Dallas Holocaust Museum names new CEO

Alice Murray assumes the newly-created leadership post.

DALLAS — Alice Murray, a highly regarded executive in the city’s real estate and non-profit communities, is the new chief executive officer of the Dallas Holocaust Museum/Center for Education and Tolerance.

Alice Murray

Murray, who has served as president and CEO of DowntownDallas and the Downtown Improvement District and The Real Estate Council, Inc., assumes the newly-created post at the museum effective immediately, said Jim Hogue, president of the board of directors of the museum.

“Alice Murray is a talented executive and a highly-respected community leader who is the right person at the right time to lead the Dallas Holocaust Museum/Center for Education and Tolerance,” said Hogue. “Her background and experience is critical for the museum as we put together plans for a capital campaign to realize the long-awaited construction of a best-in-class, nationally-recognized Museum/Center for all the citizens of North Texas.”

Founded 25 years ago in the basement of the Dallas Jewish Community Center, the museum moved to its interim location at 211 N. Record Street, in Dallas’ West End historic district in 2005. More than 40,000 students and teachers and another 15,000 visitors tour the museum annually. The museum has purchased land along DART rail line, across from The Sixth Floor Museum, at the corner of Houston and Pacific Streets for the new building.

“I am thrilled, honored, and excited to have the opportunity to work with the museum board and staff to take the museum to its next level, especially the construction of a new museum,” said Murray. “The museum’s mission — to teach the moral and ethical response to prejudice, hatred and indifference — is unduplicated in its importance for all residents of our city and region.”

At the request of the museum board, current Executive Director Elliott Dlin, an internationally-recognized Holocaust expert, will assume the new title of museum director and focus his duties on the museum’s educational, archival, and content-related programs and services, especially for the new museum. “When the new museum is built, we want it to be recognized as the finest teaching museum in the region, if not the country,” said Hogue.

In addition to her non-profit background, Murray has extensive experience in commercial real estate. Her first development project was the remodeling of the historic Kirby Building, a Main Street fixture since 1913, into a downtown residential high-rise that re-opened in 1999. Other development projects included the finish-out construction of the W Dallas Victory Hotel and Residences, as well as premiere hotel projects in San Diego, and Milwaukee, Wisc., which were accomplished while serving as vice president of development at Gatehouse Capital Corporation in Dallas.

Murray has logged thousands of volunteer hours as a member or officer of non-profit organizations, including the board and executive committee of DowntownDallas, the executive committee of the State Fair of Texas; the executive committee of the Trinity Commons Foundation; the board of the Dallas Summer Musicals and many others. Former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller appointed her to the Mayor’s Task Force on Homelessness from 2004 to 2006.

Source: Dallas Holocaust Museum/Center for Education and Tolerance