When Lisa Busch announced she was retiring this April after 14 years as Executive Director of the Sitka Sound Science Center, Fairbanks-based veterinarian Arleigh Reynolds says he was ready to hop on a southbound flight. Reynolds, who most recently served as the director of the University of Alaska – Fairbanks Center for One Health Research, says he has been collaborating with the science center and other Sitka organizations for the past decade. And now that he’s been hired as Busch’s successor, he says he’s eager to get to work. Reynolds sat down with KCAW’s Meredith Redick to talk about his first few weeks on the job, and how he hopes to grow the organization.
REYNOLDS: When Lisa Busch, the former executive director of the Science Center went on sabbatical a couple years ago, she asked me to sit in as the Interim Executive Director. I’d never worked for a nonprofit before, but it was great – really great people, wonderful community, I just really loved it. And I thought, you know, I’d love to do this before I retire. I mean, I never thought Lisa would be retiring this early. She’s very young, and she’s done such an incredible job getting the science center up and going. But she did this year, and so I was fortunate enough to be chosen as the new Executive Director.
REPORTER: So this is your first time really manning the helm at a nonprofit. That must be a big transition.
REYNOLDS: It is a big transition in a way. But what I really love about this job is, first of all, I have great people to work with, and I like the way that we are really integrated in the community. And I love working with different groups within the community on issues that are really important to them. I’ve done that my whole time at UAF. So this One Health program that I ran, for those that don’t know what One Health is, it’s the concept that our health as humans is really interdependent with the health of the environment we live in and the animals and plants that we live with and depend on. And for any of those to be healthy, they really all have to be healthy. We often consider big issues from only our perspective when we really need to be considering all of those perspectives and how they integrate. And the Science Center has already been doing that for a long time. The Tribe has done that since millennia. This is really an Indigenous concept. And so, coming to the Science Center is a fairly natural progression.
REPORTER: I’m curious, and it’s okay if you don’t have an answer to this, but do you have any ideas about what that kind of work could look like in Sitka?
REYNOLDS: That’s a great question. I think the first thing I want to do is listen – because I’m relatively new to the community, and people who’ve lived here a long time know a heck of a lot more about it than I do. And I’d love to hear what people here are concerned about in terms of, you know, what’s going on with fisheries, what’s going on in the marine environment, and even the terrestrial environment and what’s going on with issues like food security and food sovereignty. And once I get a better understanding of that, to work with them to help get funding and build some programs that they’re interested in. It’s not so much me coming to them saying, “Hey, I want to do this, would you help me?” It’s kind of the opposite.
REPORTER: So Lisa Busch is retiring from this role, and you’ve already spoken about this a little bit, but how do you envision making this role your own?
REYNOLDS: To start with, I do want to say a huge thanks to Lisa because she built an incredible organization. You know, it’s really nice to take over the helm of a ship that’s incredibly well-built and running well, right? No big leaks, no problems with the motor. It’s good. It’s running great, and I’m super grateful to her for that. You know, it’s not like I want to change a lot of things. There are a lot of things that are just fabulous about the science center, and there are some areas that I think I can bring some new insight in. And you know, for me, One Health is something that’s always been part of Indigenous worldviews, and we now have a Western way of trying to describe it. But it’s so many levels of complexity that Indigenous people, I think, understand to such a degree. I’d really like to build and expand on partnerships with the Indigenous community and learn from them and work together with them on some of these really pressing issues that we have here. You know, and please understand, I don’t think it’s gloom and doom. I think this place is remarkable. But you want it to stay remarkable, and there are some issues, like ocean acidification and what’s going on with some of our fisheries and, you know, some of the risk of invasive species that we really do want to stay ahead of.
REPORTER: What else do you want people to know about you?
REYNOLDS: Well, you know, it’s always been my wife, Donna’s, and my dream to end up here. Since the first time we came here, we just fell in love with this community, and it’s taken us 10 years to figure out a way to do it. And we’re super grateful to be here and just really looking forward to meeting folks and learning more about the community and fitting into our place in this community. Sitka has a sense of community like no place I’ve ever been before, and I’m really grateful for that.
