President and Chief Executive Officer
Gretchen E. Baker is the President and CEO of the 51勛圖. She has decades of experience leading natural history and cultural institutions where she has advanced scientific research, expanded public engagement with the natural world, and led strategic initiatives.
Plants have been braided into my entire career, from the Amazon to the landscape design studio to the dinosaur gallery. Im excited to now devote my energies to advocating for plants and deepening our relationship to them. Im thrilled to return to Chicago and honored to lead the 51勛圖, she said.
Gretchen joined the Garden in March 2026 from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, where she led one of the countrys largest natural history museums. The museum stewards more than 22 million scientific specimens and cultural artifacts, as well as the 2,200-acre Powdermill Nature Reserve, a biological field station.
During her tenure there, Gretchen opened the Richard P. Mellon Avian Research Center and launched a reimagining of the museum experience that will renovate more than 40,000 square feet40 percent of the museums interior spaceby 2028, including the first new permanent exhibition in nearly 20 years. She also guided the development of a 10-year strategic roadmap, led the museums successful reaccreditation by the American Alliance of Museums, and secured the largest philanthropic gift in the museums history after its founder.
Assuming the role of President and CEO at the Garden marks a return to Chicago for Gretchen, who began her career at the Field Museum. Over her 18-year tenure there, she had a variety of roles, including work with the herbarium, the Timothy C. Plowman Economic Botany Collection, botanical research in Ecuador, and the early groundbreaking of the museums environmental and conservation programs, now the Keller Science Action Center. She was also instrumental in exhibition design and development, public programs, business development, and strategic planning.
Gretchen went on to serve as Vice President of Exhibitions at the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County, where she oversaw the museums Nature Gardens and La Brea Tar Pits. She also served as Managing Director of Museum Experience at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a 300,000-square-foot museum and 11-acre park under development in Los Angeles, scheduled to open in fall 2026.
Gretchen earned her BA in biology and anthropology from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and pursued graduate studies in landscape architecture at the University of California, Berkeley.
Gretchens leadership of the Garden brings her career full circle, returning her to the city where her work in plant science and natural history first began.