I mean this is like all the pieces, parts are here. You’re in a city that has 14 Fortune 500 companies, foundations, everything you could think of, and yet nobody was taking it and running with it. And so I was kind of perplexed about that. But anyway, Chuck Wiggenhauser,… Read More
Put your resume together, send it to me. So that’s what I did. I said put my resume together and I sent it to her, and we had really clicked when we’d done the accreditation inspection, ’cause she was along on a lot of the inspection. And so anyway, I… Read More
Why, and what was the thought process then of deciding to leave the Riverbank zoo?… Read More
Well, I had done, during the time that I was at Riverbanks, I served on the accreditation commission for AZA, and actually ended up being on the AZA Accreditation Commission for 12 years. ‘Cause I was a three for, I was a three for. And so by the end of… Read More
So they teach you about finance, and they teach you about strategic planning, and they teach you about this, but they don’t teach you actually how to do it. They teach you the terminology, marketing. Marketing and PR. Actually, my focus in my MBA was marketing and PR, because I… Read More
An MBA, a basic MBA, gives you the terminology and the introduction to a whole lot of things, right?… Read More
Uh huh. Read More
While I was doing that, like I didn’t have enough to do, I had a full-time job, getting my MBA, right, and it was intense. We had exams, the whole nine yard, I got pregnant. And so during that time I delivered. During the time I was in school I… Read More
So luckily my professor let me retake it after the baby was stable, and I managed to pass and move on from corporate finance. Not my favorite thing, but I know the terminology. MBA doesn’t teach you how to be anything. Read More
And I had my husband, my wonderful husband, tape the notes for the exam on the underside of the toilet seat, ’cause that’s where I spent most of my time, there. And so he helped me study. So I’m stubborn as hell. So I decided to go ahead and take… Read More
Oh no, I wanted to be a director. And so my husband and I are sitting in our respective chairs one night at the house, and I told him, I said, I think I wanna go into zoo administration. I think I wanna get involved in zoo administration and have… Read More
I just don’t make it a priority to manage my checkbook, ’cause I’m busy, and that’s not top priority. And by that time we had a two year old, well we didn’t have a two year old yet, but we were thinking about it. And so he said, well you… Read More
I was involved in a visitor survey while we were there to learn what the visitors like. And this was in the infancy, really, of us actually studying what the visitors thought, and now that’s a big field as well. But back then we didn’t really study the visitors. All… Read More
So you’re now thinking zoo administration, but you’re thinking, “I want to be a zoo director” or you’re just thinking the zoo administration?… Read More
When did you start thinking about leaving the medical side of the profession for going into zoo administration?… Read More
Well, I’d been a zoo vet for eight and a half years. And it’s kind of funny, I used to tell people that you can only see so many primate diarrheas before you’re kind of done with primate diarrhea. And that is a lot of what you see in primates,… Read More
And so I was learning all about design and strategic planning. We went through two strategic plans while I was there. So strategic planning, and design, and construction, and all of those aspects. And I was blessed that Satch Krantz let me be involved in all of the aspects of… Read More
Oh, absolutely. Because when you first start at a zoo and you’re a zoo veterinarian, you’re not mindful of all the things it takes to actually run a zoo. We think the thing about being a zoo veterinarian, or any veterinarian for that matter in any facility, is that you… Read More
And so you’re more on an individual basis. One of the reasons why I did the studbook was because I wanted to be on a broader basis, I wanted to help the species at large as opposed to just the individual animal. And that actually led to why I became… Read More
Your primary focus is on that individual animal that’s sick or needs your help that day, right?… Read More