When Racquel Ardisana started volunteering at Brookfield Zoo Chicago as a teenager, she didn’t know that she would go on to work full-time at the zoo — or that she would do so for nearly 16 years.
Ardisana, who grew up in Riverside and graduated from Riverside Brookfield High School in 2006, is the zoo’s associate director of carnivore and small mammal care and conservation. Before that, she worked as an animal care specialist.
“I have several keepers that I work with in the department. I oversee a whole bunch of different things, from daily husbandry to species survival plan recommendations,” she told the Landmark. “I have actually worked at the Brookfield Zoo for all of my adult life. I started here as a youth volunteer … and absolutely loved the zoo. I worked here throughout college in the education department, and after college, I started my animal care career.”
She said one of her favorite parts of her job is interacting with members of the public, educating them about the zoo’s different animals and the importance of conservation.
“I grew up loving the zoo, but I also grew up loving wild places and knowing that these wild places need our help,” she said. “When people connect with wildlife and fall in love with wildlife and fall in love with wild places, they’re more likely to want to conserve and protect those places.”
Ardisana said one of her earliest inspirations was Rachel Carson, a marine biologist and conservation writer known for her nature books published in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s.
“I remember very distinctly in fifth grade, I did a book report on ‘The Sea Around Us,’ which I think my teacher was a little surprised by,” she said. “I learned about her from a young age. [She was] a very famous marine biologist, and I was so interested in her books and her research. That’s why my original dream was to be a marine biologist.”
In high school, Ardisana said she volunteered at the Shedd Aquarium, too.
“There was a person there in their education department named Nicole Pearson, and she was a big inspiration to me. I got very lucky; early on, I had a lot of female mentors … who I really felt helped push me into this career,” she said. “Dana Murphy was the head of the youth volunteer program [at the zoo], but she helped me and my sisters. We all went into careers similar to this. She kind of championed us and always was helping us find new opportunities.”
Indeed, a love for animals runs in Ardisana’s family. Her older sister spent much of her career working as a veterinarian, while her younger sister worked for several years as an animal care specialist at the Dallas Zoo, she said.
“My dad, I will say, was another man who inspired us when we were young. My dad was from Chicago but grew up visiting and spending the summer on his aunt and uncle’s farm in Wisconsin every year. He had a love of animals, and from an early age, we found an injured animal, and we were like, ‘Can we take care of it?’” she said. “People were like, ‘The Ardisanasisters will take this animal until we can get it to a rehab center,’ and my dad always supported us in that.”
To any youngsters with a fledgling interest in caring for animals like she had, Ardisana suggested seeking out opportunities and mentors alike.
“There are great opportunities out there for high school students to get involved. There are a lot of stewardship days for [the Cook County] Forest Preserves. There’s volunteering here [at the zoo],” she said. “I did have some really great mentors who continued to push for me and open my eyes to more opportunities that I didn’t realize were out there.”