From a very young age, Sara Sullivan had a innate love for animals and a genuine drive to work with them. And after scaling the ranks and swapping a few zip codes, she’s now an associate population biologist at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, Ill.
Sara diligently worked toward degrees in psychobiology and wild animal biology in the U.S. and the U.K, all while maintaining zoo jobs, industry contacts and side research projects—including studying her favorite species, cheetahs. Pretty wild. (Bad pun intended.) After graduating and pursuing job after job in the competitive field, Sara has already reached her goal of working in population biology. And only in her early twenties, she’s excited to see what comes next. “I currently don’t have any grand plans for my immediate future, other than to continue to learn and increase my expertise as a population biologist … I have no idea what the future holds or how what we do now might be different in five years, but I’m excited to find out.”