Children pretend to canoe in the Mississippi River and discover constellations in the night sky. Others play with engineering gadgets or draw their own masterpieces on an art wall. Some young adventurers even climb 30 feet to walk among clouds.
University of Minnesota Twin Cities alum Cassie Miles helps create these fun experiences in her role as CEO of the Great River Children’s Museum, which opened earlier this year in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
“Our mission is to shine a bright light on the power of play to spark children’s learning, strengthen families, and build community connections,” says Miles, who grew up in a small town near St. Cloud. “It’s different than what people might think of when you say the word ‘museum’ — here, you can touch and play with everything. That’s the whole point.”
Building this new community space in the heart of downtown St. Cloud has been a years-long process. Miles, a graduate of Minnesota Carlson, took the CEO job in July 2020, becoming the museum’s first paid employee.
Miles worked to build the museum into the bright, joyous place that it is today. She put together large-scale fundraising campaigns, collaborated with an architect and exhibit designers, conducted community outreach, and eventually hired her 25-person staff.
Rooted in entrepreneurship
Miles’ drive to build an organization from the ground up largely started in her classes at Minnesota Carlson. As a first-generation college student, she double-majored in finance and entrepreneurship. Inspired by seeing her parents run their own businesses, Miles envisioned her career going in that same direction.
She even started her own business with classmates in Carlson’s Entrepreneurship in Action course. The group created Gopheropoly, the first University of Minnesota–themed Monopoly game.
“That gave me a great foundation for understanding how multifaceted starting a business is,” she says. It was also her first experience of work entwined with play—an idea that would come back years later at the children’s museum.
Pivoting to the museum
After graduating from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in 2007, Miles moved to Chicago, where her then-fiancé (now-husband) had been accepted into graduate school. Although she’d dreamed of pursuing entrepreneurship, she took a job in the finance department of a privately owned bank. After beginning her career in finance, Miles soon became more involved in her community.
In 2020, the Great River Children’s Museum’s Board of Directors was looking to hire a CEO, and Miles could see that this would be a good fit.
For her, the career shift was not only a way to connect with the community but also a return to the world of entrepreneurship that she’d explored at Minnesota Carlson. And, it brought playfulness back into her professional life.
“This was truly a start-up,” she says. “The board brings the strong expertise behind childhood development and how influential play is in children’s lives, and I stepped into my role to build the business side of that.”
Miles created organizational systems and helped the museum get its first major financial donors. She also coordinated renovations of the museum’s building and worked to promote the museum throughout central Minnesota. All these efforts led to the museum’s grand opening in June 2025.
She says this ability to navigate uncharted territory can be traced back to her days at Minnesota Carlson.
“Carlson helped me understand how important it is to be resourceful and not just immediately knowledgeable,” Miles says. “Of course, you want to be knowledgeable, but to be able to adapt and figure things out is a superior skill.”
As Miles considers the regional influence of the museum, she reflects on her own childhood, growing up in the small town of Annandale, near St. Cloud.
“I want kids in central Minnesota to have the same access to really cool, inspiring opportunities that others do,” she says. “You’re not limited by a small town. Big dreams can happen in a small town.”
Miles is living proof of that.
- Categories:
- Business and Management
- Entrepreneurship
