About

I am fortunate to work in and contribute to the sector of collecting institutions. Many of these world-class organizations use science to advance planetary and public good. On this page you will find you will find a very brief summary of my history.

Author.

Writing has been a constant thread through my career. For all the different kinds of writing, in exhibition labels, articles, my blog, and books, including The Future of Natural History Museums (Routledge, 2018), it’s popular science that brings me the most joy, and something I return to frequently. It’s the place where I get to translate scientific principles into something creative that a non-scientific reader can feel as well as understand.

My most recent publication is as co-author of the beautiful The Linda Hall: A Visual Journey (Linda Hall Press, 2026).

I recently started The Attentive Naturalist on Substack, which is a place for longer essays that more look closely at both the natural world and the human one, often through the same lens. I write about ecology, animal behavior, Egyptian animal mummies, dioramas, the history of science, and whatever else seems for the connective tissue between the natural world and the social one.

Thinker.

From a scientific perspective, an idea that has occupied me longest is scale: how ecological patterns that make sense at one level, a single bird’s foraging choice, a stand of trees, a wetland’s water chemistry, can produce entirely different outcomes at the level of a landscape or a region. My research on waterbirds in human-dominated environments, sustained on and off for twenty years across institutions and coastlines, has traced this question through reef systems increasingly shaped by development and tourism. The Linda Hall Arboretum has given me a second, complementary vantage point, an urban landscape where the same questions about scale play out among trees, soil, and the people who walk through it every day.

Other things.

It’s my honor to serve as President and CEO of the Linda Hall Science Library and Arboretum, in Kansas City, MO. The Library’s holdings of over two million books, journals and hard-to-find conference proceedings are dedicated to science, technology, and engineering. With rare works going back to the 1472, their collections make it one of the most prestigious science institutions in the United States. Founded in 1946, the Library sits on the former estate of its founders the Hall family, which is now a scenic arboretum. I am also an adjunct at the University of Missouri Kansas City in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Before this, I’ve been in both academic and museum settings, including leading Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. My first leadership role was as the Director of Whanganui Regional Museum in New Zealand.

I’m also active internationally, most recently serving as an executive board member of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and for nine years served as chair of ICOM’s International Committee for Museums and Collections of Natural History (NATHIST), as well as deputy chair of the international ethics committee (ETHCOM).

Media queries, please contact: The Linda Hall 816.363.4600