Margaret Britten assumed the role of executive director of the Airborne & Special Operations Museum Foundation on July 1, where she will lead the independent, nonprofit foundation that supports the Army-run museum in Fayetteville.
Britten has spent her entire career in veteran advocacy organizations. She comes to the foundation after seven years working for Team Red, White & Blue, where she was the senior director of advancement. Before that, she served as the communication director for United Service Organizations of North Carolina. She moved to North Carolina in 2016 from Virginia and has called the Fort Bragg community home for many years.
“I grew up as a military brat. My dad was in the Army, and I think I moved 10 times before middle school, which is pretty wild,” said Britten. “He was also in Third Group Special Forces as a captain when I was about five years old, so we were stationed here at Fort Bragg. It’s nice that I’ve kind of come back full circle.”
Britten spoke to CityView a few weeks into her new role, which started as the museum looks ahead to a major renovation to one of Fayetteville’s top tourist destinations.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Do you remember the first time you went into the museum?
Yes, I do actually. So when I moved here, I think it was in 2021, after my husband and I had our son, we came into the museum with him. And it was the first time that I had been in here, though my husband had been. And it was just amazing—an amazing experience. You know, having that connection to my family and being able to see what that was like for them; I loved being in the plane that they jumped out of and just honoring that history of Green Berets. My dad served in South America for a lot of the time. There’s some artifacts in there that were really related to his service, and it was just like an amazing, kind of overwhelming, feeling to be experiencing that and seeing it firsthand.
You’re coming in after [former Executive Director] Renee Lane had a very eventful seven years, and obviously right in the middle of a major renovation project for the foundation and the museum. As you’re hitting the ground, what are your top priorities for the foundation?
First of all, I’d be remiss if I didn’t share some thanks for Renee Lane. She did an amazing job. She raised $8 million for the capital campaign and really helped professionalize the foundation, bringing it to the next level. So I hope that following her footsteps, I can take us to yet another level.
My goal is to help modernize the foundation and really grow the impact that we have in the community. So what you guys will be seeing from us is an increase in communications; that’s my background. I’m very excited to dive in there. But also just an increase in what we do in the community and how we engage our service member community as well, and the local Fayetteville community.
What does the foundation reaching out into the community look like in your mind?
The more people that come into the museum, the better it is for the foundation and for the museum. We want people to be in here learning about the stories of our airborne and special operations service members and their great history.
We’re going to be kicking things off with an event on 9/11. It is a remembrance ceremony—as you probably know and the community knows, we have our field of honor where individuals can purchase a flag to honor a service member, a fallen service member, anybody who served. And so we’ll also be unveiling our field of honor at that moment and just bringing the community together to recognize that anniversary.
This community, the Airborne Special Ops community, carried those wars for 20 years after those attacks, and so it is very impactful for the people we serve here. So we also have a focus exhibit around 9/11 and the [Global War on Terror]. So we’re just going to bring people out, just get them in the museum again, show them what’s going on. We want to have pop-up events here and there. Because what’s good for the community is good for the foundation and the museum.
What specifically drew you to the space of veteran services and that area of nonprofit work?
When I went to college, my parents still were stationed in Germany. So I went to the United States by myself. I went to Syracuse University, and funnily enough, I kind of struggled. I had been around military people my entire career, and I struggled to connect with my civilian new peers at college.
So I found myself in the Student Veterans Club. More or less, the Student Veterans Club folks adopted me. They took me under their wing, and I just really had somebody that I could connect with. And so from there, I made some connections, and I really found a love for supporting that veteran and military community that I had lived in my whole life. Every step of my career, I just continued down that path of supporting that community, and now I’m even more excited to be the executive director.
Tell me a little bit about your fundraising priorities and what your focus is on that front.
Right away, our number one priority is that on July 31, we are hitting the end of our Pritzker Grant matching period [which began August 1, 2025]. So up until July 31st, every donation up to $50,000 will be matched. So if someone donates $2, it becomes $4 for us. We currently have $30,000 raised, which is amazing. It has to be all new donors or people who have not donated in three years. So it is a challenge, but an exciting one.
But number two priority is I’m actively looking to find companies, local businesses—military veteran ones—that we can partner with and help bring some spirit to the foundation. And then after that, we will always be fundraising for our capital campaign because that allows the museum to renovate, update, do more, and keep this museum fresh for our community.
Talk me through what your timeline is and what your focus is in terms of this major work on the museum.
We have designs for new exhibits, and right now we are in the process of finding a fabricator to implement the changes in the museum. That means we will be updating our World War II side, and it will probably be three phases. So we’re starting with World War II; we’re going to be having a trench World War I exhibit leading into the start of the Airborne; there’s going to be a lot of exciting stuff. Our lobby is going to be a lot more interactive. But you know these are long games for us, so we’re hoping to be done with the first [phase] by 2028. We will continue fundraising from the foundation side to support the future phases as well.
Looking at all this work that’s going to happen on the museum, what do you think is going to be the biggest challenge for the first year as executive director?
I think for me the biggest challenge will definitely be working through these renovations. That is new to me. But we have a lot of support here with our board and our museum colleagues to work through it. You know, we will have an active construction site, which will probably be a little bit tough for us to figure out what that looks like for our visitors and museum-goers.
The second most challenging thing I think for me will be really activating this community around this mission. My personal belief is that people have not always come back into their community the same way we did before COVID, and we really want to encourage people to come out again and be part of our community. That’s a challenge I’m willing to accept, and we’re excited to kick it off on 9/11.
Do you have partners that you’re either already working with, other organizations that are supporting the museum, or who you’d like to build relationships with?
Right now we’re already working with the Cool Spring Downtown District; they support our field of honor, so I’m getting to know them. I’ve been meeting with the Woodpeckers, who are our next-door neighbors here in Fayetteville at Segra Stadium. A lot of the board members are very well connected and helping connect me with the city.
So those are just a few that are already existing, but I think moving forward, I’d really like to establish more support with local businesses. You know, what’s good for the museum is also good for our local businesses because we want to bring more visitors to Fayetteville and have more people in and about downtown to support the local economy.
Is there a group of people that you would like to see coming to the museum more, or a particular group you want to kind of reach out to more as visitors, not just sponsors or partners?
As a military spouse, I really would like to see our military community come out more. I think that our spouses and people who live on post and our active duty families don’t always know about the museum if they’re not getting out downtown. Our community has a lot to offer, and our museum has a lot to offer.
I think for families, it really helps you understand maybe what your service member has gone through. We are about to launch a VR [virtual reality] experience to figure out what a day in the life is like when your spouse has a jump day. So I think that’s going to be really exciting for families to experience that. So, if anything, I would say I really hope that our military community will come out and experience the museum, learn more about their history, and learn more about their stories.
I would just like to invite everybody in the Fayetteville community to come out to the museum on September 11th. You know this—9/11 is a very impactful moment for this community. We did fight those wars for 20 years following, especially our airborne and special operations carried it. So coming out to the museum, seeing the focus exhibit, being part of the community, seeing the field of honor; we just want everybody to get out there and kind of be re-energized around these upcoming renovations, what we’re doing, and remembering those who served.
