At the intersection of Buchanan and Jackson Streets, just past the crest of Pacific Heights, sits a hulking, fossil-gray mansion owned by the California Academy of Sciences. Valued by real estate agents at up to $8 million, the home has four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a downstairs apartment, three outdoor patios, and, according to more than a dozen academy employees, no primary resident.

Sold to the academy in 1995 by a former donor, the home is intended to serve as the primary residence of the executive director, who, for the last seven years, has been Scott Sampson, a renowned paleontologist and former museum director in British Columbia, Colorado, and Utah. Sampson — who announced his resignation last week after a tenure marked by falling museum attendance, mass layoffs, executive departures, and what many insiders describe as questionable financial decisions — was to use the mansion to woo donors at dinner parties and hold events for staff. 

But employees say Sampson never lived there full time — and he has admitted as much in staff meetings and to colleagues. Cars owned by Sampson and his wife are registered to an ocean-view home in Muir Beach. Employees report that Sampson used the home as a pied-à-terre, only spending a portion of his time there. Despite this, the academy has allegedly taken staffers away from their primary responsibilities at the museum to work on maintaining the house, as well as spending tens of thousands of dollars on upgrades that include electric car chargers, new furniture, fresh paint, and manicured landscaping.

Even before Sampson took over as director, the house was a symbol of questionable management by the leadership of Northern California’s largest museum, which is overseen by a sprawling board of 45 well-heeled individuals and scientists whose decisions over the past two decades, critics say, have plunged the institution into chaos.

After a controversial exit in 2019 by the previous director, Jonathan Foley — marked by a divorce settlement that gave his ex-wife the right to continue living in the academy-owned home in Pacific Heights — Sampson was hired by the board of directors to develop a new global vision for the museum. This included a three-pronged initiative to boost research and conservation of island ecosystems, global reefs, and native habitats in California.

Some of that vision came to pass during Sampson’s time in charge, which saw the launch of several major initiatives, including Reimagining San Francisco, a coalition of more than 60 organizations collaborating to improve green spaces, and One Galápagos, aimed at restoring ecological health throughout the Galápagos Islands.

But employees say many of his most far-reaching goals were never realized, as pandemic-related revenue losses hobbled the museum’s growth plans. In spite of these declining fortunes, the board awarded eye-popping bonuses and salaries to Sampson and the rest of the museum’s executive staff over the last several years.

“When I saw in the Chronicle the quote (opens in new tab) about blaming the pandemic for the financial woes, I just about lost my lunch,” said one former employee who served in a leadership role. “To still be blaming the pandemic for revenue loss at the academy just seems bonkers.”

Founded in 1853, the California Academy of Sciences has spent the better part of two centuries accumulating things: 40 million specimens, 40,000 live animals, a planetarium, an indoor rainforest, an aquarium, and a reputation as one of the country’s great scientific institutions. Its $488 million home in Golden Gate Park, a sinuous, 410,000-square-foot building that seems to have grown organically from the earth beneath it, is the kind of place that makes children press their faces against the glass and adults briefly forget their phones.

But among those millions of carefully cataloged creatures, the academy has buried more than a few metaphorical skeletons, according to interviews with 16 current and former employees, including executives, department directors, and staff in facilities, payroll, programming, exhibitions, and science departments — all of whom were granted anonymity in order to speak freely about their experiences.

Staffers and representatives of SEIU 1021, the union that represents approximately 350 museum workers, have raised concerns over what they call unnecessary spending at the academy, pointing to rising salaries on the executive team; costs associated with the house on Jackson Street; first-class airfare for the executive director; the hiring of Sampson associates for projects that went over-budget; and a board of directors that has mismanaged the museum’s debt.

All of this comes against the backdrop of falling revenue, slashed programs, lost jobs, and a prolonged budget deficit that threatens to bury alive one of San Francisco’s most beloved institutions.

Bringing Sampson on to lead the academy into its next chapter was a bold but sensible move by the board of directors, according to current and former employees. Known for his study of carnivorous dinosaurs and for hosting the PBS show “Dinosaur Train,” he has a preternatural ability to make science fun and accessible — exactly the kind of “big ideas” person the board believed the academy needed.

