How the many colorful threads of Randy Boyd's life weave into a one-of-a-kind pattern

You can get lost quickly in the search for the perfect narrative thread to describe Randy Boyd's life, choosing and discarding from a collection of spools that would overwhelm even a tailor.

There are stories of loss and redemption. Of fanatical focus on achievement. Of relentless drive to test his body in punishing physical tests. Of quests to find a calling that will quiet his restlessness.

He defies easy description, a man who rises before the sun every day to savor his solitude but works at a small desk in the corner of an office tower floor bustling with colleagues and visitors who demand his attention.

Boyd is a failed salesman who made a fortune in sales. He's a thwarted political candidate who now occupies the toughest public office in Tennessee. He's an exemplar of the self-made man who buys in unquestioningly to the proposition that no person can succeed without the support of a community.

So pick a thread and pull it. But when the spool is exhausted, know you'll need to tie it to another to keep the story going. And there's no guarantee the colors will match at first look.

The runner

With Boyd, it's easy to start with running. He's a marathoner's marathoner, completing races on four continents (including Antarctica) with three left to go.

He runs for his health - he's 64 years old with a physique that puts to shame men 40 years his junior - and he runs for his mind.

“That's my meditation time. I run by myself, I run without music," he said. "I'm out for an hour, my blood's circulating and I just have my time for quiet thought."

It's a quiet that rises to a crescendo as the day progresses. Colleagues talk about the emails he fires off at 4:30 a.m. before he laces on his running shoes, the start to a day stacked with commitments.

It's a pace he's always kept.

Running through college credits at a breathtaking clip to graduate in three years, eager to finish his degree as quickly and cheaply as possible and jump into his professional life.

Running from sales pitch to sales pitch across the Midwest, cold-calling stores in a failed attempt at selling a tornado detecting system, a product way before its time, but failure planted the seed for his first big business success.

Running for governor, the favorite to clinch the Republican nomination in 2018 until he veered from the course in a campaign shift that didn't fit his personality or suit the constituency.

As Boyd sat for a conversation with Knox News, he faced east toward the big windows on the 12th floor of the UT Tower downtown.

There's a sweeping view of the cranes rising just beyond the Old City, the site of an ambitious $114 million construction effort to raise a new stadium for the Tennessee Smokies, a project that will bring the team back to Knoxville after a 25-year absence once it opens in 2025.

The team is Boyd's. The stadium is yours and mine and the effort the actualization of a passion that has consumed him since he first conceived of it in 2014.

The builder

Timber rises on steel anchored in concrete into the sky abutting the Old City, the profile of the Smokies Stadium taking shape. Boyd is passionate about baseball and his money follows his passions. He bought the baseball team in 2013, and the Double-A Minor League club plays its games in Kodak, one county over from Knox County and 21 miles east of Knoxville, its original home.

Boyd envisions an entire community around the future stadium, replete with restaurants and residences. That vision prompted his promise in 2020 to invest $142 million in adjacent development. His salesmanship was a key factor to gain the support of political polar opposites in city and county government to back a joint sports authority that will own the multiuse stadium.

In a joint column for Knox News published in November 2021, Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon, a Democrat, and Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs, a Republican, made a powerful and ultimately successful pitch for the project.

"We want to see construction workers get to work and move closer to the 400 permanent jobs that can be created by this project, and the estimated $480 million in economic benefit it will provide," Kincannon and Jacobs wrote.

"We've kept our eye on the ball. Let's take our swing and hit this home run."

Just miles away on the other side of the UT Tower, adjoining the west end of downtown, sits the University of Tennessee at Knoxville campus, the system's crown jewel. It, too, is abuzz with construction starting on new housing complexes spurred by public-private partnerships.

Chancellor Donde Plowman leads the university. Her tight partnership with Boyd stands in stark contrast to the dysfunction that once roiled the top ranks of the UT System and its national-profile campus. Boyd not only recruited Plowman, he flew his private plane to Lincoln, Nebraska, to pick her up for the interview. By the time the pair landed in Knoxville, Plowman recounts, she was sold on Boyd's promises.

