recreational learners. Students experience the working principles of the material world through working with their hands, learning the fundamentals of operation and maintenance of the “old school” automobile. Designed as a menu of fee-based programs that not only educate and entertain, but also build community and affiliation with Revs Institute, these classes are proving highly popular.

Revs Symposia are biennial conferences for the world’s leading collectors. These events offer insights into problems and opportunities in collecting, curation, conservation, operation and appreciation of important automobiles, Revs Institute has been offering symposia since 2000 to great acclaim. Leading collectors from around the globe experience 3.5 days of learning, sharing experiences, and networking, facilitated by leading historians, industry professionals, and notable experts. The symposium is a fee-based program that contributes materially to Revs Institute's operating budget.

Who Visits Revs Institute? Revs Institute’s visitors come from all 50 U.S. states and from around the world. Most international visitors are Canadian and Western European. The museum also enjoys a regular flow of major collectors, historical automobile industry VIPs, writers, and historians. Highly trained and expert docents interpret the collection for visitors. Indeed, TripAdvisor reports that the two-hour docent tours are a “must.”