After an extensive nationwide search, the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History has officially announced Arthur Pearson as its inaugural chief executive officer.

A native of Chicago, Pearson brings a wealth of experience in the arts, conservation, museum collections and philanthropy to the new position. Pearson spent twenty-five years with the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, most recently as its Director of Chicago Program. In this role, he worked hand in glove with a portfolio of more than two hundred nonprofit groups, with an emphasis on building their operational and financial capacities to meet mission goals. In May of last year, RTPI board members made the decision to pursue the search for a CEO, after realizing that the efforts of Senior Director of Science and Conservation Twan Leenders could be focused more specifically.

“In the last several years, Twan has done conservation work funded by grants mostly from out of the area,” said Doug Schutte, Board Chair of the Institute. “This has become a fairly large part of the annual revenue that emanates from RTPI. What we’ve started to see is you have this whole side of the operation, and then you have the other side which is world-class art exhibits. We have the collection, and we’re starting to see that this was taking up so much of Twan’s time to generate this, it has essentially taken a life on unto itself. We felt that in order to continue to pursue the celebration of Roger Tory Peterson’s legacy that we needed to do more in the museum side to balance it out.”

With an extensive background in art and museum consultation, Pearson was selected as the man to lead RTPI in one direction from this ‘fork in the road’, as Schutte said.

“He has a great grasp of accounting for not-for-profits, understands developments, and he is clearly, being an artist himself, he understands the needs of the museum and administering a collection,” Schutte said. “He brings a multitude of talents, we’re really excited.”

RTPI is scheduled to hold a board meeting May 1, which will be the first since Pearson took over his new position on March 16. Due to the social shutdown in place during the Covid-19 outbreak, welcome plans for Pearson in his first few weeks have unfortunately had to be shelved.

“First and foremost,” Pearson said via news release. “Roger Tory Peterson was an artist. He channeled his passion for nature into his art. And through his art, he lifted a veil, helping millions of people across the globe to see the natural world around them as never before. That was his genius, his legacy. That is our charge today -to nurture the next generation of artists-educators-conservationists.”