The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum hired a search firm to find president and CEO Terry Stewart's replacement. Turns out the right man for the job was already on staff: Greg Harris, the museum's vice president of development and government relations since 2008. We talked to the 47-year-old about being the museum's new frontman.
How did your 14 years at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum prepare you for this job?
The big thing is being associated with a regional attraction that truly is a national treasure — a place that preserves and celebrates something that means so much to so many people. ... What you learn is how to take that passion and use it to create opportunities to communicate, to support, to build this excitement around the organization.
How will your development background help with that?
[I'll] be doing more fundraising. And with my background at the Baseball Hall of Fame, I'd like to look at ways to keep our core operations strong but expand our brand with some things that we're doing now. ... I'm interested in partnering with the right national partners to deliver programs or extend our reach and impact. Everything that we do should be casting a brighter light on the museum and ultimately whetting people's appetites to visit.
You co-founded the Philadelphia Record Exchange in the '80s. What's the oddest thing you saw there?
We had a frantic musician run in the store at about 10 o'clock on a Saturday night — with a cowboy hat on. He said, "Do you guys have a bass-drum pedal?" Remarkably, we had a drum kit set up in the back. • He said, "All right, if I can borrow this bass pedal tonight, you guys get all the beer you can drink." Turned out it was Dwight Yoakam. He was playing in a bar down the street.
