Meet Jenny Gray, the CEO tasked with expanding on her predecessor’s legacy at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Five months into her role as the second-ever CEO of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Jenny Gray is finally beginning to feel settled. Gray, who moved from Australia to Pacific Grove to take on the new job, has been working closely with Julie Packard, who has served as the Aquarium’s founding executive director since the 1980s.

“Not at all hard to follow her,” Gray jokes.

The leadership transition has been gradual and deliberate, with plans to build on the Aquarium’s conservation mission while discussing what to preserve versus change. But Gray brings with her a remarkably diverse background, shaped by a restless curiosity about society’s biggest questions.

She grew up in the suburbs of Johannesburg in South Africa at a time when the country was transitioning out of apartheid. At 27, she became CEO of a bus company – a defining position, as she was tasked with leading its operations during a time when bus services were transitioning out of being racially segregated.

Her career would span industries from aviation to banking to zoos. In tandem, she pursued master’s degrees in ethics, engineering and business administration, and a PhD in ethics from the University of Melbourne.

“I want to feel that whatever journey I’ve been on, it’s made a positive impact,” she says.

Weekly: What did running a bus company at 27 teach you that you still use today?

Gray: It was such an incredible moment. It was just this opportunity, this chance they took on me. I was so young, and we were looking for so much change. I learned that telling me about something is not nearly as good as showing me. Take me out, let me see what we’re talking about.

I learned that everyone adds value. There’s no hierarchy on good ideas, and so as a CEO, spending a lot more time talking to my staff, and they came up with some absolutely amazing things over the years.

What tilted your attention to zoos?

What happened was we went on holiday, I was sitting in the desert with my husband and I said, “I’m done with the bank,” and I made a little list of what I wanted to do.

We got back to Johannesburg and he was reading the local paper and said: “Oh, look, the CEO of the zoo resigned.” And I went, “That sounds like the job for me.”

You’ve said that zoos play an important social role, specifically in South Africa.

It’s an unknown fact that through apartheid, the Johannesburg Zoo was always open to everyone of every race; a lot of people, that was the only place they could go. On Christmas, everyone wears their best dresses and comes to the zoo. It’s often a luxury for a birthday or something like that.

We take for granted that you’ll go walking in a national park or see animals in the wild. Many of these kids live in the townships around Johannesburg and aren’t able to do that. They would come to the zoo and they would see an elephant, and their lives would just light up.

You ended up doing a PhD on whether or not there’s a moral case for zoos.

I saw that there was a degree in applied ethics at University of Melbourne. A lot of people laughed and said I was running the risk of: If I couldn’t build a moral defense of modern zoos, would I have to change jobs? For me, it’s really helped me to find a course through. Working with animals is challenging; it doesn’t matter whether you’re a dog trainer or you ride horses or you work in a zoo or on a farm. We all work with animals in some way, and that means we have a whole lot of obligations in terms of how we do that.

What’s the biggest difference you’ve noticed running an aquarium?

I keep standing in front of that kelp tank, going, “Yeah, you can’t do that with lions.” The mixed exhibits with all the creatures that can live together in the ocean is a big difference.

When it comes to conservation, there’s a really big difference with the ocean. If you can protect a piece of the habitat like we’ve done here off the coast of California, life will come back. On land, it’s way harder. So many of the animals that we worked with breed really slowly. You can’t just protect an area, you have to get the predators out, get the invasive species out. The ability of the ocean to recover is remarkable.

Favorite restaurant since moving here?

Wild Fish in Pacific Grove, especially going with a couple other people so you can try little bits of each order.