The Exploratorium is a museum of science, art, and human perception founded in 1969 and located in San Francisco, California. The Exploratorium’s mission is to create a culture of learning through innovative environments, programs, and tools that help people nurture their curiosity about the world around them.

Housed within the walls of San Francisco's landmark Palace of Fine Arts, the Exploratorium is a collage of hundreds of interactive exhibits in the areas of science, art, and human perception. Since the Exploratorium’s inception, the museum’s exhibits and programs have focused on human perception: how do we see, hear, smell, feel, and otherwise experience the world around us? In addition to its exhibits and public programs, the Exploratorium also supports an extensive array of teacher professional development programs locally, nationally, and internationally, and has developed significant partnerships with universities and other organizations in the field of science education.

Described by Encyclopaedia Britannica as “the archetype of the experiential, ‘hands-on’ science center”, the Exploratorium welcomes more than a half a million visitors, including 110,000 children and teachers on school field trips, each year. The Web site receives over 17 million visits annually, and more than 145 million people see Exploratorium-designed exhibits displayed at science centers around the world. The
museum is a not-for-profit organization with an annual operating budget of over $32 million and 460 employees (266 are full-time employees).

The Exploratorium has become internationally known for its innovations in exhibit design and science education. Around the world, museums have emulated the Exploratorium’s interactive style of exhibit building, or quite literally become our partners in an international Exploratorium network established in 1999. It stands in the vanguard of the movement of the "museum as educational center." It provides
access to, and information about, science, nature, art, and technology.

Noted physicist and educator Dr. Frank Oppenheimer, who devoted his efforts as Director until his death in 1985, founded this unique museum in 1969. Dr. Goéry Delacôte, a renowned French scientist, educator and public servant, was Executive Director of the Exploratorium from 1991 to 2005. In 2006, Dr. Dennis Bartels, a nationally known science education and policy expert, became the Exploratorium’s Executive Director.

Dr. Bartels’s expanded vision for the Exploratorium is to change how the world learns, with the goal of changing individuals from passive consumers of information to active, personal explorers, whether adults or children, professional teachers or amateurs, anywhere in the world, given that in today’s world, technology enables all. Under Dr. Bartels, the Exploratorium continues its educational research and
development capacity as it continues to scale its innovation.

The Museum’s public programs support such ongoing activities as a curated film series related to exhibitions; innovative special events; demonstrations where artisans conduct informal, hands-on workshops with the public; and webcasts from scientific research sites around the world. In addition, the Exploratorium invites visual and performance artists to create works while in residence at the Exploratorium. The Osher Fellowship Program brings scholars, artists and scientists in all fields.

While the Exploratorium’s leisure-time visitors usually attend individually and in family or social groups, the interactive exhibits are also core curriculum materials for the work of the Exploratorium’s learning and teaching efforts, which focuses on supporting educators and science education in schools. And finally, the exhibits developed at the Museum are replicated and rented or sold to museums around the world through our museum partnerships.

Partner Museums: Where in the World Are Our Exhibits?

A partnership composed of the Exploratorium and others from Paris, France to Fort Worth makes it possible to lease the Exploratorium’s most popular exhibits for three years at a reasonable cost. Each partner receives 30–35 thematically based exhibits annually, plus educational expertise and support from the Exploratorium. The network forges alliances among partners, and creates new funding, research and
collaborative opportunities for them. In addition, several Exploratorium-designed exhibitions are traveling, rented by other institutions. Among them are Memory, which explores how humans process, store, retrieve, and forget memories; Navigation, which explores the diversity and ingenuity of human navigation and has gone to 20 venues since 1993; Turbulent Landscapes, which blends art and science to
illuminate the underlying order in the chaotic patterns of nature, and Traces of Time, which tells the story of time through a selection of 30 captivating images. A traveling version of Traits of Life began circulating in early 2004.

Exploratorium Network for Exhibit-Based Teaching (ExNET)

The Exploratorium Network for Exhibit Based Teaching (ExNET)—a hybrid exhibit and teaching program-- draws from our strengths in exhibit design and education. Since 1998, the Exploratorium haspartnered with science centers nationally and internationally to share the fruits of its research: dynamic hands-on exhibits (changed annually). Since 1982, over 1,500 exhibits have been designed for science
centers, museums, and other organizations world-wide.

Informal Science Education through Public Exhibition and Formal Science Education through Learning and Teaching

The Exploratorium’s educational approach provides maximum exposure to the phenomena of science. Amidst the excitement of blinking and beckoning exhibits is a carefully devised science curriculum, appropriate for the informal and formal teaching of science. It stresses the presentation of authentic experiences, in an unpretentious manner, in a public learning environment.

More than 500 elementary, middle and high school science and mathematics teachers from the Bay Area and the nation annually attend Exploratorium institutes that use our exhibits as the basis for inquiry-based training of educators. In a unique collaboration of informal and formal educational institutions, the Exploratorium’s Teacher Institute has partnered with school districts, universities, business and
government to improve science instruction and decrease the number of teachers leaving the profession. The Teacher Institute’s Novice Teacher Program, for example, offers professional development and support to beginning teachers in middle and high schools.