Together, the two have navigated the increasingly tricky waters of public higher education, creating a powerful partnership to woo legislators with proof of the irreplaceable economic benefits the system and the school bring to the Volunteer State.

As the system's leader, Boyd led the creation of the UT-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute to bring partnerships together, moved the UT Institute of Agriculture back into the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and in 2021 acquired Martin Methodist College – now known as UT Southern – making it the first new campus to join the system in more than 50 years.

By 2023, UT experienced significant growth: record-breaking system enrollment reaching 58,726 students, retention rates increasing to 4.2%, graduation rates increasing by over 3%, budgets increasing across the system and increases in fundraising with a goal to reach $3 billion by 2030.

Boyd hasn't hit the same milestone that legendary UT System President Andy Holt did by tripling enrollment in 10 years. But Boyd and UT aim to enroll 71,000 students systemwide by 2030. Right now, he's already grown the system by over 7,000 students.

Boyd has relationships that help protect the university system from the political attacks against higher education often employed by Republican legislators nationwide. He's one of them, for starters, as the longtime commissioner of Economic and Community Development under former Gov. Bill Haslam (who was mayor of Knoxville before ascending to the governor's office).

He also has paid keen attention to the tone and tenor of discourse at the Knoxville campus, putting his weight behind UT Knoxville leadership in an ambitious effort to remake the Baker Center for Public Policy into the Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs. One of the school's highest-profile efforts is its focus on strengthening civility and civic participation.

The school brings to town scholars, diplomats, policy experts and business leaders who span the political spectrum, and even hosts a podcast by Haslam – Boyd's self-described mentor – and former Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen. The podcast is called "You Might Be Right," a genuflection to the famed motto of legendary U.S. Sen. Howard Baker, the school's namesake and rock-solid conservative who nonetheless never eschewed the power of bipartisanship.

Baker's philosophy was rooted in the concept of giving grace, and the precept of giving is a value Boyd embraces even when his detractors don't see it.

The giver

Randy Boyd has done as much for accessibility in education as anyone in Tennessee. His entry into education sprang from the unlikeliest places: His gamble years before creating an invisible fence to keep animals contained on a property.

Boyd made his fortune after making an entrepreneurial leap into the pet supply market, creating Radio Systems Corporation in 1991 to market the invisible pet fences. The PetSafe brand came later in 1998 selling products in fencing, accessibility and care for pets.

His gamble on Radio Systems Corporation proved successful. The company was earning around $480 million in revenue annually according to the USA TODAY Network in 2018. He sold the company in 2020 to private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (UT Board of Trustees Chair John Compton is a partner in the firm).

Sitting on his back porch one morning in 2008, Mike Ragsdale, who was Knox County mayor, turned the tables on Boyd's long-running lobbying to make the county the most pet-friendly place in America.

Ragsdale proposed the idea for knoxAchieves, an innovative scholarship program, to Boyd, who quickly signed on. Boyd joined with Ragsdale, Bill Haslam, Rich Ray, Tim Williams and Chris Woodhull to launch the program in 2008 to offer privately funded scholarships for qualifying high school students. It was the first step in a campaign to expand access to education that now is a key strategy for building the strength of the state's education system.

As the program grew, knoxAchieves became tnAchieves, encompassing more counties. When Boyd joined Haslam's state cabinet in 2013, he brought tnAchieves with him.

The idea grew into a statewide initiative in 2014 when Haslam announced the Tennessee Promise scholarship. The scholarship works with tnAchieves to mentor qualifying high school students, prepare them for college and provide free community college scholarships. Since then, Tennessee Promise has enrolled 123,204 students and paid over $186 million in scholarships.

Boyd counts the moment tnAchieves became the statewide program Tennessee Promise as one of his proudest accomplishments.