When Sampson arrived in September 2019, he initiated a three-pronged strategic plan, with the idea that it would be organized and crowdsourced across the organization. Former academy executives and directors said he immediately got to work expanding funding and research in far-flung areas of the world. The number of regions where the academy conducted foreign fieldwork and research grew, as did the number of staff and contractors working abroad.

However, Sampson’s globalist vision may have had the adverse effect of alienating faithful donors, who were historically more interested in stewarding long-standing exhibits and programs, such as the Steinhart Aquarium, which is partially funded by the city and is among the academy’s most visited exhibits, and the Bayview Institute, which was put on pause in 2024.

“Why try to start a conversation with a donor about doing (opens in new tab)coral reef work in the Maldives (opens in new tab)? You’re adding a degree of difficulty to the fundraising that’s totally unnecessary,” said a former executive. “Or you could say, ‘You know what? The new building’s great. The part that you remember taking your grandchildren to every week is pretty freaking rusty. Do you want to give me $10 million to fix it and slap your name on it?’”

As much as far-flung research on Darwin’s archipelago might impress fellow scientists, the typical academy donor is more interested in attractions that can compete with the late, great Claude the alligator. “Nothing will ever beat Claude in getting little old ladies to write the $50 and $100 checks,” said the executive.

Individual and foundation gifts averaged roughly $22 million annually under Sampson — putting him right in between his two predecessors. However, new gifts to the academy’s endowment, often considered an expression of donor confidence in an institution’s future, averaged less than $500,000 annually across his tenure — 90% less than the yearly average in the six years before he took the job, according to the Academy’s tax filings. 

The academy declined to comment on donations to its endowment. Sampson and Mathew Lau, the academy’s CFO, did not respond to multiple requests for comment and the academy declined to make them available for an interview.

The disconnect between Sampson’s priorities and the academy’s longstanding work — and what donors seemed to want — was “demoralizing for a lot of staff,” said one former employee who worked in a leadership role. “What was being said by leadership publicly about what’s so valued and important about the museum wasn’t aligning with the reality of what was being resourced.”

That alienation has manifested in an alarming turnover rate among academy leaders in recent years: 10 executives and 10 department directors have departed since 2022, the majority of whom had been at the museum for more than a decade.

The pandemic, which hit just eight months after Sampson took over and led to two extended public closures, turned a tricky situation into a tragedy. In May 2020, the academy laid off 105 employees. The bleeding didn’t stop there, with attendance remaining below 2019 levels for years after the academy reopened in March 2021. (Its 2025 attendance was 20% below that of 2019, according to the academy.) In 2024, 38 employees took voluntary buyouts, and in April of this year, 53 were laid off. Though the Academy rehired after the pandemic, the latest round of layoffs has left it with roughly 516 employees — 89 fewer, or 9% less, than when Sampson arrived in 2019, according to tax filings and recent layoff announcements.

As with most museums nationwide, revenue plummeted after the pandemic, and the deficit remained despite the layoffs and program cuts. At a Board of Supervisors’ budget and appropriations committee meeting in June 2024, CFO Jim Gohary — who resigned abruptly in 2025 — said earned revenue, a bulk of the academy’s budget, was projected to increase by 10% over the next fiscal year from $35.4 million to $39 million. It actually dropped by more than $1 million, due to unexpectedly low attendance, according to a spokesperson for the academy.

One year earlier, in 2023, when workers organized to form a union, the academy hired Jackson Lewis — a firm that has represented employers in hundreds of union disputes — to counter the effort. The protracted negotiations that followed burned money and alienated unionized workers, employees said. The HR department was caught in the middle — tasked with managing relations between unionized and nonunionized staff while simultaneously absorbing an unprecedented churn in leadership. In the last three years, the academy has employed three different CFOs and three different heads of human resources.

• California Academy of Sciences chief Scott Sampson abruptly resigns

“In the last year and a half that I’ve gone into [the former head of HR’s] office, I’ve seen probably 12 different faces,” one current employee told The Standard last May. “There was a period of four months where there was a different person every four weeks. They’d be there for a month and then go, ‘I’m out.’”

