Raymond B. King

Raymond B. King
Born	1965 (age 61–60) Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	Georgia Institute of Technology (BS)
Occupation	Nonprofit executive, former banker
Company	Zoo Atlanta
Title	President and Chief Executive Officer
Spouse	Robin Lord King
Children	1

Raymond B. King (born 1965) is an American nonprofit executive and former banker who has been president and chief executive officer of Zoo Atlanta, the zoological park in Atlanta, Georgia, since June 1, 2010. Before joining the zoo he spent 22 years at SunTrust Banks, first in corporate banking units and then, for his last eight years there, as senior vice president for community affairs in Atlanta, overseeing the bank's grant-making, public relations and employee volunteering.

King, an Atlanta native and graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology, was recruited to the zoo in 2010 after a year in which he was treated for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, an experience he has described as the reason he was willing to leave the only employer he had worked for. He took over an institution with a budget of about $15 million to $16 million, roughly 200 to 220 employees and a record of operating losses.

During King's tenure Zoo Atlanta's annual attendance rose from about 675,000 to about one million, the zoo moved from operating losses to operating surpluses, and it raised more than $80 million in philanthropic support and more than $60 million in public support, according to his Furman University biography. The largest projects of his tenure were the Scaly Slimy Spectacular amphibian and reptile complex (2015), the "Grand New View" redevelopment of the former Cyclorama building and its surrounding land into an African savanna habitat and the Savanna Hall event venue (2019 to 2020), and the Rollins Animal Health Center veterinary complex (2024).

King also oversaw the end of the zoo's first giant panda agreement with China, when its four pandas left for China in October 2024. He then oversaw the start of a new one: in April 2026 the zoo announced a cooperative research agreement with the China Wildlife Conservation Association, and two pandas, Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, arrived in Atlanta on September 27, 2026. Outside the zoo, he has chaired six Atlanta nonprofit boards and sits on the boards of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, Central Atlanta Progress and Furman University.

Early life and education

King was born in 1965 and raised in Atlanta. His birth year follows from contemporary reporting: Georgia Trend gave his age as 38 in October 2004, and the SaportaReport described him as 44 when his appointment to the zoo was announced in May 2010. He has said that he followed his father into banking.

He attended Catholic schools in Atlanta: Christ the King for elementary school and St. Pius for high school. He spent his first year of college at Erskine College in Due West, South Carolina, where he played on the men's varsity tennis team. He then transferred to the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he was a member of the Chi Phi fraternity and graduated in 1987 with a Bachelor of Science in management with honors. In a 2011 interview he said that until he moved to the zoo he had been "the only person I knew who lived in one city their entire life and had one employer their entire career."

Career

SunTrust Banks (1988 to 2010)

King joined SunTrust, then known in Atlanta as Trust Company Bank, straight out of college. He spent 22 years there, most of them in a series of corporate banking units with increasing leadership responsibility. For his last eight years at the bank he was senior vice president of community affairs. Georgia Trend's 2004 profile gave his title as senior vice president for community and governmental affairs at SunTrust Bank and said that he oversaw the bank's civic and philanthropic activities. A 2013 account of the role said it covered grant-making, public relations and employee volunteering. The Atlanta Business Chronicle reported that much of the work involved metro Atlanta's arts and cultural organizations.

King described the job as one that "put me deep in the non-profit and the philanthropic world," and said civic involvement was "part of our corporate culture" at the bank. By 2004 he sat on the boards or committees of about 15 organizations, including the Georgia and Metro Atlanta chambers of commerce, the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau, the Metropolitan Atlanta Arts and Culture Coalition, Theatre in the Square, Theatrical Outfit and the Woodruff Arts Center. That year Georgia Trend quoted him on the economic case for the arts: "The arts are important for quality of life; they enrich the mind and the soul, but the arts also help tremendously in our community's economic development and the education of our children." His boss at SunTrust in 2010, Jenner Wood, president and chief executive of the bank's Central Group, said King "significantly raised our presence in the community" and compared him with Robert Strickland, the Trust Company Bank executive who had led the business community's effort to rebuild the zoo in the 1980s.

