A Thousand Trails Home: Living with Caribou by Seth Kantner.
What charity or cause are you passionate about?
My wife and I are really focused on supporting kids at risk. We’re both really attuned to and close to Covenant House and Clare House.
What’s the first thing you do when you get home after a long day at work?
[He laughs] We usually walk the dog. We have a cockapoo, Phoebe.
What vacation spot is on your bucket list?
The Lodge at St. Edward State Park [a hiking spot just north of Seattle].
If you could domesticate a wild animal, what animal would it be?
I don’t know. Maybe a wolf.
A Thousand Trails Home: Living with Caribou by Seth Kantner.
What charity or cause are you passionate about?
My wife and I are really focused on supporting kids at risk. We’re both really attuned to and close to Covenant House and Clare House.
What’s the first thing you do when you get home after a long day at work?
[He laughs] We usually walk the dog. We have a cockapoo, Phoebe.
What vacation spot is on your bucket list?
The Lodge at St. Edward State Park [a hiking spot just north of Seattle].
If you could domesticate a wild animal, what animal would it be?
I don’t know. Maybe a wolf.
Off the Cuff
pstairs at the Anchorage Museum, the Arctic Studies Center is the Smithsonian Institution’s toehold in Alaska. Inside its Gillam Archaeology Laboratory and Art Space, center director Aron Crowell prepares for a visitor by laying out artifacts he and his teams collected in Yakutat, Klukwan, and Kodiak: a cooking pot, projectile points, a Russian musket ball.
The visitor is Rob Gillam. His name is on the wall as part of the Robert B. Gillam family, the lab’s primary benefactor in 2010 when the museum expanded. Gillam, the CEO of financial services firm McKinley Management, sustains the family’s work at the museum.
Gillam became fascinated with archaeology while studying business at The Wharton School, with its bountiful libraries and museums. He didn’t become a field researcher—“Wish I was brave enough to do it,” he says—but he spends as much time in the Bush as if he were.
“There aren’t many options where you can have one foot on Wall Street and one foot in the wilderness,” he says. “I’d rather be in Dillingham than Davos.”
Crowell invites Gillam to handle the artifacts. That tactile experience is the lab’s most important function, Gillam believes: children are welcome to learn directly from the objects and their makers.
Rob Gillam: I’m a “wilderness guy,” so I love the wilderness.
AB: Is there a skill you’re currently developing or have always wanted to learn?
Gillam: I read a lot; I like to learn all manner of things, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s a skill.
AB: What’s the most daring thing you’ve ever done?
Gillam: I once did a packrafting trip down the Upper Mulchatna which was substantially above my skill set. Daring or dumb, I’m not sure which.
AB: What are you superstitious about?
Gillam: I’m definitely a man of habit; I don’t know if that’s a superstition… I grew up in the business with a gentleman who was really a big believer that you always park in the same parking spot. That was his superstition.
AB: What’s your favorite local restaurant?
Gillam: We really like Laile Fairbairn’s restaurants, whether it’s Crush, Spenard Roadhouse, or South.
AB: Dead or alive, who would you like to see perform live in concert?
Gillam: We just came back from a Garth Brooks concert, which was great. Gonna have to say, we might do Garth Brooks again.
AB: What’s your greatest extravagance?
Gillam: I’ve traveled an awful lot of places all around the world, and I think we’re pretty blessed to live in this country and in this state. The extravagance is the life that we’re blessed to lead here in the United States and in Alaska.
AB: What’s your best attribute and worst attribute?
Gillam: In reverse order: I’m not a process person, so process is probably my least favorite thing and my lowest level of skill. Vision, direction, big picture—much more interested, much better at that.
