Perhaps befitting a place targeted by the international animal rights movement, officials of the John G. Shedd Aquarium Tuesday announced that its new director is an expert not in fishes and water creatures, but in public relations and marketing.
Ted A. Beattie, 48, director of the Ft. Worth, Texas, zoo and former associate director of Brookfield Zoo, will take over the Shedd beginning Jan. 1.
In replacing William Braker, 66, director of the Shedd since 1964, Beattie becomes only the third director in the history of the 63-year-old lakefront institution.
Beattie takes over the biggest indoor aquarium in the country and the largest indoor marine mammal pavilion in the world. He will have to manage the well-being of 6,000 animals representing 600 aquatic species with a staff of 220 and a $20 million annual budget.
Moreover, Beattie will have to take the heat of animal rights activists, who have campaigned for four years against the Shedd’s collecting and keeping beluga whales and Pacific white-sided dolphins.
A coalition of West Coast animal rights organizations are threatening to launch an armada of boats in Southern California to thwart the Shedd’s latest collection expedition. The aquarium has until Dec. 31 to catch three additional white-sided dolphins off Santa Catalina Island before its federal collection permit expires.
“Our challenge is to make people understand what (zoos and aquariums) are all about,” Beattie said Tuesday in a telephone interview from his Ft. Worth office. He acknowledged the Shedd’s ongoing struggles with animal rights activists, but said zoos and aquariums are at the forefront of working for animals and wilderness habitats.
“We’re all wanting the very same goals, the public, zoologists and animal rights people,” he said. “The research aspect of what zoos and aquariums do is absolutely critical if we are going to save these animals and protect their natural habitats.”
Beattie comes to the Shedd with a sterling reputation in the zoo and aquarium world.
Starting in the zoo business in 1978 as marketing director of the Cincinnati Zoo, he came to Brookfield Zoo in 1981 as associate director in charge of public relations and marketing. In 1987, he became director of the Knoxville, Tenn., zoo, then moved on to the Ft. Worth Zoo in July 1992.
He has received high marks in all four cities for innovations in building attendance, fundraising and professional staffs. He left the two zoos he managed in Knoxville and Ft. Worth with larger collections, new buildings and stronger educational and research programs.
“In the last several years, every time a large institution in this country went out looking for a new director, they always had Ted Beattie’s name at the top of their list,” said Robert O. Wagner, chief administrative officer of the Association of American Zoological Parks and Aquariums, the industry’s principal trade organization.
“Zoos and aquariums are big businesses now,” he said. “The search committees are looking for new directors who can do it all, who can bring prestige to the institution, but who can also bring in the dollars so that they can do the work that brings the prestige.
“I can think of few people in the country who are as well-suited for the job at the Shedd as Ted Beattie. He’s not a fish expert, but that institution has an outstanding staff, and he will soon be well-versed on how to maintain aquatic life.”
George Rabb, longtime director of Brookfield Zoo, also said Beattie was ideal for the Shedd.
“The days of a zoo or an aquarium being run as a one-man show are gone,” Rabb said. Such institutions in America, he said, have become major educational and research facilities that need funding while trying to please the public with well-kept parks and facilities.
“When boards of directors go out looking for someone to run their institutions, they pay less attention to technical, biological, or communications backgrounds than they do a candidate’s managerial capacity.
“The larger the institution is, the more complex and involved it becomes to balance governmental relationships, training people technically, managing animal populations.
“It goes far beyond the local scene now. We’re collaborating with people all over the world every day to manage wildlife populations and habitats.”
The Shedd, through the years, has evolved into a major educational and research facility, especially under Beattie’s predecessor, Braker.
The aquarium was built with a $3 million bequest from John G. Shedd, who headed the Marshall Field’s retailing empire after the death of Marshall Field I. Much of the original building’s design was overseen by the first director, Walter H. Chute.
Chute hired Braker fresh out of Northwestern University in 1950 and turned the aquarium over to him in 1964. Braker vigorously pushed the aquarium into education and research programs. He spent 25 years campaigning for a marine mammal exhibit, which culminated in the 1991 opening of the $43 million Oceanarium addition.
John Shedd Reed, grandson of the founder and chairman of the aquarium’s board of directors, announced Beattie’s selection Tuesday.
“Mr. Beattie,” Reed said, “with his marketing and leadership skills, together with deputy director David Lonsdale, who has a working knowledge of the aquarium and a strong grasp of aquatic issues, will make a well-balanced team for continuing to move Shedd Aquarium.”
Beattie, who has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in business from Ohio State University, said he was shocked when the Shedd board approached him and offered him the job.
He said he was happy to return to Chicago, particularly since he met his wife, Penny, here. She was working as a volunteer at Brookfield Zoo when he went to work there.
“One of the things that really attracted me into returning to Chicago,” he said, “is that the reputation of the Shedd is so outstanding, especially in education and research. I get the most satisfaction from my job in those areas, and while I’m there, there will be a continuing priority in those directions.”
