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Virginia Riddle Pearson, "Ginny" to her friends and family, has spent nearly four decades studying elephants in zoos and helping their conservation efforts in the wild. Her passion for these gentle giants is extraordinary and her perseverance inspiring.

Virginia Pearson first came to the Philadelphia Zoo as a volunteer and immediately recognized two things: the enormous value of volunteers in educating the public about wildlife and the positive impact interacting with a volunteer can have on fostering connections with animals. She also saw the need for an infrastructure that would allow these things to be accomplished in a coordinated fashion and at a level beyond anyone's wildest dreams. So in 1971, the Docent Council, which will be celebrating its 26th anniversary this year, was born. "Docent," which means volunteer teacher in Latin, only begins to define the actions of this group. Sprinkled throughout the Zoo on any given day, Docents schooled in scientific data and anecdotal stories can be found standing in front of exhibits with their "Just Ask" carts, fully armed with educational artifacts (i.e. animal bones, teeth, etc.), and anxious to share ways you can make a difference for wildlife. Conducting private tours, fielding hundreds of phone calls and online queries about the Zoo and its collection, research, conservation, special events and fundraising all fall under the many hats worn by the Docent Council. Ginny Pearson's insight into founding this volunteer-based group was nothing short of visionary.

Still the perennial volunteer herself, and a scientist at heart, Ginny has expanded what began forty years ago from a part-time interest to full-time work for elephant conservation, supporting the efforts of the Philadelphia Zoo, Save the Elephants (based in Nairobi, Kenya), The Elephant Listening Project (working in Western Africa with the forest elephant), and most recently, the International Elephant Foundation (IEF) who have asked her to join their efforts to contact researchers all over the world in order to create a central database on the IEF website for elephant researchers. The Philadelphia Zoo has also supported the International Elephant Foundation through contributions to MIKE, a worldwide program to monitor the illegal killing of elephants and to gather information on elephant population trends in Kenya; as well as IEF's work studying and educating communities on how best to live with elephants in Sri Lanka. With Ginny's help, the Zoo also hosted Dr. Katy Payne from the Elephant Listening Project several years ago as part of an educational seminar series for staff and volunteers.

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