You have to be good. And I think that was sometimes surprising to people. ’cause you know, oh well I thought we were friendly, Rick. Yeah, we were, but you, you’re not doing your job. So I, I think I was pretty, I was upfront maybe too upfront sometimes, but,… Read More
But if it doesn’t work you say, Hey, let’s try it a different way. You don’t wanna get in the weeds too much. You, you wanna hire good people, but you gotta tell ’em, Hey, don’t be afraid to make a mistake. I would always forgive people for making a… Read More
Most of the staff I’ve worked with, I keep in touch with quite a bit. The curator of mammals at the San Diego Zoo now. I hired her. I gave her an opportunity when other people didn’t. And she’ll never forget that. The same thing at Houston. I mean there… Read More
But I, I think if people said Rick ji’s animal style management style was hire the best people and get out of their way and let them do their work, What would your staff, how would they describe your management style do you think?… Read More
Gallup, they did our profiles and other sub and with all these other top executives from oil companies and medical companies. And what they taught us or what they kind of made us believe more of is go with your strengths. Don’t try to do stuff you’re not good at. Read More
And, and, and they all remembered it and they all liked it, you know, because you weren’t critical back then you, but, but it was, and then I built on that. And so, so you know, you, you, you, you, you start accumulating all this stuff. So I think my… Read More
I got the vision award because my presentation started out with how many of you remember your first visit to a zoo?… Read More
So she had the, the board chair then was somebody that was much more geared to the, the, the revenue side of it rather than the conservation side of it. I, it was good. It was, it was just the, I was 63 and I knew I still had another… Read More
So tell me what, how would you describe your management style?… Read More
Somewhat unpredictable because we’d have, I’d like to plan things and, and we have plans, but then sometimes you have a plan and as you go through it you realize you gotta change things a little bit. Some people say, no, we gotta stick to the plan. No, sometimes we… Read More
The beginning and the end. The middle was great. The beginning because I had, there were two years for the city and as that changed, as soon as we privatized, you know, then my, my salary increased dramatically finally. And the, and, and we could, but those, those first two… Read More
And the first one I worked very well with, but he didn’t work, work very well with the board. He was a great fundraiser. So then they brought the second one in the banker and we, we did okay together for a while, but in the end it was more… Read More
You know, something like that. So, but we, we, we always included the appropriate animal staff and facilities was in there, you know, the, the normal planning that you would do. But I, I used, i, I changed architects, but first I used Pat Janowski, who, who worked with me… Read More
I mean, he’s known for his Nick and Moore exhibits, but Ray knows a lot about a lot of, he knows interpretive stuff too. And we, and we had a videographer with us too. So we tion a lot of footage of gorillas, elephants and other things that, that we… Read More
So during your time in Houston, what would you say were some of your more frustrating or challenging times?… Read More
Well do we really need a 14 high foot wall when 12 works in every other zoo for chimps?… Read More
Oh, we included the, the senior keepers, the curators. We would bring zoo architects in. Obviously that had experience because sometimes with the animal staff, they haven’t built a new exhibit yet. And a lot of times they would ask for stuff that sounded nice, but maybe a bit extravagant. Read More
When you were developing at Houston, when you were developing exhibits, what staff did you include when developing the new exhibits?… Read More
It’s the best money she ever spent because it took many years. But now, now there’s a vaccine. First of all, we learned how to treat it better. And then we started saving elephants. But now he’s got a vaccine that actually works and they can test the efficacy of… Read More
We need to, we need to be the leaders in research for, for the herpes. And we have the largest medical center in the world next door. And I just got a call from the head virologist of Baylor College of Medicine and he asked if he could help. He… Read More