Former employees, in both leadership and programming, described a shift in culture that felt increasingly disconnected from the institution’s core identity: the building, the science, the public programs that had made the academy what it was. Ambitious initiatives were championed from the top, while the infrastructure that donors, staff, and visitors actually cared about went under-resourced. Meanwhile, staffers who tried to raise those concerns felt unheard.

In 2023, the academy posted its worst operating deficit since the pandemic: $29 million, which has since shrunk to $28 million. A spokesperson for the academy argued that this number is misleading because it includes non-cash items, such as depreciation of facilities. However, the academy’s cash deficit is also expected to grow in the next fiscal year, according to the academy (opens in new tab).

Steven Tulsky, a financial consultant for nonprofits who teaches museum management at the University of San Francisco, said the underlying trend does not suggest an institution operating in financial health. “They’re a wealthy organization that’s losing their butts,” he said, referring to the academy’s latest financial audit. “If you’re showing an operating loss of $28 million on $80 million of revenue, as a percentage, that’s unconscionable.”

When voluntary buyouts hit dozens of employees in spring 2024, morale had reached an all-time low, staffers said. At an all-staff Zoom meeting following those buyouts, a recording of which was obtained by The Standard, Gohary said that “in fiscal ’25, there will be no raises for anyone on the senior leadership team,” and the academy would cut back on travel.

Yet at least five of the academy’s nine-person executive team had already received pay bumps last year that outpaced inflation — and tax filings show Sampson brought home his largest annual paycheck to date: $885,755. His base compensation, bonus, and retirement fund all grew. And for the first time in at least 13 years, the academy sprung for first-class travel — to the tune of $22,443 — for its executive director, according to tax filings. 

Despite criticism from former executives and employees over Sampson’s fundraising abilities, tax filings show the board appears to have awarded him performance bonuses, citing “outstanding accomplishments in fundraising, establishing deep partnerships, and management team building” — on top of his standard 25% bonus — in the last three fiscal years. The academy declined to confirm these payments.

“Let’s just say I’m curious how the board is measuring success,” said one of the 10 former executives to depart the academy since 2022. “Personally, I think it’s crazy how much [the executive director] gets paid. I was shocked at the job offer they gave me, because it was higher than I understood the market for my skills was.”

Sampson’s pay and bonuses — amounting to $1.84 million in the past two years, including the non-taxable benefit to live in the academy home in Pacific Heights — mirrors a broader shift in how the academy compensates its top ranks. In 2008, senior leadership took home less than 5% of the total payroll. By 2019, when Sampson was hired, that share had doubled to 10% — and it has, on average, stayed there, outpacing comparable institutions, like SFMOMA (5%), the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (8%), and the Monterey Bay Aquarium (6%), according to tax filings.

Sampson’s compensation is negotiated with John C. Dwyer — a senior partner at Cooley LP and the board’s chairperson — then approved by the board’s five-person executive committee, according to tax filings. Union workers have objected to the raises and bonuses for executives, especially after Sampson called the April layoffs of 53 employees “a last resort.”

“When I was there, we slashed business travel and expensive consultants — we didn’t go after the floor staff,” said a former employee who served in a management role prior to Sampson. “We refused to cut planetarium presenters or people on the floor — that’s what engages the visitors. We tried to cut basically through admin and behind-the-scenes kind of things, and really had very few layoffs by comparison.” 

Even as executives were being rewarded and rank-and-file workers were being dismissed, there were other projects that raised alarms for staffers. In 2020, the academy embarked on building an outdoor playground called Wander Woods, hiring a Canadian company, Bienenstock Natural Playgrounds, as the designer. The firm’s CEO, Adam Bienenstock, had a years-long relationship with Sampson. In Sampson’s 2016 book “How to Raise a Wild Child: The Art and Science of Falling in Love with Nature,” he thanked Bienenstock for offering “important input before and/or during the writing process.” Sampson had shared Bienenstock’s work on social media and had vouched for him at other projects the company had applied for.

Two former employees who held leadership roles told The Standard that Sampson’s hiring of companies with which he had relationships, was a trademark of his time as director. “That’s sort of his style,” a former executive said. “Scott really believes in his own vision, which is a necessary characteristic for an executive director.” But, the former employee added, “that’s not best practice, right?”

Bienenstock did not respond to requests for an interview but said in a text message that “Scott is one of my favorite people.”

