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Bay Research Institute Gets New Guru
Mike Connor is one of those irritating individuals who remembers names—irritating, that is, for the rest of us with mid-life Alzheimer’s. Word on the street is he’s a people person, and that's why the S.F. Estuary Institute hired him as Executive Director. A staffer from another agency, who'd only met the 50-year-old lifetime bodysurfer once, was astounded when at a recent crowded public meeting, Connor hailed her with a confident "Hi Mabel."
Though the Institute—long-known for its monitoring of Bay pollution levels and mapping of historic wetlands, among other things—has been leaderless for about a year, interim director Bruce Thompson nicely navigated various cash flow and project management problems, say onlookers. But staff, board members and regional interests alike all seem excited about the arrival of the new kid in the Institute's head office this June.
"Mike has already impressed us with his ability to communicate clearly and directly, and to understand the problems we have to deal with in a technically and politically complex estuary," says Board Chair Steve Ritchie.
"He’s added new energy to the place," adds Institute program director Mike May. "It surprised me how well he's been able to take in all the details of everyone's issues and actually offer support and solutions."
Connor worked most recently as Vice President of programs and exhibits for the New England Aquarium, and prior to that as a chief scientist for the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. He’s managed several East Coast Estuary Projects for the U.S. EPA (and even consulted for our region's own S.F. Estuary Program in the 1980s), worked on environmental policy for nonprofits such as the Amity Foundation and the New Alchemy Institute, and even studied Japanese watershed management techniques. He did his undergrad at Stanford, his PhD at MIT, and his post-doc at Harvard, and calls himself a biological oceanographer.
The ocean, says Connor, has been surging through his system ever since he first started bodysurfing at the age of eight, during summer vacations at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. He thought becoming an oceanographer would allow him to play in the ocean all the time, but has since found himself mostly behind a desk.
Looking back over his life, Connor speaks of three turning points in his career. The first occurred on a snowy night in 1973 in a small South Korean village, where he had been volunteer teaching. In the midst of supping with a local family, some of the country cuisine took its revenge, and he ran for the "pyunso"—a hole in the ground under a thatched roof. As he jumped for relief, the entire structure collapsed under him, leaving him faced with the appalling prospect of appearing before his host pants down and royally slimed. "I said to myself, ‘If I get out of this alive, I’ll work on waste management," says Connor, who went on to build a pipeline to reroute sewage sludge discharges out of Boston Harbor (reducing bacterial contamination to a 50-year low).
The second turning point came, he says, in grad school when he learned the importance of not taking everything you read as the "truth," and seeking confirmation from multiple sources. The third point occurred during his Harvard post-doc, when he realized that: "Most problems aren't science-limited, but getting-info-to-the-people-limited."
This science-to-policy link has since become a mantra for his career. Connor likes to cite Vannevar Bush's 1950s book Science is Not Enough. The book argues that scientists have a social compact with society in that they conduct their work with public dollars, and should thus apply themselves to solving their community's problems, rather than holing up in ivory towers. "It's not necessary for every scientist to be at every public meeting," says Connor. "But scientists need to treat other interests with respect, and think about the relevance of their work to the questions of today and tomorrow. There are windows of opportunity, for example, when people and policymakers are ready for new bits of information. Science isn't useful unless it's ready at the right time."
Back in Boston, observers say Connor did a good job of getting buy-in from confused and often angry stakeholders about the scientific studies necessary to ensure that the Boston Harbor project could move forward. The way he sees it, "My whole career since that Korean toilet has been trying to figure out the back and forth between research science and public policy, how to decide what you know and don't know, and how to deal with the uncertainties. The S.F. Estuary Institute's niche is at that interface, and it's good a playing a translation role."
Connor seems eager to wade into all muck and mire of California’s convoluted environmental scene—welcoming the chance to apply his skills and experience to a bigger arena than Boston. "I was looking for a job with complexity and controversy," he says. ARO
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