Chicago’s Joseph Frumkin (BS, ’13, integrative biology) is the guest engagement coordinator with Lincoln Park Zoo. From designing public education presentations to managing the fellowship program, Frumkin has found that informal education diving into animal care and conversation combines skills that he honed while studying at Illinois.

Please briefly describe a typical workday. Also, what is an example of the most interesting aspect of your job? I’m thankful that a day at the Zoo is far from typical, which is what I love. In general, the guest engagement team focuses on using interpretation to tell stories related to our animal care and conservation work. We engage the public to try and inspire them to take their own action to help protect wildlife. The way we do this can vary day to day; sometimes it involves me delivering a program to an audience of 500 people, while other times it involves mentoring our Guest Engagement Fellows on how to prepare for a career in free-choice learning environments. This ultimately makes for the most interesting aspect of my job. Working with the public or early-career professionals always presents a new audience at varying levels of knowledge, but all passionate about wildlife. It makes every conversation I have on zoo grounds a unique one, which has me continually learning something new.

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