The contract was awarded through a no-bid process, even though the Canadian company did not hold all of the licenses necessary to operate in California, leading it to subcontract out some work, according to four current employees. Workers described last-minute additions to the project that drove the cost well over the initial $800,000 budget to $1.5 million.

“They were set to open on time, and then, with two months left, Scott came out and said, ‘Can we completely redesign it?’” said one employee who worked on the project. “He wanted to add an outdoor classroom and redesign the layout when everything was already piped in.”

Roughly two months before the playground was completed, additions to the plans were made by the applicant, according to the Department of Building Inspection. Academy employees said the notice to redesign came unusually late.

A spokesperson for the academy said it knew about Sampson’s connection to Bienenstock, arguing that his role was simply to make an introduction to staff. There is no evidence that Sampson received any kind of financial benefit in hiring Bienenstock Natural Playgrounds.

“We are allowed to choose our vendors without a competitive bid as we are not a government agency,” the spokesperson said, adding that the project went over budget due to several factors, including rising labor costs after the pandemic and unforeseen site conditions requiring remediation and permitting.

The development of Wander Woods was not the first time academy leaders may have allegedly blurred the line between institutional priorities and personal ones. Eighteen months before departing the academy as executive director in June 2019, Sampson’s predecessor Foley went through a divorce — and the institution’s Jackson Street house became a term of the settlement.

The divorce agreement, which was viewed by The Standard, stipulated that Foley’s ex-wife and daughter would have “exclusive use of the California Academy of Science Main Residence, which use has been granted to Jon as a component of his employment agreement.” The house was to be provided to them “free of charge, with all expenses associated with the house to be paid by Jon’s employer,” while Foley lived in the home’s downstairs apartment.

In a phone interview, Foley said his ex-wife never received money directly from the academy, that she lived in the main home for roughly a year after he stepped down as executive director and took on a role as senior scholar, and that he paid taxes on the home during that period. But museum sources said no academy events appeared to have taken place at the house in the year leading up to Foley’s exit in June 2019 — meaning a private divorce settlement had effectively decommissioned the site for any public mission.

The house continued to be maintained into the Sampson years, for unclear purposes. Current and former employees who worked in facility maintenance said they were often routed away from the work they were assigned to at the academy grounds for painting, electrical jobs, landscaping, and other work at the house. This included purchasing and installing  “thousands of dollars” worth of furniture, according to an employee who worked on payroll, and an electric car charger, at a cost of more than $11,000, according to receipts shared with The Standard. When the pandemic hit, and facility workers were severely restricted from museum-related projects, work done at the house became a common frustration. 

“Why are we keeping this place?” a current employee said. “The executive director has a house in Muir Beach. We don’t have the time, the bandwidth, or the abilities to go over there right now, and it’s taking us way out of our game.”

A spokesperson for the academy said costs for the house don’t require board approval and are drawn from a budget for facility and infrastructure improvements.

“The academy’s use of the Jackson Street house fully complies with IRS guidelines and aligns with the organization’s stated purpose,” the spokesperson said.

At an all-staff meeting following layoffs in April, executives reportedly said they were considering selling the house, a decision that would require board approval and one that Gohary once noted might not make a meaningful dent in the museum’s long-term deficit.

Normally, when an institution’s crisis hits a fever pitch, the buck stops at the board of trustees, especially when issues are widespread across the organization. But former employees in leadership told The Standard that the academy’s massive board (opens in new tab) — made up of 45 politically connected donors, wealthy heirs, and renowned scientists — displayed ignorance of the academy’s alleged dysfunction in recent years. 

One former employee who served in a leadership role said senior staff have at times in the last few years been candid with the board about Sampson’s leadership and the attrition of top executives. “They’ve been professional in that they’re like, ‘Thank you for letting me know’ but have not necessarily revealed their point of view to me,” the employee said.

Mark Buell, the Democratic party megadonor who served on the museum’s board for three years leading up to Sampson’s appointment, told The Standard that the board suffers from an inherent structural problem.

“It’s a scientific research entity and a museum, and those are two separate and distinct functions,” Buell said. “You have one board to carry out two different missions, and I think that dilutes the effectiveness of the institution.”

