After a five-month search, the Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum has chosen a new executive director.

Dr. Sharon Kahin has 30 years experience in Wyoming.

Kahin now serves as president of the Greater Yellowstone Historical Society in Dubois. She completed a term on the board of the Dubois Museum Asso-ciation in 2011. She is one of the directors of the Native Memory Project, a partnership between the Greater Yellowstone Historical Society, Utah State University in Logan, and USU’s Fife Folklore Archives. She has also been a consultant with the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, and the University of Wyoming.

She will begin work at the history museum in early September.

The historical society’s search committee received applications from people in at least 10 states, committee chairman Steve Ashley said.

“The board was unanimous in their decision to hire Sharon,” Ashley said, “because she was professional, has an academic side to her, and has experience running museums. Those attributes, coupled with her passion for the area’s history, made her a perfect fit.”

Kahin has a master’s degree and a doctorate from Cornell University in the history of art and was an undergraduate at Colorado College in Colo-rado Springs. She also studied abroad, including at Cambridge University in England.

Kahin has taught at the University of Wyoming, Utah State University, Northwest College in Powell, Cornell Uni-versity in Ithaca, N.Y., and informally with Elderhostel programs involving anthropologists, archaeologists and Amer-ican Indian elders. She is a former director of the Wind River Historical Center in Dubois. Kahin has received honors from the Wyoming Historical Society, the Wyoming Nature Conservancy, the Wyoming Council for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was awarded a fellowship in the Smith-sonian’s Museum Program. 

Kahin first traveled to Wyoming at age 5, taking a pack trip into the Absaroka Range on a Shetland pony. She and her brother now own the Spring Ranch in Dubois; the ranch has been in their family since the mid-1960s.