Outside his comfort zone
When Piekarz arrived in Akron in 1998 as a general curator, the zoo was growing. It had begun constructing new exhibits, and in 1999, a new master plan laid out its strategic direction for the next 15 years.
It was an ambitious plan that would bring animals to its collection and increase the educational opportunities available to the community. Its first property tax levy, passed in 2000, committed $8.1 million a year to the zoo for the next seven years. Around that time, it also secured a 99-year lease of additional land from the city, doubling its size.
As the zoo started growing and making major improvements, staff members changed positions based on their skills and abilities. Piekarz became vice president of planning and conservation programs, and while he had the conservation piece down, the planning piece required him to learn new skills quickly as the zoo moved through habitat construction. It also set him up to look more holistically at the organization.
In 2013, he was invited to study with the inaugural class of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Executive Leadership Development program, a 14-month program designed to train future CEOs in the zoo and aquarium field. The program accepted 10 people from among more than 240 institutions.
“When you’re living in your area of subject matter expertise, things feel comfortable,” Piekarz says. “My subject matter expertise was in the sciences, and I effectively was looking at taking a greater role, a chief executive officer’s role, but from an area of subject matter expertise that was animal related.”
While he was comfortable in that realm, he didn’t have that same degree of comfort with organizational finance, marketing and public relations. In the executive leadership development program, an individualized development plan helped him shore up those areas of relative weakness. And in 2015, he left his role as vice president of planning and conservation programs, having gained the academic and professional experience needed to step confidently into the CEO role after the board selection process.
With a little help
While Piekarz knew how to ask the right questions, there were some areas — finance, for example — where he didn’t always know how to evaluate the answers. So he brought people with subject matter expertise to the table to help him reach the best decisions for the organization.
