California Academy of Sciences chief resigns after layoffs at museum

Scott Sampson resigned as chief of the California Academy of Sciences after nearly seven years at the helm, deepening the sense of instability at one of San Francisco’s most visible cultural institutions. His departure came only weeks after the Golden Gate Park museum announced layoffs and budget cuts tied to a widening deficit.

The Academy announced on May 14 that Sampson would step down after joining the institution in September 2019. The museum said he would stay on in an advisory role through June 30 while the board launched an international search for a permanent successor. Board chair John C. Dwyer said Amber Mace, PhD, the Academy’s managing director and chief strategy officer, was named interim executive director. Mace joined the museum in 2023 after serving as chief executive of the California Council on Science and Technology.

The change at the top follows a harsh financial reset. On April 28, the Academy said it was implementing staffing and budget reductions to address a recurring deficit. The museum said its fiscal 2025 cash deficit was $7.3 million and that the current fiscal year deficit was expected to top $8 million. The reductions eliminated 53 staff positions, about 9.3% of the team, while another 32 positions, or about 5.6% of the workforce, were offered new roles or had hours reduced.

The Academy said the cuts were driven by the cost of maintaining its buildings and facilities, caring for 60,000 live animals and stewarding nearly 46 million specimens. It also pointed to declining tourism to San Francisco and changes in post-pandemic visitor behavior as pressure points that have squeezed revenue.

For workers, the succession news lands in the middle of a morale crisis. Leaders of CalAcademy Workers United criticized the layoffs and said management had not fully explored alternatives such as executive pay cuts or job sharing before cutting staff. KQED reported that the layoff notice affected 37 union-represented workers and nonunion staff. The union, formed in 2023, has argued that the museum’s leadership needs to restore trust as much as balance the books.

That is the larger test now facing the Academy’s board. The institution is not just a tourist stop in Golden Gate Park. It is an employer, an education hub, and a scientific repository with one of the region’s most important public missions. A leadership turnover after layoffs raises immediate questions about donor confidence, staff retention, exhibition planning and whether the museum can steady itself after two rounds of reductions and regrowth since 2020. Sampson said he planned to spend the next several months finishing his book Superbloom before deciding what comes next. For the Academy, the harder task is making clear that this resignation marks a reset, not the start of another cycle of upheaval.