This grounded theory study is an examination of the culture, context, conditions and competencies of a set of six museum educators from a large city in the United States. Participants were education department leaders from a variety of museum types, including: A science museum, an ethnic arts museum, a settlement house museum, a children's museum, an aquarium, and a zoo. An analysis of data points to an emerging framework that codifies particular leadership settings and domains of practice for leaders of museum educators. An array of data collections were employed in the study, including: Semi-structured interviews, unstructured observations, written reflections to assigned readings, and professional development workshops. Primary source documents were also analyzed as part of this study. Research suggests that highly skilled leaders of museum educators possess an ability to lead in a variety of settings including leading IN their departments, UP the institutional hierarchy, ACROSS the institution and OUTside the institution. An emerging framework is articulated that includes four domains of leadership practice: The Teaching and Learning Domain, the Political Domain, the Financial Domain and the Operations Domain. Lastly, research suggests that the participants in this study share a common lens through which all their work is done, which is that of the visitor as a learner.