Science Teaching through Media and Communication

The Exploratorium uses interactive and traditional media to extend the Exploratorium’s learning approach to audiences — teachers, students, the general public — within and outside the museum.

An example is the Exploratorium’s 4-time Webby-award-winning Web site, a true extension of the museum. A resource without walls, free to everyone, it offers educational content and experiences to people around the globe. Featured are hundreds of hands-on activities, which give all Exploratorium audiences the ability to explore and interact, and in-depth pages that explore such topics as cooking and
food or biodiversity. Noteworthy are the experimental Webcasts in which we send our own crews around the globe to feature live science events from around the world, providing museum and Internet visitors with science as it happens. Another focus is trade and educational publishing for children, adults and families. Over 50,000 copies of Exploratorium educational publications are sold annually, with more than 28 titles in print.

International Impact and Influence

The Exploratorium is one of San Francisco’s most prominent museums, drawing visitors from across the country and around the globe. In any given year, representatives from some 35 museums in 18 different countries personally visit the Exploratorium for the express purpose of planning a new science museum or
enhancing an old one. At least 90 percent of the nation’s science museums, and 70 percent of the museums worldwide, have borrowed ideas from Exploratorium exhibits or programs.

The Exploratorium’s annual attendance is over half a million. The museum’s impact is extended to approximately 20 million people per year through the dissemination of its exhibits and programs to other museums. The Exploratorium’s contribution is especially significant in light of the growing importance of science museums and science centers in general. They are more popular than all other museums combined
and, in many metropolitan areas, more popular than any other form of public “infotainment.”

SUMMARY

The Exploratorium is looking for an experienced Business Development Officer to leverage the work and creativity of the organization in new ways and new markets. The goal of this position is to build-out strong new earned revenue streams and support existing businesses, including a strong exhibit sales program. This person should be an entrepreneur with a passion for science, learning and enterprise
thinking, and they need to value creating meaningful enterprises. He or she will research new markets, forge new partnerships and create new lines of businesses for the Exploratorium Intellectual Property (IP). He or she will also advance enterprise thinking throughout the organization to help scaffold current businesses. Reporting to this position will be four department heads: Exhibit Services, ExNET, Museum Store and Museum Rental accounting for approximately $6 million in revenue.

This person will be able to develop a strong sense of the Exploratorium brand and create new ventures that strengthen and advance it worldwide. He or she will report to the Executive Director and hold a seat on the Executive Management Team.

POSITION RESPONSIBILITIES & ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

* Find new audiences for the current products, experiences and IP in the organization
* Advance the enterprise thinking throughout the organization
* Incubate new ventures within any and all parts of the organization
* Have an eye for the item; knows what IP is of value outside of the museum field
* Research and develop new markets, forge new partnerships and create new lines of businesses for the Exploratorium IP
* Create networks and alliances both within the Exploratorium and outside with others to advance new enterprises and products
* Open new doors and seek new opportunities, but also be able to close deals and advance the business
* Be able to fit within a creative, mission-driven, R&D organization
* Perform risk analysis and be able to communicate all aspects of a new venture
* Be able to hand off ventures once they are established, be a coach and leader, not always the manager of the business
* Lead the business development group of key onsite earned income groups, including exhibit services and partnerships, event rentals, store and concessions

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

* Likely from the business world with an MBA or comparable experience
* A proven track record of Business Development
* Highly collaborative, a strategist and a leader
* High emotional and social intelligence
* An associative thinker Strong vision for the outcome, plus creativity and imagination
* Comfortable and experienced with open-source business thinking
* Strong vision for the outcome, plus creativity and imagination
* Comfortable and experienced with open-source business thinking
* Thinks globally
* Aggressive, but to a point, knows when to stop pushing
* Experienced with nonprofit and/or education is a plus

ATTRACTIONS

The successful candidate will be attracted to this position by the challenge as well as the opportunity to creatively build the organization in new ways and through new relationships.

The Exploratorium last year announced that it is a step closer to moving to a new home on the Embarcadero at the Piers 15 and 17. The city's Port Commission has approved a 66-year lease which will allow this world renowned science museum to locate to the waterfront, making it just a short walk from the Ferry Building. The lease deal for side-by-side Piers 15 and 17 marks a major milestone for the
Exploratorium where it will soon be readily accessible to pedestrians as well as public transportation services including ferry, BART and Muni. The new site will be three times larger than the Exploratorium's current home in the Palace of Fine Arts and will have an observatory, indoor and outdoor exhibits, classrooms, a theater, a cafe and a remake of the popular Tactile Dome.

So, not only will this position offer the opportunity to support and expand existing businesses, it will also open new challenges of exploring and building new markets. This is a key and highly visible leadership position the within Exploratorium. It will report directly to the Executive Director.

An excellent compensation and benefit package will be discussed in detail with seriously interested candidates. For more information about the Exploratorium, please visit our web site at www.Exploratorium.edu. The Exploratorium is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to diversity. We urge qualified minority candidates to apply.

To learn more about the position or to apply, please contact:

TRC Executive Search
2750 Bardy Road, Santa Rosa, CA 95404; FAX: 707-527-7996
e-mail, trc_corp@ix.netcom.com