In 2009 King was diagnosed with lymphoma; other reports describe it as non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The diagnosis was accompanied by neuropathy, which made walking painful for him. His treatment included six rounds of chemotherapy and three weeks of radiation, and SunTrust supported him through it. He later called 2009 "the most rewarding year of my life," saying the illness had made him "realize that life is fragile."

Appointment at Zoo Atlanta (2010)

In December 2009, Dennis Kelly, Zoo Atlanta's president and chief executive since 2003, announced that he would leave in February 2010 to run the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C. King, who knew both Kelly and the zoo's incoming board chairman, Brad Benton of KPMG, sent Kelly a congratulatory note and Benton a note of sympathy about having to find a new chief executive. In King's telling, Benton replied by asking whether he wanted to run the zoo. The SaportaReport's account says the two met for lunch to talk about the zoo and that Benton raised the job after hearing King's views on it.

King said that he had not considered the job and was not yet healthy enough to take it, but that he put his name forward because the search would take time. He credited his wife with persuading him: "How often are you going to get a chance like this in your life? You have to give it a try." "My cancer did influence my thinking," he said in 2010. "How often is an opportunity going to come to lead a major cultural institution in Atlanta?" In 2013 he said, "I don't think I would have even gone on the path of interviewing for the job if I hadn't had that Moment in 2009."

The zoo announced King's appointment in May 2010 after a national search that the executive search firm Parker carried out without charge. Benton said King's civic connections were a key factor. He said the board had wanted someone with business and leadership skills, commitment to the zoo's mission of education and conservation, and "a strong ability to connect with the Atlanta community." King's last day at SunTrust was May 25, 2010, and he started at the zoo on June 1, 2010. Because of the new job he gave up the chairmanship of the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. Like Kelly, who had come from the Coca-Cola Company, King was recruited from the corporate world rather than from the zoo profession.

Early tenure (2010 to 2014)

When King arrived, the zoo had an annual budget of about $15 million, around 200 employees and about 1,000 animals. His stated first goal was to "increase the core profitability of the business" through more family-oriented marketing, a higher public profile, and growth in operating income, contributions and sponsorships. He later said the job's main challenge was its scale: "I frankly had not led something of that size. So the board had to take a leap of faith, as did I, that my skills were transferrable to that environment."

King said in 2011 that the zoo "had lost money on a consistent basis, which meant that they were unable to make any significant capital investments," and that "the philanthropic community isn't going to invest in you when you're losing money operationally." The zoo broke even in 2010 despite a weak economy and poor weather. It then began capital fundraising for a new amphibian and reptile complex to replace a building from the 1960s, receiving $5 million from the Joseph B. Whitehead Foundation, then the largest single gift in the zoo's history, and $1 million from Southern Company.

Attendance grew by about 30 percent in King's first two years, to 866,000, and membership approached 40,000 households. By mid-2013 he had led the zoo in raising more than $21 million in a capital campaign. The campaign funded Scaly Slimy Spectacular: The Amphibian and Reptile Experience, an $18 million complex that opened in 2015. The zoo described it as the first amphibian and reptile exhibit in the world to receive LEED Gold certification.

Grand New View (2014 to 2020)

In 2014 the City of Atlanta offered Zoo Atlanta stewardship of the historic Cyclorama building next to the zoo in Grant Park. King later described the building as "a distraction for the city". It had housed a painting of the American Civil War that remained city property when the zoo was privatized in 1985 and that was expensive to maintain. A donor's pledge allowed the painting to move to the Atlanta History Center, provided the city could find another use for the building. King said that "everybody was looking to us to take that building over so that the painting could move," but that "I had to put the zoo's fiduciary obligations first."

The arrangement he negotiated fitted a problem the zoo already had. Accreditation standards required at least three elephants, but the zoo had only two and no room for a third. It had been operating under an exemption and risked having to give up its elephants. King said he told the mayor that if the zoo were given the five acres behind the building as well, it could move its elephants to a larger habitat and turn the building into an event venue. The zoo used federal and state historic tax credits to restore the 1919 building.

