Louisville Science Center Gets New Exectuive Director

The Louisville Science Center has a new executive director at the helm. WFPL’s Elizabeth Kramer reports.Joanna Hass took the position following the retirement of Gail Becker, who was executive director for 17 years.Becker raised millions of dollars to make capital improvements on the building and brought in the IMAX theater.Hass says that having this infrastructure in place gives her and the center the opportunity to build partnerships with other organizations throughout the community and offer activities for all types of people."It really just gives us great capacity for innovating program offerings for the very youngest of our children all the way up to really great adult programming, almost like Idea Festival every day," Hass says.Hass’s last job was director of the Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Science Center, which has an annual budget of $12 million.Hass says she wants to build on Becker's legacy and sees the center as an organization that can stimulate discussion among children and adults about topics that are important to the community."We can be a catalyst for really important conversations about science literacy, about social and economic development, about growth in our workforce population, about global competitiveness," Hass says.