A factory man helps guide the Franklin Institute to a new digital century of ‘igniting the imagination’

Founded as a tech promotion center by venture capitalists almost 200 years ago, the Franklin Institute is known for its Parkway science museum, with its giant locomotive, the model heart so big you can walk through it, and other displays you loved as a schoolkid.f

Lately it’s also been a stop for national exhibits showcasing the media technology of Disney Animation and Harry Potter. Chief bioscientist Jayatri Das and chief astronomer Derrick Pitts raise its media profile; hip-hop artist the Bul Bey and comedian Kristen Michelle Cills guide its growing podcasts.

Like other nonprofits around Center City, the Franklin Institute’s overseers are a board of largely local professionals — industrialists, real estate developers, doctors, start-up bosses — whose behind-the-scenes roles include hiring the institute’s chief executive, Texas-bred Larry Dubinski, and raising and donating the money to enact the institute’s vision of what’s next in science and spectacle.

Chairman of the 44 trustees is Tom Lynch, the first CEO of one of the largest companies based in the region, TE Connectivity, whose 92,000 workers, mostly in the U.S., Asia, and Latin America, make sensors, connectors, and electronic assemblies for cars, planes, hospitals, robots, and human body parts. Lynch took over last fall from Donald Morel, a materials scientist who ran West Pharmaceutical Services in Exton.

Lynch agreed to take questions from The Inquirer. His answers were edited for clarity and brevity.

We have a mission that drives everything, but they run it with a business attention to detail, a business timetable. The profit motive does get people to the point quicker.

I was recruited to this board back when I was a CEO. At first, I wasn’t sure how I could help. I had come here more than 50 years ago, when I was a kid in Levittown. Later I brought my kids, and now my grandkids. I was impressed by the grandness of this building, the statue of Franklin. And that great heart, that’s the thing you remember.

Once you’re going to the meetings, it’s easy to get committed and feel passionate about the place. It’s just fun work. That was six years ago. Last fall, I became chairman.

I was more into history. I’m not mechanically inclined, but I’ve always been into groups that make stuff. You need a lot of teamwork and cohesion to go from an idea to making 10,000 of that item every day in the factories, which is what we did at TE. There’s a lot of complexity in that — the tasks and the people interactions.

Two things recently: this capital campaign we are doing, positioning this institution for the next 50 years, keeping its essence of igniting the imagination and making it more flexible so the exhibits can adapt to changes in technology and in priorities.

And we helped navigate through COVID, keeping the essence of this institution alive when all your admission and event revenue goes away for awhile. [Past chairs Donald Morel and Marsha Perelman and Lynch were among those who made “significant gifts” to keep the place running when the doors were shut, according to CEO Dubinski.]

You have to make it super interesting. But there’s still nothing quite like when you experience a thing in person.

So my job is launching the plan to make that compelling and exciting. Take a building that has this kind of history and bring it forward.

The culture of this place is test and learn, educate and inspire.

Still in process. The Hamilton Family Foundation [the founder started Campbell’s Soup] is a leading donor toward the new Treasures of the Franklin Institute Gallery [including the giant locomotive exhibits].

The first new exhibition we will open is a new space exposition, where Boeing is the lead donor. They immediately said it makes a lot of sense for them. Space inspires you to study science, technology, engineering, math. From their helicopter plant in Ridley Park and their offices in Washington, D.C., they put in one of their more significant investments, $3 million [of the $8.5 million total cost].

With any exhibition there’s a digital component, a curriculum that can be done with teachers and out-of-school-time leaders, so they can use it. Boeing had already been supporting on a pretty good level our program for underserved youth, STEM Scholars.

TE Connectivity is also a significant donor, up in what we call the Makerspace. You can walk through and put your hands on the 3D printers and other tools. Our relationship shot up when TE first sponsored Michael Andretti as a driver in the Electric Vehicle part of the IndyCar Racing League. We have a lot of engineers at our plants around Harrisburg. They were really excited.

Tying into that, we’ll have an advanced-machines and robotics exhibit here. And last September we launched CurioCity, a Roblox game, with our space exhibition and our Human 2.0 biosciences initiative, incorporating features of those exhibits into the game, that has gotten almost a million plays and a 96% ‘like’ rating. We produced this, with board member involvement, the Metaverse development company Melon, and we put together the funding.

The culture of this place is test and learn, educate and inspire.

Chris Fralic, from the day he joined the board in 2018, he’s been phenomenal. [Fralic has, among other initiatives, used the Franklin as a venue for films that draw a tech crowd.] That was something he really pursued. He was a venture capitalist (FirstRound Capital), and we have a lot of his contemporaries who have joined the board — Anthony Bucci who started RevZilla, Robert Moore from Crossbeam and his other companies, Andrea Anania Stewart from Cigna, they all helped us when we were setting up our podcasts, with our scientists, and our media people.

We are now in the third season of the So Curious! podcast, which [this season] tackles mental health. And just this month debuted our third video series, which [this season] is called “The Road to 2050,″ with expert insight from 35 top innovators worldwide, talking about where we all are headed.