When Chad Fifer was younger, his parents — a nuclear power plant worker and a paramedic in Ohio — tried to talk him out of a career in marine biology. “We pay, in fields like this, what we call the passion tax, to do what you love,” Fifer said. “There are certain sacrifices that you have to make.
” That passion has led Fifer, 45, to the helm at the Aquarium of Niagara, where he started as the organization’s CEO on June 17. “This has always made me so content and made me so happy and kept me so focused. And I’ve just been lucky to be able to continue moving up and gaining more perspective to really figure out where I wanted to be,” he said.
“I’ve been very fortunate in ending up exactly where I wanted to be.” With his wife, Cailtyn, and children, Noah, 5, and Wren, 3, Fifer comes from the Dayton Society of Natural History in Dayton, Ohio, where he was CEO for the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery and SunWatch Native American Village. Before that, he was director of education at the Nashville Zoo.
Fifer has also worked for Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, Zoo Knoxville, Ripley’s Aquarium of the Smokies and Brevard Zoo. He is vice chair of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Conservation Education Committee and is on the advisory board of the Modeling Zoos and Aquariums as Inclusive Communities of Science. “I tell my team that my superpower is perspective.
I’ve not jumped around for the sake of jumping around,” Fifer said. “I’ve moved t.
