“My parents bought me a goose when I was a toddler,” says Nancy McToldridge, the director of the Santa Barbara Zoo when I ask her when she knew she wanted to be a zoologist. “I have seen the home movies,” she recalls, adding that “it was probably someone’s poor decision at the time.” But that decision sent her on her wondrous career path. I sit with the jovial and inordinately pleasant Nancy in her perch-like second floor office overlooking the Zoo on a sunny Spring morning. The huge map of the world that papers one entire wall of the room intrigues me, so I ask her about it. “Besides getting a pre-professional degree in zoology from Ohio Wesleyan, I also majored in geography” she explains, “and that set my love for world travel.”
Nancy is currently celebrating 35 years working for our Zoo. There have only been two people to hold the title of director since the Zoo opened in 1963, and they are both named McToldridge. The Zoo's first director was her husband, Ted McToldridge, who retired in 2007. “I never imagined I would be here 35 years,” Nancy says, adding that “Santa Barbara is a hard place to leave.”
Her career began as an interpretive naturalist with the Ohio State Parks, where she discovered her love of connecting people with nature. That led to volunteer work as a docent at the Columbus Zoo. Nancy accepted an appointment as Education Curator at the Santa Barbara Zoo in 1982. She was promoted to Assistant Director in 1989, to Chief Operating Officer in 1999, and to Director in 2007. “I identify with the mission of conserving wild animals,” she shares. Every employee in the zoo gets a paid day to do conservation work whether it’s with the monarch butterflies – the southern sea otter – the red-legged frog or the California Condor. “For a zoo this size, we exceed the expectations in conservation,” she states.