Among the most aggressive critics of the academy’s board has been SEIU 1021, which, in March 2025, submitted a sprawling report to the Board of Supervisors’ government audit and oversight committee requesting a city controller audit of the California Academy of Sciences.

The union’s core accusation is that the academy’s board members are at best poorly financing the institution’s debt and at worst in breach of fiduciary duty by prioritizing paying senior executives over the institution’s public mission — the science, education, and conservation programs that have defined it for more than a century.

A spokesperson for the academy dismissed the report as a typical negotiating tactic. “Documents like this are commonly used as part of the bargaining process,” the spokesperson said.

In the 2000s, the academy issued a series of bonds to finance its new building while launching fundraising campaigns to pay off the debt. By 2008, the academy had raised $459 million in city, state, and federal funds and donations — just shy of the building’s $488 million price tag. The public monies, and $79 million of the fundraised money, did pay off a portion of the building debt. But rather than pay off the majority of the building’s cost, leadership chose to park the remaining money in an investment fund, hoping it would generate more income each year than the debt would accrue in interest. 

The problem, the union alleges in its report to the Board of Supervisors,  and former executives confirm, is that the academy has refinanced its debt multiple times since 2008, passing on fixed interest rates and driving up the cost of annual interest payments while not drawing down any of the principal.

Between 2008 and 2024, the academy refinanced its $281.45 million bond three times, and each time it kept a floating interest rate — meaning the amount it owed each year moved up and down in line with broader market conditions. This proved costly: As the Federal Reserve aggressively raised interest rates to fight pandemic-induced inflation, the academy’s floating rate moved in tandem, and its annual interest payment exploded from $1.7 million to $8.2 million between 2022 and 2023. It wasn’t until 2024 — 16 years and roughly $57 million in combined interest and management fees since taking on the debt — that the academy finally locked in a fixed rate of 3.25%.

The investment fund’s returns are difficult to verify — and the academy’s own account has shifted. According to a former executive, the institution made meaningful returns in years prior to Sampson’s tenure when the interest rates were forgiving. But in the ensuing years, the returns appear spotty. An academy executive cited one return figure in the fall of 2024, then reported a significantly lower number just months later, with a three-year average of 2.4%. The academy’s audited financial statements don’t explicitly describe the fund’s performance, and its reliance on private equity and hedge funds makes independent verification nearly impossible. Its own filings acknowledge that the investments have estimated values that may differ significantly from what they’d fetch on the open market.

The academy pushed back on the union’s characterization of its debt management, saying each refinancing is governed by defined windows set by the prior bond agreement and that earlier interest rate environments were not conducive to locking in a fixed rate. It defended holding the bond debt while investing the fundraised money as a common and sound institutional practice — adding that 80% of the academy’s portfolio is invested in conservative fixed income.

However, the academy declined to comment on investment returns prior to 2024, stating only that its returns have exceeded interest costs since it secured a fixed rate on its debt that year.

After the 53 layoffs were announced on the morning of April 28, the winding halls and offices of the academy echoed with a level of despondence most employees had never experienced on the job. People sobbed in the hallways after learning about the layoffs from the news. Some wandered aimlessly, unsure whether their supervisor had been laid off and whom they should report to.

The despair has become all too familiar for employees at San Francisco’s creative institutions. In 2022, after spending lavishly on a new building, the San Francisco Art Institute announced that it was going bankrupt. In January, California College of the Arts sold its assets to Vanderbilt University after debt from its new building severely hampered finances. In March, the Contemporary Jewish Museum announced that it was selling the downtown building with which it had become synonymous.

To save itself from the same fate, the academy, current and former staffers say, must confront reality. With a highly bespoke museum building comes bespoke repairs, which, according to internal documents shared with The Standard, the academy can’t afford. Its priorities will have to become more local, the staffers say — less saving coral reefs in the Maldives, more saving fish in the Steinhart Aquarium.

On May 14, in the hours following Sampson’s resignation, the phones of current and former employees lit up across the Bay Area, like fireflies emerging after an extended winter. 

“There’s an overwhelming sense of relief — and a feeling of ‘finally’ — mixed with anger that it took this long,” one former employee said of the executive director’s departure. “I’m still angry that it didn’t happen years ago when staff were sounding the alarm. I do hope that the academy can now heal and rebuild.”