The resulting campaign, "A Grand New View: Elephants, Events and Expansion," was launched in November 2014 with a $20 million matching grant from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation. The grant matched one to one all gifts made by June 30, 2016. Gifts of $1 million or more came from Delta Air Lines, the Georgia Power Foundation, the Kendeda Fund, David and Cecelia Ratcliffe, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, the Gary W. Rollins Foundation, the Marcus Foundation, the Zeist Foundation, the Home Depot Foundation and the UPS Foundation. An anonymous donor gave $3 million. In February 2016, with months left before the deadline, King said: "We can see the finish line, but the homestretch is the most challenging and important part of this race, and we still need support." In May 2016 a $2 million gift from the Thalia N. Carlos and Chris M. Carlos Foundation brought the total to $41 million against an original goal of $38.1 million, which allowed the zoo to claim the full Woodruff match. The goal had been raised to $40 million so that none of the match would go unclaimed. Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed and Arthur Blank served as honorary co-chairs. By January 2017 the campaign total stood at $42.6 million.

Construction began in fall 2017. The elephants Kelly and Tara moved into their new habitat in June 2019, a male elephant, Msholo, arrived in July 2019, and the African Savanna opened to the public in August 2019. At the opening King said: "If people don't feel connected to these animals and to their ecosystems, they have little reason to want to save them." Savanna Hall opened for events in February 2020. The zoo described the whole project, which cost about $55 million, as the most ambitious reimagining in its history. Bank of America committed $10 million in tax credit equity investments to help finance the hall. In July 2020 the Zambezi Elephant Center and Savanna Hall received LEED Gold certification. King said in 2022 that the new elephant facilities could hold up to seven animals. A male elephant, Titan, joined the herd in January 2025.

COVID-19 pandemic (2020)

Savanna Hall opened about a week before the COVID-19 pandemic closed the zoo. King later said the timing "could not have been worse," because the zoo was entering its high season with its cash at its lowest. Revenue fell to zero during a closure of about two months, and he said, "I literally couldn't tell my staff for sure that we would survive." The zoo laid off staff, raised about $5 million in emergency donations, cut expenses and obtained Paycheck Protection Program loans. King said the laid-off staff were later brought back and that "unbelievably, we came out of COVID stronger than we entered it."

The zoo reopened on May 16, 2020, with timed online ticketing, closed indoor areas and one-way paths. King said it had been "essential that we not reopen the Zoo until we could do so confidently, with the safety of our visitors, team members and the animals in our care as the number one priority." During the closure the zoo also expanded its virtual education programs, which King said went on to serve students outside Georgia.

Care, Conserve, Connect and the Rollins Animal Health Center (2021 to 2024)

By early 2022 King had named a new veterinary and animal care complex as the zoo's next priority. He said that although the animals received good care, "my staff have to work in less-than-optimal conditions." The zoo's "Care, Conserve, Connect" capital campaign had raised nearly $21 million toward a $22 million goal before construction began. King announced the facility's name at a ceremony marking the start of construction on July 27, 2023, at which Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens, the campaign's honorary chair, spoke. The Rollins Animal Health Center, named for a $3 million gift from the Gary W. Rollins Foundation, was completed in October 2024. The campaign closed at just over $21 million, with further gifts of $1 million or more from the Lettie Pate Evans Foundation, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, the Marcus Foundation, the Sara Giles Moore Foundation, the Zeist Foundation and an anonymous donor.

Other projects of this period included a renovated rhino habitat funded by a $1 million gift from the Delta Air Lines Foundation in late 2023, and a $3 million renovation of the African lion complex that opened in April 2025. In July 2025 the zoo announced a partnership with Fort Valley State University to create routes into veterinary careers for students. In March 2026 the Association of Zoos and Aquariums renewed the zoo's accreditation for another five years.

Giant pandas (2024 to 2026)

Zoo Atlanta's first giant panda agreement with China ran from 1999 to 2024. The original pair, Lun Lun and Yang Yang, had seven offspring at the zoo between 2006 and 2016. Under King the zoo sent the twins Mei Lun and Mei Huan to the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in November 2016. In the same year Lun Lun gave birth to a second set of twins, later named Ya Lun and Xi Lun. When King took office, Kelly had just negotiated a five-year extension that roughly halved the zoo's annual payment for the pandas, from $1.1 million to $570,000. King said then that "for the most part, the zoo is breaking even, excluding the pandas."

