As recently hired Zoo Knoxville CEO Bill Street gets to know his new community, he finds that his job is an instant icebreaker.

Street's message to the public: The zoo is for everyone.

“People light up when they talk about the zoo,” he says.

But Street, who joined the not-for-profit organization in August, is also surprised that many locals think of the zoo mostly as a place for families or for children. While they have great memories of being there, and while they may follow the zoo’s charismatic animals on social media, that doesn’t always translate to visiting the campus in East Knoxville.

Street wants to change that by dreaming up activities for different audiences — seniors, young professionals, those looking for an upscale experience as well as those looking for an outdoor adventure.

He has a message: The zoo is for everyone.

Journey to Knoxville

Street was most recently senior vice president at the Indianapolis Zoo. He was hired after a nationwide search to replace Lisa New, who headed Zoo Knoxville from 2013 to 2023 and led several large expansion projects. She is now the first woman top executive at the Dallas Zoo.

New, Street says, “did a fantastic job” and left the organization in a great place for thoughtful growth. Noting that the zoo is within a day’s drive for more than half the country, and close to such major tourist centers as Gatlinburg and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, he says the zoo is uniquely positioned “to both celebrate the history of Knoxville and grow with the city.”

Street and his wife, Candace, settled in downtown Knoxville this summer. (They have two grown daughters.) They’ve enjoyed discovering restaurants and shops and capping off their strolls with stops at Cruze Farm Ice Cream.

“We’re having a blast in Knoxville,” Street says. He appreciates that it’s a city that feels like a small town. “There are few places as beautiful as Knoxville and East Tennessee.”

Street, who grew up as the son of educators in Illinois, has almost 35 years of experience in aquariums and zoological institutions. He has worked at SeaWorld and Busch Gardens, as well as the Aquarium of the Pacific. He was also employed by the National Wildlife Federation and was a board member for the North American Association of Environmental Education.

Local developer Russ Watkins, who became Zoo Knoxville’s board chair at the end of last year, was part of the search committee that hired Street. He says he appreciated Street’s breadth of experience and that it included leadership positions in both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.

“He understands how business works,” Watkins says, “and he loves data.”

Since Street joined the staff, he’s been meeting one-on-one with zoo employees to get their ideas and feedback. “I’m taking the first few months to really listen,” Street says.

By mid-November, he had clocked more than 150 face-to-face interviews. The zoo has more than 350 employees and, according to documents filed with the IRS, last year had more than $20 million in gross revenue.

Besides being a large local employer and a tourist attraction, the zoo is also special within its field. “We’re the center of the world for red panda conservation,” Street says.

The zoo is also a founding member of the American Zoological Association’s SAFE program for turtles. Zoo Knoxville has helped return the Southeast’s native bog turtle to the wild and also rescues and rehabilitates turtles and tortoises. After Hurricane Helene flooded Asheville and the surrounding area, the zoo was able to help Western North Carolina Nature Center evacuate animals.

“We have the capacity to help out other organizations,” Street says.

A Homeless Lion Cub and an Angry Elephant

The zoo as it exists today was the vision of late Knoxvillian Guy Smith III. A small city-operated zoo existed at Chilhowee Park from the 1940s through the 1960s, a hodgepodge of cramped enclosures and random animals. In the early 1960s, a visiting circus left behind an ornery male African elephant. The 18,000-pound Old Diamond, cut off from the society of his species that we now know elephants need, destroyed one enclosure after another. 

Finally, in 1970, the city decided to sell off the animals.

Smith bought a lion cub, Joshua, which he and his wife were determined to raise. But it quickly became apparent that a good zoo would be a better place for a wild animal than a private home. That meant Smith would have to create one.

He got the community excited about the zoo and worked with the city to raise funds. Schoolchildren who sent their allowances in to build a home for Old Diamond got their names featured in the Knoxville Journal. (Old Diamond went on to sire Little Diamond, the first African elephant born in the United States.)

“The people of Knoxville are the reason the zoo is here,” Street says. “We share their passion and love for these animals.”

Modern zoos have evolved since Smith’s day, and even in the decades that Street has been in the field.

“What we know about animals today is light years ahead of what we knew when I started,” he says.

Veterinary care for animals now often includes geriatric care, as animals live in captivity longer. (Big Al, an Aladabra Giant Tortoise who came to the zoo in 1974, is thought to be about 150 years old.)

There is also an ongoing conversation about what kinds of animals don’t belong in a zoo — Zoo Knoxville was in the process of sending its last elephant, 43-year-old Tonka, to The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tenn., last spring when he developed complications from illness and was humanely euthanized. Stories about the elephants who once called Zoo Knoxville home will continue to be shared, but the elephant preserve will become the home of an expanded herd of Southern white rhinoceroses.

Where once the zoo was a place where people went to see “exotic” animals and learn facts about them, now it’s a place where zookeepers and volunteers share stories about the animals in a way that gets people excited about conservation and wildlife protection.

“I’m happiest when I’m teaching people,” Street says.

Transparency is a big value for Street, and he wants visitors and patrons to have more opportunities to see behind the scenes into all facets of animal life. As magical as it is to see otters frolicking in the water or a family of chimps mugging for visitors, he thinks it’s even more magical to see “all the care that goes into keeping our animals happy, healthy and safe.”