You try, in the first six months, the only thing you could do in the first six months, and I wasn’t completely good at this, but the only thing you do in the first six months is walk around, talk to people, and learn the lay of land. Don’t do… Read More
So one of the things I negotiated, when I took the job at Pittsburgh, with the city was I wanted a mobile phone. Now, mobile phones were about this big at that time, they looked like a handheld radio, there were huge, and there were seven of them in the… Read More
Seven of them at the time in the whole city administration, whole city government, right?… Read More
Oh, that was funny. Read More
So I get there in 1990, right?… Read More
Hot off the press, new director, all fired up, all excited. And the zoo society and the zoo did not get along. They did not speak. They did not speak to each other, like once or twice a year. And the executive director of the Zoo Society office was in… Read More
And he said, well, they’ll give you the money and you’ll give it to us. I said, I will not do that. I absolutely will not do that. I’ll give them the money back. I had the check already. I said, well, I’ll give them back. I’ll give the money… Read More
I’m not gonna tell them that I’m gonna spend this money on this and have you take the money away. Well, it actually passed city council, thank God. They weren’t all of that frame of mind, we’ll just say, but city council was a hoot. Talk about a learning experience,… Read More
Well, but talking about that, what was your relationship with the Zoo Society and how did it change over the years?… Read More
And this one council member wanted to take that money. No, no, no, we don’t wanna spend that money on that. We wanna spend this money on this, not at the zoo, and this, this is more important. And I’m like, but you don’t understand, this money is designated for… Read More
And he’s like, well, why not?… Read More
So who was gonna raise the money for the zoo?… Read More
And I had not been real successful in raising money for the zoo from the city. The biggest grant I got under the city of Pittsburgh that I remember, it was $200,000. And the reason that occurred was, for one, previous generations in the city had upset the foundation community… Read More
And I sat before city council with this gift to the city, ’cause we were city run at that time, of $2.2 million to build this new education center and this new office center, right?… Read More
And we had workshops at the zoo on the same thing. Read More
We brought people in to try to figure out, well, who should run the zoo?… Read More
Because the Zoo Society at that time was not strong. And the most money our Zoo Society at that time had raised was a million bucks. They were doing the education program, they were supporting education, and they had the membership program when I first got there, and then we… Read More
Well, we did a lot of things at Pittsburgh. I mean, we were one of the first zoos to privatize back in 1993, ’94. The city was having a very difficult time at that time. The mayor came to me and told me they were $35 million in the hole… Read More
And so I did, I studied that for 14 months and put together a task force of major people, I mean like the managing partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers, a major accounting firm in Pittsburgh, and worldwide, actually. And put together a whole team of people to work with us on all the… Read More
And then I went to the zoos, the few zoos at that time that had privatized, and I went to those zoos to learn about what they had done for privatization, and what had worked for them, and what was the best thing for them at that time, and how… Read More