Madison Wilson

Madison Wilson serves San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance as a Research Associate in Community Engagement. In this role, she instructs educational modules for the team’s ongoing Exploring Conservation Science field trip program, as well as helps facilitate the Teacher Workshops in Conservation Science program that runs each summer at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center for Conservation Research and abroad.

Madison works alongside the team to prepare for the lab and updates curriculum to keep the modules current to the work being done at SDZWA Science. She is also responsible for lab set up and assists with a wide array of other responsibilities according to the needs of the team, including designing manuals and student journals, redesigning the Conservation Education Lab, and assisting with the traveling kits the team manages for our Teacher Workshop alumni to bring conservation science into their classrooms across the nation.

Prior to SDZWA, Madison served the San Diego Zoo Safari Park as a Guest Ambassador for two years. She is currently working on her undergraduate degree in Ecology with a minor in Native American Studies. Madison has earned two Associates of the Arts degrees from MiraCosta College (Biological Sciences and Liberal Arts; Math and Science). She spent her formative years in Nicaragua working with the conservation organization Paso Pacifico to survey plant and animal populations and restore habitat by reforesting native trees in order to create a migratory corridor for primates though the Central American isthmus, where she found her calling in conservation. Madison is especially fond of California native plants and butterfly-host plant interactions, as well as geology and ethnobotany. In her free time, she enjoys art, rock climbing, and backpacking.