Executive Session with Roger Birkel

By Adam Hughes
| 6:00 p.m. May 13, 2005
| 2 Free Articles Remaining!

Entrepreneurs

PERSONAL

HOMETOWN: St. Louis, Mo.

EDUCATION: Bachelor of science degree in anthropology, Lindenwood University, St. Charles, Mo.

AGE: 59

FAMILY: Married with a daughter, 6.

PASSIONS: "Looking and keeping track of birds, and the great thing about Selby is not only the beautiful plant life but also some marvelous animal life.

"I'm also a fine arts photographer. I still use a camera with animals and plants but I love abstract and black and white. Real film, not digital yet."

READING LIST: "I'm an avid reader. Instead of sitting in front of a computer I'm usually with a book. I grew up with books and I just haunt book stores." "Saturday," by Ian McQwen, "Winning," by Jack Welsh, and "No One Loved Gorillas More," by Dian Fossey.

PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND

PREVIOUS POSITIONS: He was a consultant for two years to zoos, museums and botanical gardens, eight years as executive director of Baltimore zoo and over 20 years for the St. Louis zoo including his ending position of deputy director and director of animal collections. He joined Selby in March.

HOW DID YOU GET INTO ZOOS: "When I was in school, I had to come home to help my mom because she had health problems. When I came home I needed to find work right away and I went out to the zoo and started as a zoo keeper and once you're involved in this world of plants and animals it's very easy to stay in."

ANY CRAZY ANIMAL ESCAPING STORIES: "The St. Louis zoo has a great Reptile House, and, of course, these are the animals that fascinate everyone and scare them at the same time. One day one of the keepers was cleaning and left the drain cover off and a spitting cobra escaped into the building. We had to close the building, but we all knew it was still back in the work area. Then finally the press asked, 'Well, why is the building closed?' And we had to tell them why it was closed and we starting getting calls from all over St. Louis, people saying they just saw the snake in their back yard and we knew it hadn't left the building. We would come in every evening and look for that snake, and because it was a spitting cobra we had to wear goggles. Well, we actually found more than one snake. We found a large constrictor that was living in there for a while alive. After a couple of weeks a guy found the cobra and he wasn't very far from where he left."

LEADERSHIP MENTOR: Marlin Perkins. "He stood for stuff that I believe in. All my mentors were actually out doing things that thrilled me. ... I craved sometimes to know people and it was people I'd read about, all these marvelous adventures. I didn't know them personally but that's how I grew up. Saturday mornings in St. Louis were spent in one of two places, either the zoo or the library. I'd go into the section that was all about travel. The mentors were the people I was reading about. Did I know Jacques Cousteau? No. But was he a mentor? Yes."

WHAT'S THE MOST FACINATING PLACE YOU'VE BEEN: "I've been to Rwanda. I had the opportunity to take a group up into the mountains to see the mountain gorillas. We had to climb this mountain for hours and everyone was tired and they were kind of wondering if they should really be doing this and then the guard stopped us and I could hear things, stomachs rumbling and vegetation being torn up, and I said, 'Are we close to the gorillas?' And he said, 'Yes, we're really close.' And he reached up and grabbed the bushes that were just in front of us and parted them ... an adult gorilla was just sitting there eating some wild celery and staring right back at us. They told us the rules but no one told the gorillas the rules because you weren't supposed to touch them, but they'd get right up to you and play with you a little bit. It was just the most exciting experience."

PROUDEST PROFESSIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT: "I now have a 6-year-old daughter and I'm seeing the world through her eyes in many ways. So when you ask that question I could tell you that setting up a national park and all those things are wonderful. But to help children understand the world they live in and watching my daughter and other children come to the place where I work and for the first time understand what a beautiful world this is and to get muddyand dirty - that's what it's all about."

CHALLENGES

IMMEDIATE CHALLENGES IN THE NEW POSITION: "My whole life has been spent in institutions that care about the living world and helping connect their guests to the living world. I still want to build that connection and I think the challenges are in a world that is so fast-paced today, and the world in which families have so much going on, and in a world that's so removed from the natural world and the environment, it's a real challenge in helping people connect."

HOW DO YOU GET PEOPLE TO CONNECT: "The blue light here is the garden itself and that's the basis of everything we do. It's the place where we can show you that living world and you want that guest visit to be as exciting and as beautiful and as wonderful.

"We need to reach children. Traditionally gardens have been seen as something for a mature audience and we don't want to lose those kids in terms of a connection. My daughter spends a lot of time in front of a computer screen and at the same time I want her out there climbing trees and getting muddy and getting dirty and just loving the world of the living so she'll grow up with that relationship and that's what we want for our guests too."

HOW DID YOU GET INTO PHOTOGRAPHY: "I was always with a camera as part of my work in documenting the places I had been. I just gravitated to an art form instead of documenting as I got older. I'm not real good at painting or drawing but I love to create." and dirty - that's what it's all about."

CHALLENGES