Guiding natural recovery

Ann Bergstrom, an Atlanta native, practically grew up in the woods of the Southeast, she says. Her father was in the U.S. Forest Service and taught her to love the outdoors.

That passion for the natural world continued through her adult life, though she kept it separate from her career for decades.

Monday through Friday, she worked in retail marketing, including 25 years at Rich’s and Federated department stores. She and her husband spent their weekends canoeing and camping.

Then, in December 1999, she took on what she considers the hardest challenge of her life. She became director of the Chattahoochee Nature Center, which was struggling and in danger of shutting down, she said.

She has been able to stabilize the financial health of the nonprofit and raise nearly $10 million for a new facility that is under construction.

The 10,000-square-foot Discovery Center, scheduled to open in June, will focus on education about the Chattahoochee River. It will house interactive exhibits, a high-definition theater and a rooftop garden terrace for community activities.

Q: Why did you take this job when you knew the center was struggling?

A: It was a call to the heart. I gave it a lot of thought. I came down here and walked the trails. I went in and out of the place a number of times anonymously without anyone knowing who I was. I could see visibly that the center was needy in a lot of ways. I thought about it, prayed about it… . I am the only director who has stayed more than five years in the center’s 32 years of existence. It is a very difficult challenge and has been since the initial launching of the center.

Q: Why is it such a difficult challenge?

A: It is an environmental nonprofit. Put that at the top of the list. There are almost no environmental nonprofits in the state of Georgia. There is no critical mass for the work we do. There is no official structure in state or local government to work with and support nonprofits that work in the environmental field, or, for that matter, in the science field.

Education is sort of the overlooked part of the environmental continuum. I think the general public thinks environmental education is taught in schools and it is something we should all just sort of understand and know, that the real issues that deserve support in the environmental arena are the crises —- saving a piece of land that is going to be lost to development or saving a habitat in which animals are in danger. Those are compelling causes that attract people. Education is not sexy.

A little bit of that is changing now, however, with the awareness that we are going to have to face the issue of global warming and climate change. … At the same time, the pressure of the community on the Chattahoochee Nature Center to deliver environmental education was enormous. The people kept coming, they kept coming, they kept coming. More than 100,000 people a year come to the center.

Q: So when the center was in so much trouble, it wasn’t from a lack of interest on the part of visitors?

A: Absolutely. It was finding the operating dollars to deliver and create the programs. We are an educational institution. We are not a park. Even though we are a place of 127 acres where you can walk, that is not what the public wants from us. What they want from us is programs, and programs are created by people, and people take money. My payroll is 80 percent of my operating budget.

Q: So what did you do?

A: We got some help from Fulton County… . Fulton County has been our partner from the inception of the center in the ’70s. They own about two-thirds of the land that we operate our programs on. We have a long-term, 50-year lease with the county. They had become mostly an absentee partner, not really at the table and not really funding us at the level that was helpful. We were able to get additional funding from the county to stabilize the center and allow me to hire some people at a pretty close to market-competitive rate. The board stepped up and put another $150,000 to $200,000 of operating income on the table through their own fund-raising efforts, which had never happened before. We took apart every program at the center and asked: Can we afford to do this?

Q: You have worked hard to raise the funding for a new Discovery Center. When it opens, will this be a highlight for you professionally?

A: I think so. The center is unique. The Discovery Center is unique because it is focused entirely on the Chattahoochee River watershed. It is local learning within the context of environmental education. Because it is place-based and local, we hope it will help people understand environmental education in a new way and understand their role in it. You are a part of this. Your actions are a part of this. Everything you do contributes in a positive way, or in a not-positive way, to the health and well-being of the community in which you live.

THE ANN BERGSTROM FILE

> Age: 69

> Home: Cherokee County

> Family: Married with two children and five grandchildren.

> Education: English degree from Georgia State University.

> Currently reading: “Collapse” by Jared Diamond

> Hobbies: Spending time with family, canoeing, walking in the woods.