Dr. Gordon Tremblay
Lead Paleobotanist | PleistoVentures International - Siberian Research Station

Language / Origin: English (native), Canadian French (functional) / Canada

Tenure: 3 years, 2 months

Security Profile Notes: High Openness, Low Agreeableness. Distinguishes between protocols that protect the animals and protocols that protect the corporation's investment. Complies selectively based on that distinction. Documented history of bypassing electronic locks to introduce unauthorized botanical samples. 

Kat Byrne's Notes / For SA&T Specialist Use Only 

As of this writing, Tremblay has an open HR review dated March 21st. I was the one who initiated it and I want to be clear about what that means and what it does not mean. It means he was intercepted at Gate 4 with three unmarked canisters of Siberian Wild Rye in a laundry cart. It does not mean I think he is a threat to this facility. It means I cannot have a senior researcher bypassing containment perimeter protocols with unmarked biological material in a laundry cart regardless of what the material is or what his intentions were, and he knows this, and he did it anyway, and that is the part I need him to understand before the review closes.

Tremblay has been here three years. He was here before the current containment protocols were finalized. He watched the mammoths arrive. He is a paleobotanist who studies Pleistocene flora and he gets to observe the animals those plants evolved alongside, and I think that means something to him that he would not describe in those terms because he is not that kind of person. What he said at Gate 4 was that the samples were for the animals, not the balance sheet. I believe him completely. I also confiscated the canisters.

His security profile is specific: he distinguishes between protocols that protect the animals and protocols that protect the corporation's liability exposure, and he complies selectively based on that distinction. The distinction is not irrational. His application of it is a problem. A man who has decided which rules are real rules will eventually make that determination in a situation where he is wrong, and at a containment facility in Siberia the cost of being wrong once is not recoverable. That is the argument I intend to make to him when we have the conversation that this HR review is going to require us to have. I am not looking forward to it. I expect it to be the most interesting conversation I have had at this facility.

He has bypassed electronic locks to introduce unauthorized botanical samples before. This is documented. The pattern is consistent and predates my arrival, which means it was either not addressed or addressed in ways that did not land. I am not going to repeat what did not work. I am going to make the case on the terms he actually operates on, which means the animals, the science, and what happens to both if a containment failure is traced back to an unauthorized introduction through Gate 4 in a laundry cart. He loves those animals. That is the lever. I am not above using it.

He is one of three people at this facility who has been here long enough to have genuine institutional memory. The other two are Penhaligon and Nikitin, which tells you something about the particular kind of person who stays in Siberia across ownership changes. They are not the same kind of person but they share something I have not fully named yet. Tremblay stays because the work is here. The mammoths are here. The Pleistocene is here, under the permafrost, and he is the person who understands what it was.

His playlist is all ten tracks of a man who has thought carefully about what matters and made his decisions accordingly. Northwest Passage is in there. So is The Garden. I noted both. I am not going to say more about it than that.

Dr. Gordon Tremblay's Greenhouse Groove - Staff newsletter feature, self-submitted. The title is his also.