Protecting the Pack At The Saint Louis Zoo
08/18/2025
Domini Montgomery, M.P.H., ASP, CSP, CEAS (M.P.H. ‘13) has the good fortune to work in one of the most unique workspaces in Saint Louis.
As the director of Safety and Risk Management at the Saint Louis Zoo, Montgomery naturally works closely to animals of all kinds and with a vibrant Zoo community.
Whether it be a porcupine, a bear or a penguin, a furry or feathered friend is never far away.
The zoo is just a really awesome place to work, and even the bad days are really good,” she said. “(If) I'm having a (bad) day I’m going to mosey on over and go see the Penguins. It's really cool to have that opportunity.”
Across three zoo campuses in the area, Montgomery’s charge looks tangibly different every day, albeit filled with animals from around the globe. However, the goal remains the same: to be proactive about wellness and making safe choices so everyone can go home safely, and so everyone has the same opportunity to experience the zoo that St. Louis has grown to love.
Montgomery earned her Master of Public Health in 2013 with a dual focus in environmental and occupational health, and biosecurity and disaster preparedness from the Saint Louis University College for Public Health and Social Justice.
She came to SLU with a bachelor’s degree in biology in hand and aspirations to become a doctor but made the pivot to public health, a degree with the versatility to instigate change with a local focus via human health.
“How do I impact public health every single day here at the Saint Louis Zoo? Our mission is connecting people with the environment and conserving wild places and wild spaces. While I may not be boots on the ground (like the) keeper staff or conservation staff, what am I doing? I'm keeping the humans alive so that they can do that work. I work at an organization that values public health, animal health, human health, environmental health, one health,” she said.
Montgomery began her work in the Safety and Risk Department at the zoo in 2015 as a coordinator and has since helped build the department into a well-choreographed network that serves 1,200 staff, 2,000 volunteers, and the zoo’s 3 million yearly guests.
While no days look the same as another in this role, her focus remains on general liability, casualty, prevention, and understanding the root cause of incidents.
Montgomery and her team spend a great deal of time asking and answering the questions that are necessary to promote personal safety at the zoo.
“Some of the things I'm most proud of are the shift and safety culture that has been a direct result of work and time and resources poured into the community,” Montgomery said. “I'm here specifically focused on them.”
The St. Louis Chapter of the American Society of Safety Professionals validated and recognized her work by naming her 2024 Safety Professional of the Year.
She was also selected as a member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Safety Committee. The AZA is a major accrediting body setting the gold standard for zoos and aquariums worldwide. Much of her work in the industry has also focused on the mental health and well-being of zoo professionals, which is informed by research out of Denver Zoo and Colorado State University that highlights how fatigue and burnout impact zoo professionals. This study came out during the COVID-19 pandemic, but her team was already focused on mental health and total worker health facets in 2018 at their zoo.
Asking questions like ‘What are your needs? What do you need me to do? How can I help advocate for you? What challenges are you seeing?’ have helped create the current safety culture at the zoo.
With her M.P.H. and dual focus from SLU, Montgomery has the tools to look after many audiences.
“One thing that I think people don't acknowledge or realize or just even think about, and it's not necessarily because I want them to, right, is zoonotic diseases,” she said. “Security is kind of a big deal in the zoo environment, and so that really just put me in a really unique opportunity and a unique setting to serve this community here.”
With as vast as public health is and how versatile an M.P.H. degree can be, Montgomery credited her professors with being able to provide her the tools she needed to excel in her current position.
“Public health students, whether you're at SLU or another public health university or program abroad, either here or elsewhere, have got to make sure that you are in it for the right reasons," she said. "If you want to work in public health, you're probably not going to make $1 million, but you could save someone's life and I don't know about you, but that's worth it to me."
For Montgomery, her passion and purpose aligned at SLU and beyond to help create a better future for those in her path.
She credits SLU with creating an experience that meant something then, and now.
“Having approachable staff, whether that is a professor or another member of the college faculty, was really important to me ... I think the approachability is really what's most important,” Montgomery said. “Just the approachability and accessibility of staff and faculty was a key component for me. I felt like my emails and phone calls were answered super quickly and promised.”
College for Public Health and Social Justice
The Saint Louis University College for Public Health and Social Justice is the only academic unit of its kind, studying social, environmental and physical influences that together determine the health and well-being of people and communities. It also is the only accredited school or college of public health among nearly 250 Catholic institutions of higher education in the United States. Guided by a mission of social justice and focus on finding innovative and collaborative solutions for complex health problems, the college offers nationally recognized programs in public health and health administration.