Lisa Marie Stevens is known to her friends as a smart, attractive, well-traveled woman who rides her horse once a week, has four dogs, a cat and a corn snake, speaks two foreign languages and has lived and worked in more than a dozen countries.
But to hundreds of millions of people all over the world, she is known simply as “the Panda lady.” For the last 18 years Stevens, who spent most of her early childhood with her military family in Thailand and Okinawa, has managed all aspects of the giant panda program at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park.
Since Ling Ling and Tsing Tsing had twins in 1987, Stevens, 50, has been the face of America’s pandas. Now she is back in the spotlight with the birth of the nation’s newest baby panda, Tai Shan, 5 months old.
Stevens, who has worked at the zoo for 26 years, is responsible for all aspects of the panda operations, including the budget, exhibit design, construction and supervising personnel. She is also responsible for the zoo’s primates, which include the gorillas, orangutans, gibbons and macaques.
We sat down with her recently to ask her about the excitement surrounding the birth of the new panda and her zoo work in general.
Q. How did you become interested in animals?
A. My interest in animals goes way, way back to when I was very young and I lived in Southeast Asia. I lived in a tropical environment where there were a lot of insects and reptiles and other animals, and I became really interested in both of those, insects and reptiles, [and] in animals in general. So throughout my childhood, I would make my parents take me to zoos and so forth.
Q. How often did you go to the zoo?
A. When I was in high school in D.C., I probably came to the zoo at least once a month. Prior to high school, we probably visited an animal facility once or twice a year.
Q. So, that started you on the path toward your current job?
A. That, and the other part of my childhood that had a significant effect on me was learning how to ride horses. My parents gave me riding lessons when I was about 10 years old, and I think that had a tremendous impact, being around the riding stables and watching the veterinarians take care of the horses. But I had no clue, no idea that one could make a career as a zookeeper. In the days I was in school and you wanted to work with animals, the career path was to be a veterinarian. There was no guidance whatsoever on other kinds of careers working with animals.
Q. Do you find many other African-Americans in your profession?
A. No, it’s not a diverse profession at all. … When kids see me doing what I’m doing, especially children of color, but all kids in general, I certainly hope that it will help them to think more broadly and to think of other possibilities and other career choices besides sort of what we’re pigeonholed into.
Q. What is the most dangerous encounter that you’ve had with an animal?
A. In a zoo setting, one of the main rules is to always work safe. So probably my most dangerous incident was when we had an orangutan escape. He basically grabbed and bit one of the keepers and in the process another keeper and I went to her assistance, and the orangutan grabbed my leg. Like most people when you’re in a dangerous situation, things seem to slow down. I was calm and just stood there and waited for him to let go, and he did. Probably the other most dangerous situation is falls from horses. I probably have fallen about a dozen times.
Q. What is it about pandas that make people go crazy?
A. They have the characteristics that we’re genetically programmed to find very cute, very adorable, those characteristics that our babies, our toddlers have–big round heads, high foreheads. Although their eyes aren’t very big, the black eye spots make their eyes look big. Their ears stick out; and when they sit up, they have these pudgy bodies, and they sit up and hold their food like we do, and these are all characteristics of our infants and toddlers.
Q. When you’re out with friends do you talk about your job much?
A. Oh, all the time! Zoo people are the life of the party usually. People are fascinated by animals, and obviously we’re unusual because there aren’t many of us out there. They want to ask you animal questions and they want to know the story behind the story of something they read in the paper about the zoo.
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Personal highlights
Title: Assistant curator at the Smithsonian National Museum.
Marital Status: Single, but “I’m in a long-term relationship. I’m just not formally married.”
Education: Bachelor of science degree, zoology/pre-veterinary medicine, 1977, Michigan State University. American Zoo and Aquarium Association School for Professional Management Development for Zoo and Aquarium Personnel, 1986.
Favorite movies: All-time favorite “To Kill A Mockingbird.” Recent favorite, “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
Favorite music artists: Santana, Grover Washington, Boney James and Eva Cassidy
— St. Louis Post-Dispatch