More Than a Museum

It’s a juggling act all too familiar for many: the delicate balance of career, family life and our creative passions.

Heather (Young) Sutcliffe ’92, however, decided to combine career, family and creativity into the Museum of Leo’s Art, a nonprofit she started in 2018 that uses the sales of art made by her younger son, Leo, to fund programs for families with neurodivergent members. “I’d spent a lot of time in waiting rooms with my sons always thinking about how much I’d learned about navigating all of this, and how I could share it with others,” says Sutcliffe, who also holds a full-time job in digital commerce and is a mom to two teen sons, both of whom navigate life with neurodiversity.

The organization, which supports Sutcliffe’s sons, fulfills a creative itch and puts her business background to work, exhibits and sells at 60 pop-ups and farmers’ markets around Greater Boston. Sutcliffe’s older son, Owen, helps out at the markets: “It’s been a great chance for him to build vocational experience,” she says. The foundation also hosts classes, providing opportunities for more kids to build skills like event planning and sales, and serves as a support network for parents and caregivers. The venture allows Sutcliffe to put key lessons she picked up as a marketing major at Bentley into practice: “There was a course on diversity in the workplace. That paved the way to an awareness of any differences in people,” she says. “My higher-level classes taught me to look at the complexity of things when looking for solutions.” Of which, it could be said, her foundation is one.