Sarah George

Sarah B. George, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of the Natural History Museum of Utah and Adjunct Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Utah. Her first job in a museum was as a sophomore biology major at the University of Puget Sound, and she never looked back. Trained at the Museum of Southwestern Biology at the University of New Mexico as a field biologist, mammalogist, and evolutionary geneticist, Sarah has conducted fieldwork in 22 of these United States and around the world. Prior to coming to Utah, she was Curator of Mammals at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, and held adjunct faculty appointments in biology at USC and UCLA.

Sarah and her team of staff and board raised the funds for and managed the development of a $102.5M new building, exhibits, and landscape for the Natural History Museum of Utah, the Rio Tinto Center. The new Museum is designed to meet LEED© Gold certification and is home to more than 1.2 million objects; research and training programs in paleontology, archaeology, botany, and zoology; new innovative exhibits and learning laboratories; plus statewide public school outreach. The award-winning Museum opened to the public in November 2011 and has received world-wide press coverage, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Discovery Magazine, and many other outlets.

An active participant in the California Expanding Your Horizons program to encourage high school girls to take science and math courses, she has keynoted two Expanding Your Horizons events in Utah. She is a member of the Utah Women's Forum, recognized as one of 30 Women to Watch by the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce and Utah Business Magazine in 2005, served on the University's Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, and twice chaired the Women's Week Committee for the University of Utah.