Chicago Botanic Garden names new president

The next head of the Chicago Botanic Garden will be Jean Franczyk, a South Side native who has worked at the Museum of Science and Industry and most recently was deputy director of London’s Science Museum.

Franczyk’s appointment as president and CEO was announced Friday by the Glencoe nature park, which has seen its attendance grow in recent years to surpass 1 million annual visitors. She will succeed Sophia Shaw and begin her duties April 1.

“I’m really excited about it. I think the organization is fantastic. The mission is something I feel in my bones,” said Franczyk, 54, reached at her London home. “I’m absolutely thrilled to be coming back to Chicago.”

Franczyk has a journalism degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and early in her career she worked at the Chicago Reporter and Miami Herald.

“That initial training and thinking that it takes to be a good journalist has served me really, really well,” said Franczyk, whose family lived in the Roseland neighborhood and then in Oak Lawn.

Her other Chicago career stops included serving as chief of staff for the Chicago Board of Education and a policy adviser to Mayor Richard M. Daley for four years in the mid-1990s. At the South Side science museum, she headed education and guest services. She has a masters in public policy from the University of Chicago.

In Franczyk, “we saw someone with broad experience both in the Chicago area and internationally and someone who was a proven executive and leader,” said Robert Finke, the garden’s board chair.

Franczyk has lived the past 10 years in England where she held multiple leadership positions with the Science Museum Group, which runs several museums throughout the country, including the London Science Museum.

The common thread in her career, she said, ” is about communicating, and it’s about telling stories. I think of museums and galleries and gardens as the public squares of the 21st century.”

sajohnson@tribpub.com