Who

The woman New York parents should thank when they take their tykes to look at the dinosaurs, Ellen Futter is president of the American Museum of Natural History.

Backstory

The New York native grew up in Port Washington, graduating from Barnard in 1971 and then earning a JD from Columbia. In 1981, at age 32, she became president of Barnard, the youngest person ever to run an American college. She spent 13 years at Barnard before being hired away by the Museum of Natural History in 1993.

Of note

As head of the Museum, Futter has overseen an expansion of the institution's physical structure, presiding over the construction of the $210 million Rose Center for Earth and Space (including the new Hayden Planetarium), as well as the renovation of the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, bankrolled by real estate titan Paul Milstein. Those big-name corporate donors have also helped raise the museum's profile in the city, and Futter has been using the institution to bring hot-button scientific issues such as climate change and evolution into the public eye. But while Futter has doubled the size of the museum's endowment over the last decade, she's not without her detractors. Some of the more science-minded employees at the museum have complained that corporate donors often exert too much influence on exhibits and that Futter goes too far to please those with the big checkbooks. Not surprisingly, Futter is a major player in corporate boardrooms around town; she sits on the board of J.P. Morgan Chase, Viacom, AIG and ConEd.

For the record

Trustees of the museum include Tom Freston, Victor Ganzi, Helene Kaplan, David Koch, Dick Parsons, Steven Denning, Richard LeFrak, Tom Brokaw, Shelly Lazarus, and Lorne Michaels.

Keeping score

Futter earns a salary of $627,000 a year.

Personal

Futter is married to John Shutkin, an attorney at Shearman & Sterling; they have a daughter, Elizabeth. They live on East 79th Street and have a weekend home in Oyster Bay.

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