Chattanooga, Tenn. (August 6, 2026) – The Tennessee Aquarium has selected Meredith Roberts, MBA, as head of a new unit supporting its nonprofit mission.
Roberts has almost two decades of marketing, sales and fundraising experience at the Aquarium and is a familiar face to many tourism and hospitality professionals. As senior director of business development, she will broaden the base of financial resources that will fuel the Aquarium’s regional impact.
“I have wonderful childhood memories of visiting the Aquarium when it first opened, especially seeing the river otters and watching SCUBA divers feed diving ducks underwater,” Roberts says. “I am excited to strategize new business opportunities to ensure meaningful moments like my own will be created for many generations to come.”
The position of senior director of business development was intentionally created to support the Aquarium’s ambitious future plans within its downtown campus and more broadly throughout the region, says President & CEO Andy Wood.
“The Aquarium’s team has been developing a strategic framework that includes bold, exciting ideas that will expand our freshwater conservation initiatives, enhance our guest experience and educate even more young people beyond our campus,” he says. “Planning for that growth requires us to create new sources of revenue to achieve the ambitious goals we are setting for ourselves.”
Roberts began working at the Aquarium in 2007. She initially served as sales representative before advancing to director of hospitality and marketing. She most recently acted as director of strategic advancement.
A graduate of Berry College’s Campbell School of Business, she later earned her MBA in marketing from The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga while working at the Aquarium.
Roberts enters her new role as the Aquarium continues to enshrine itself as a powerful regional economic driver, an unparalleled educational resource, a leader in conservation science and a world-class exhibitor of wildlife.
In 2025, the Aquarium welcomed more than 784,000 guests, generating an annual economic impact of $187 million for Chattanooga and Hamilton County.
Last year, the Aquarium celebrated noteworthy conservation milestones such as the 25th anniversary of the effort to restore Lake Sturgeon to Tennessee and a nationally lauded effort to save the endangered Laurel Dace from extinction.
In November, the Aquarium opened the S.T.R.E.A.M. Learning Center, supported by UNUM, to act as a centralized hub for its robust educational programming. More than 56,000 students visited the Aquarium in 2025. An additional 15,665 people participated in education outreach programs during the past 12 months.
Within the Aquarium’s buildings, the new Scuttlebutt Reef gallery has been thrilling guests since opening in March. The Aquarium also made national waves this year through high-profile coverage of several additions to its animal community, including its first-ever lemur infant, a recently hatched Gentoo Penguin chick and a collection of endangered and critically endangered baby turtles.
Those many successes are just the start of great things to come, Wood says.
“We are determined to accomplish even more in the years ahead,” he says. “I’m confident Meredith Roberts has the deep background, strategic thinking and energy to shape new revenue and product initiatives designed to advance our mission.”