Our ambassadors are people
Most zoos use the word ambassador for an animal. We use it for a person, and the difference is deliberate. An animal cannot volunteer to stand in front of a room of eight year olds and change their minds about spiders. A person can, and that is the job.
Our animals are called animals. Each one has its own page explaining what it teaches. The people who do the teaching are on this one.
Founders
The two people who started it
Joseph and Patricia Patinio founded Las Vegas Reptile Zoo and both serve as officers on its board. They are shown here rather than in the board grid below because the founding of the organization and the governing of it are two different things, and a nonprofit is clearer when it does not blur them.
Joseph Patinio
Founder · CEO · Board memberGrew up in Hawaii hunting Jackson’s chameleons with his father, and at ten was writing to the state agriculture department asking permission to import reptiles. Army at seventeen, then the Marine Corps, then Sin City Exotics here in Las Vegas, where he bred species that are rare, endangered and critically endangered. The zoo is what all of that was heading toward.
Patricia Patinio
Founder · Secretary · Board memberA commercial real estate specialist whose work is site selection, zoning and development incentives, which is precisely what an organization trying to put up a building needs in the room. Turtles and tortoises are the ones she goes to see.
Board and leadership
The people accountable for the organization
A 501(c)(3) is governed by a board, and who sits on it is one of the first things a grant committee or a serious donor looks for. It is a public accountability question rather than an internal one. The full board is these five together with the two founders shown above, who hold the offices of CEO and Secretary.
Dennis J. Golden
Vice President and Reptile SpecialistTwenty-eight years of hands-on reptile experience, twelve years breeding and showing dogs, and twenty-three years running kitchens. The husbandry and the management both come from somewhere.
Angela Bolanos
Treasurer
Justin W. Hollins
Education DirectorFirst snake was a Suriname boa in 1994, and he has since bred over 200 species of reptiles, amphibians, fish and birds. Kept the second largest breeding colony of Argentine boas in the country and the most genetically diverse one in the world, of a species listed on CITES Appendix I. His test for good care is simple: an animal comfortable enough to breed is an animal being kept properly.
Colette Morales
Events and Sponsorship DirectorColette Morales is a Las Vegas-based business owner, real estate advisor and a proud veteran of the United States Air Force. For the past four years she has served on her company's leadership board, leading corporate culture and client events and securing the sponsorships that make them work. She is a member of the Tule Springs Fossil Protectors and the new nonprofit Las Vegas Dragon Boat Club, where she helps run the Dragon Boat Festival. She brings that experience to the zoo's founding board.
We would rather have the right person than more people
Husbandry, build days, events, admin and presenting. Handling experience is welcome and not required, because the thing that is hard to teach is turning up consistently and noticing when something is off.
Tell us what you are good at and when you are free, and you will get an honest answer about whether there is something worth your time right now.
