Monica N. Sandri

I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and developed a love for wildlife, academics, and exploration early on in life. I earned my bachelor’s degree from the University of California—Santa Cruz in 2014, and spent the following four years pursuing a career in the zoological field. I became an Animal Keeper Apprentice in 2016 and was promoted later that year to Elephant Keeper at the Oakland Zoo (OZ). These positions granted me opportunities to participate in conservation projects and research within both captive and wild settings. My experiences leading the OZ Captive Elephant Research Project from 2017—2018 inspired me to join Save the Elephants (STE) in Kenya as an International Research Intern, and ultimately, to pursue graduate school. While in Kenya, I participated in a landscape assessment project, assisted with long-term monitoring of elephants and mammals within Samburu National Reserve, managed multi-year datasets, and expanded my skills in GIS mapping.

​

Since completing my internship with STE, I have been involved in the future research developments of the Iinnii Initiative, a collaborative bison restoration project lead by the Blackfoot Nation, Wildlife Conservation Society, and OZ. I have also applied for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship two years in a row and joined Dr. Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell at Utopia Scientific in 2020. I am currently responsible for leading elephant cognition and long-term memory experiments at the OZ and assisted with hormone analyses of elephant fecal samples collected in Etosha National Park. I am most fascinated by the ecology, behavior, and conservation of large herbivores in North America and Africa, as well as exploring science and community-based solutions to human-wildlife conflict.