Carrying over the idea, Boyd created UT Promise to provide last-dollar scholarships covering tuition and fees for students at UT. The program expanded its outreach by changing the household income threshold to $75,000 starting fall 2024, opening the door for college to almost two-thirds of all Tennessee households.

Boyd also led the charge in a new guaranteed admissions policy across the UT System, allowing top earning high school seniors admission to any UT campus.

At the same time he's built a pathway to higher education for tens of thousands of Tennesseans, he's put in the quiet work with the same relentless focus he pours into his public work.

CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters Tyler Boldin remembers when Boyd signed up to be a volunteer mentor for the organization. He agreed to do at least 12 months as a mentor, and was matched with his little brother, JoJo Tyler, in March 2012. Nine years later, they completed the match, and Boyd still keeps up with his "little" today.

"What struck us is Randy is undoubtedly ... one of the busiest people in Knoxville," Boldin said. "And the fact that he ... not only pledged to do this, but actually fulfilled it and went way beyond what was asked of him and gave his time to JoJo on a very, very consistent basis, I think that just says everything. That's incredible. He has influenced so many other people to sign up to be mentors with us, which is something that we desperately need, especially men to be mentors."

Additionally, Boyd sits on 17 boards across the nonprofit ecosystem of Knoxville. These boards include the Boys and Girls Club of the Tennessee Valley, United Way of Greater Knoxville and his namesake Boyd Foundation.

What's next

When Boyd signed on for the job of UT System president in 2018, just a week after losing the Republican primary for governor by just under 100,000 votes, Boyd got a phone call about another very public job. But this one didn't require a campaign. University of Tennessee System President Joe DiPietro was retiring and looking for an interim replacement.

"I agreed only on the condition that if I come in, I can be disruptive. If you want somebody just to be a caretaker to put their feet on the desk and just play the role, pick somebody else," Boyd said. "If you want somebody that can come in and really shake stuff up, I'm your guy."

Almost six years later, the interim title long gone, Boyd's failed political campaign continues to be a win for Tennessee. Boyd is on a self-described mission to make this "the greatest decade in UT history." The timeline, though, offers a clue to an evolution in Boyd's thinking.

Haslam has watched Boyd for years, and he took note. "Randy's normal tendency is to move fast to find the top of the mountain, get there and then figure out where the next mountain is going to be," he told Knox News.

"But in a public institution, you have to work at a pace that brings a lot of other people into the decision-making process. And I think Randy has really adjusted and done that in a really nice way."

The UT System enrolled a record number of students in 2023, raised the second highest fundraising year ever with $342.4 million in 2023 and is committed to getting more Tennessee high school students through the doors into qualified jobs across the state.

Just this month, Boyd got a ringing endorsement from the University of Tennessee Board of Trustees, who are poised to extend his tenure another five years.

The narrative threads of Boyd's life and work are there, after all, and those closest to him can tie them together.

“The pattern is that he just goes on to something else that's even better, or maybe he just learns that you have to fail to succeed, which everyone knows that, that's true. It's a hard lesson to learn, but he's never downtrodden," his wife, Jenny Boyd said.

"He's positive to a fault."

Keenan Thomas is a higher education reporter. Email keenan.thomas@knoxnews.com. X, formerly known as Twitter @specialk2real.

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Knoxville's Randy Boyd

• 1959 - Randy Boyd is born in Baptist Hospital in South Knoxville

• 1979 - Boyd graduates from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville

• 1985 - Randy and Jenny Boyd get married

• 1991 - Boyd founds Radio Systems Corporation

• 2008 - Boyd helps launch knoxAchieves, which later becomes tnAchieves

• 2017 - Boyd announces his campaign for Tennessee governor

• 2018 - Boyd loses in the Republican primary, then becomes interim president of the University of Tennessee System

• 2020 - Boyd is sworn in as permanent president of the UT System

• 2023 - Boyd marks five years as permanent president in November

• 2024 - Boyd and the UT Board of Trustees signal interest in extending his presidency by another five-year term

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Randy Boyd: Meet the millionaire, politician, university administrator