In September 2024 the zoo announced that, with the agreement ending, Lun Lun, Yang Yang, Ya Lun and Xi Lun would return to China in mid-October 2024. King said it had "been our privilege to be able to share this remarkable family with our members and guests for 25 years." The four pandas arrived in China in October 2024. Rough Draft Atlanta reported that Beijing had reclaimed the pandas as diplomatic tensions between China and the United States intensified.

On April 23, 2026, Zoo Atlanta announced a new International Cooperative Research Agreement on Giant Panda Conservation with the China Wildlife Conservation Association, under which it would receive a male, Ping Ping, and a female, Fu Shuang, both born at the Chengdu Research Base. King said the zoo was "delighted and honored to yet again be trusted as stewards of this treasured species." The Chinese association described the arrangement as a decade-long conservation partnership under an agreement signed the previous year. The announcement came weeks before a planned visit to Beijing by U.S. president Donald Trump. Chinese president Xi Jinping referred to the pandas during a visit to the White House in September 2026. They arrived at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on September 27, 2026, aboard a FedEx Boeing 777. King called it "a thrilling day for Zoo Atlanta and a historic moment for the City of Atlanta, the state of Georgia, and beyond."

The pandas are to be shown in the Arthur M. Blank Panda Grove, a $6 million renovation of the zoo's original panda habitat funded by the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation. As of October 29, 2026, it is scheduled to open on November 6, 2026. With their arrival Zoo Atlanta became one of three zoos in the United States with giant pandas and the only one in the Southeast.

Leadership and management style

King has described his role as mainly external. "My job is to tell our story broadly and loudly and to garner support of the organization from the community," he told Georgia Trend in 2011. "I tell my staff, if my car's in the parking lot too often, you need to get after me and run me off. My job isn't to be here to open the gates." He has said that he was hired for his fundraising background and contacts: "Zoo Atlanta was in a position in its evolution where it needed to raise a lot of money, and to build connections locally. I had the right Rolodex and the right background to fit the profile."

He frames the zoo as a business. In 2011 he said, "I am in the business world. I run a $15-million-a-year business. It's just got some added complexities, most specific of which is fund raising, that a typical business doesn't have to run." He used similar wording in 2022, by which time the figure had grown to $25 million. In the same interviews he set out a strategy of drawing in visitors with entertainment and events and then turning them into members and supporters of conservation: "My philosophy is to give everybody a reason to want to come to the zoo, whether they think they like animals or not, and then they'll get there and they'll buy in." Events introduced during his tenure include the IllumiNights lantern festival, first held in late 2021 with Hanart Culture, and a Savanna Nights after-hours series.

King has stressed continuous reinvestment. "You build something state-of-the-art, then you move to the next thing. By the time you get around the zoo, that first thing you did is almost obsolete, so you re-do it," he said in 2022, adding that "for years the zoo was not doing sufficiently well financially to reinvest." On the zoo's purpose he has said that "entertaining people is a means to an end, but what the zoo is about is conservation."

Accessibility programs were introduced under King. They included sensory-inclusive certification with KultureCity in 2018, a "Zoo for All" accessibility initiative supported by the UPS Foundation in 2022, and an annual Safari Camp scholarship program for children, which by 2026 had run for more than nine years. In 2019 the zoo's board formed a Diversity and Inclusion Committee covering equal employment and supplier diversity. King said the zoo should "proactively seek out opportunities to become even stronger in those areas."

Major deals and strategic decisions

• Cyclorama building and Grand New View (2014 to 2020): King accepted stewardship of the city-owned Cyclorama building on the condition that the zoo also received the five acres behind it. That allowed an elephant habitat and an event venue to be built together, at a total cost of about $55 million.
• Woodruff Foundation challenge grant (2014 to 2016): a $20 million one-to-one matching grant, fully matched by May 2016, which anchored a $41 million to $42.6 million campaign.
• Quarters for Conservation (2016): from 2016 the zoo set aside 25 cents of each general admission ticket for field conservation projects chosen by visitors. King said this made "the Zoo's success and attendance ... directly proportionate to the number of conservation dollars we're able to send to the wild."
• Field conservation partnerships: a partnership with Conservation South Luangwa in Zambia to protect African elephants from 2018, and a new commitment to the Golden Lion Tamarin Association in Brazil in 2022. By 2024 the zoo said it had contributed more than $17 million to the conservation of wild giant pandas.
• COVID-19 response (2020): layoffs followed by rehiring, about $5 million in emergency donations, and federal Paycheck Protection Program loans.
• Care, Conserve, Connect (2023 to 2024): a campaign of just over $21 million that funded the Rollins Animal Health Center.
• New panda agreement (2025 to 2026): a cooperative research agreement with the China Wildlife Conservation Association, together with a $6 million habitat renovation.

