So the zoo emotionally, the institutional emotion was not in good shape at the end of Manuel’s tenure. We had the tiger incident, we had his management style, we had his knowledge or lack thereof and the zoo, like I say, emotionally, if you look at it, institution emotion, I… Read More
Has it affected the zoo?… Read More
What were the pros and cons of that management style?… Read More
I’m happy to say I had little involvement with him, because his style, what he would do is, he would give orders and he would also, in terms of, he would minimize people, which I guess worked for many positions in senior staff at the San Francisco Zoo. He minimized… Read More
And how did that affect how you and the people ran the collection?… Read More
What type of style did he have as a manager?… Read More
I don’t think ’cause I mean you need new blood. I think it’s important that our new hires, it’s great to promote from within and at times promote zoo directors from within, it’s important to bring new blood into a facility where you are gonna see and do things possibly… Read More
Once they hired John Lewis, he was then returned to his position as director of parks. He had no feel in my opinion, he had no feel for the zoo. And it’s like he wanted to be something that the zoos are trying to get rid of. The newest, last… Read More
One of those things, could be, you know, a low B type, that’s not gonna call multimillion dollars, but depending on where you’re gonna put it, gonna cost some box, and we talked about it, looking into it, and then the marketing department made this huge, huge stink about it… Read More
And that was a pretty significant change in an exhibit. And you do that every couple years, two to three years. And then you have the A project, was the one million plus, one million to the sky’s the limit. And that was the project that should be built every… Read More
But he also through his support staff, and whatever was said to him, from him being very authoritarian in terms of making decision, we then became the consensus zoo, where everything was done by consensus. And everybody had to buy into the plan before we could implement things, and it… Read More
The institution, the area, the politic of the city. And the culture, I think, it is funny how David did change as personnel changed in his management team. And when David, initially David, he was very good at making decisions, and it’s not like he would just jump. David was… Read More
And I remember talking to Peggy Burkes after this and going, what does he know about hotdogs?… Read More
He’s the director of the zoo. And I remember her talking about, yeah, we have to teach him to be a director. You don’t know everything, you know, but, you know, initially he came on very strong, he had tried to change the zoo and unfortunately the zoo did change. Read More
And I remember at one of the early senior management meetings that we were having, sat down on that, David started talking about changing the hot dog. We need a different hot dog. Read More
But I believe that, he knows he has the right team around him. He could support them and he gets involved whenever he has to, but he’s not an animal guy and a zoo seems to do pretty darn good. So it would’ve been interesting, you know, like I said,… Read More
I think, how he did, but now I have to jump back, after Saul left when he had Phil Arnold. And once again, Phil, nice guy, new business, you know, was not a zoo guy, not an animal guy, a placeholder, who wanted to be zoo director. It’d be interesting… Read More
And whether you disagreed with him, it’s not that I’m would just sit and call him out and say something, but if something was to be done, that I didn’t agree with, strongly agree with, I would let him know. I think that’s very important with any institution. He was… Read More
And I would just do the deals, and then let him know after fact, I didn’t feel that I have to hold it. I gotta talk to Saul before I could tell you, we can do this. He gave me the authority to do this, do that stuff. It made… Read More
Saul gave me the authority, the permission to change the collection. Now I wasn’t about to sell a gorilla or get rid of the gorilla collection and bring in a new Orang collection. I mean, I knew my limits, but clearly I was able to move. Yeah, it’s part of… Read More