Dr. Robert Becker has been the CEO of City Park for fifteen years and has been credited with dramatically improving the park’s financial condition and developing a new vision for the park’s future.  Becker is credited not only with repairing the catastrophic damage done by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 but also remaking the park into one of the top public parks in the United States.  Since the storm, Becker has put together a public-private financing plan that has raised more than $122 million to repair damage and implement the Master Plan.  Prior to his work in City Park, Becker was the Senior Vice President for the Audubon Nature Institute and was the Executive Director of the New Orleans City Planning Commission during most of the 1980”s.  Becker is a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified City Planners and an Adjunct professor at the University of New Orleans.  He has received numerous awards throughout his career including the 2010 National Planning Award honoring the park’s recovery effort, being selected as the 2012 Distinguished Alumnus from the University Of New Orleans College Of Liberal Arts, and being honored as a “Hero of the Recovery” by New Orleans Magazine on the 10^th Anniversary of Katrina.   He has a B.A. in History from the University at Buffalo, an M.A. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Iowa, and a PhD from the University of New Orleans in Urban Studies.