[5] Raised internationally in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe and North America, Zimmermann earned her Bachelor's degree in Zoology from the University of Leeds in 1997.
She went on to earn a DPhil (PhD) in conservation social sciences from Oxford University in 2014, supervised by David Macdonald.
[2][3][7][8] At Chester Zoo, Zimmermann led their human-wildlife conflict mitigation projects, for which she was awarded grants from the UK Government's Darwin Initiative five times beginning in 2007.
[7][11][8] Zimmermann chairs the IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict Task Force, which she had founded in 2016.
[2][14][15] While holding positions at both organizations, Zimmermann helped facilitate the partnership between Oxford University and Chester Zoo in 2018 for a portfolio of conservation projects, including one on Andean bears, which was funded through the Darwin Initiative and is still ongoing.