Financial and market performance

Zoo Atlanta is operated by the Atlanta-Fulton County Zoo, Inc., a tax-exempt nonprofit, so it has no share price or market capitalization. Its filings with the Internal Revenue Service, as compiled by ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer, show total revenue of about $21 million in 2011, King's first full fiscal year. Revenue reached $40.8 million in 2017 and was $46.5 million in 2023 and $42.3 million in the fiscal year ending December 2025. Net assets grew from $35.0 million in 2011 to $118.8 million at the end of 2025. Revenue fell to $20.8 million in 2020, the year of the pandemic closure, when expenses of $23.2 million exceeded it.

Attendance grew in every year from 2010 through 2016: 920,700 visitors in 2015 and 997,996 in 2016. The 2016 figure was the zoo's second-highest attendance on record, behind 2000, the year the giant pandas first went on show. Attendance was 945,400 in 2017, despite a wet spring and the collapse of an Interstate 85 bridge in Atlanta that March. King said in 2022 that the zoo was "in the best health financially we've ever been."

Compensation

ProPublica's compilation of the zoo's Form 990 filings lists King's reported compensation as president and chief executive as $291,253 for 2013, $442,155 for 2014, $527,247 for 2015 and $600,120 for 2016. From 2017 to 2021 it stayed between about $593,000 and $610,000. It then rose to $722,484 for 2022, $762,144 for 2023, $818,849 for 2024 and $855,307 for the fiscal year ending December 2025. For 2016 to 2025 the filings also report other compensation of between about $15,500 and $28,100 a year.

Board memberships and outside roles

According to his Furman University biography, retrieved in October 2026, King serves on the boards of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, Central Atlanta Progress and Furman University. From 2010 to 2016 he sat on the advisory board of Hire Dynamics, an Atlanta staffing company. He has chaired six nonprofit boards: the Fernbank Museum of Natural History, the Regional Business Coalition, the Committee for a Better Atlanta, the Metro Atlanta Arts and Culture Coalition, Theatre in the Square and Research Atlanta. He has also been a director of the Atlanta Girls' School, the Civic League and Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Metro Atlanta. He is a member of the Rotary Club of Atlanta and of Leadership Atlanta. In August 2013 he gave the commencement address at Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta.

Personal life

King is married to Robin Lord King. Their daughter, Courtney, graduated from Furman University in 2024 and lives in Washington, D.C. King has said that his daughter wanted to be a zookeeper before he took the job, and that she "appointed herself vice president of the zoo." He belongs to Peachtree Road United Methodist Church, the Cherokee Town and Country Club and the Ford Field and River Club.

King has spoken publicly about his 2009 cancer treatment. He said he and his wife "never cried. We never got mad. We just knew this was something we'd have to tackle and we went into action mode." He described the recovery as his "It's a Wonderful Life" period, after his favorite film. He has said he spent time during the COVID-19 pandemic reading history, and in a 2022 interview said he disliked social media "for a lot of reasons" but valued its reach for the zoo.

Recognition

• 2004: Georgia Trend "40 Under 40"
• Woodruff Arts Center Charles R. Yates Award for Outstanding Community Service (by 2004)
• 2007: Watch List, "25 Atlantans Making a Difference"
• 2009: United Way Chairman's Award
• 2012 and later years: Atlanta Business Chronicle, "100 Most Influential Atlantans"
• 2014, 2015 and 2016: Atlanta Business Chronicle, Most Admired Nonprofit CEO, voted three years in a row, the maximum allowed

See also

• Arthur Blank

External links

• Zoo Atlanta official website
• Zoo Atlanta leadership and board