Jenn Wan

Ethnicity:

Filipina, Chinese

Current position: 

Instructor

Current facility:

The Florida Aquarium

Year zoo career began:

2017

Jenn Wan is an instructor for the Florida Aquarium. Currently, she creates and instructs educational programs for various groups and ages within the school groups, camps and home school communities. She also assists in animal care and handling animal ambassadors for those educational programs. Her favorite part of her job is that it brings new adventures every day and loves the creativity and variety within her day! One day she could be instructing school groups with on-site squid dissections and the next she could be guiding a school group through the Mangrove Forests doing water testing.

Prior to starting her Zoo career, Jen grew up on Long Island, New York and like many, she wanted to escape the cold and found herself attending the University of Tampa in Tampa, Florida. After finishing her sophomore year of college, Jenn applied to be a summer camp counselor at the aquarium as she felt drawn to the marine and conservation aspects of her biology classes. After her first day, she was inspired by the three strong and amazing women who greeted her and realized she could follow in their footsteps and do this as a career as it brought her two new recognized passions – educating the youth and the marine environment. Jenn then graduated with a degree in Marine Biology from the University of Tampa Florida.

Jenn hopes to foster curiosity about nature and inspire others to take action in conserving it. She suggests that any students interested in the field should go out and gain experience as this will help you learn different skills and figure out what part of the field you want to be in (or don’t want to be in)!