Every month our Volunteer department sorts through piles of nominations from supervisors and honors one of our volunteers for their truly stupendous efforts. Meet our latest Volunteer of the Month!

Kim Podesta

This month, we are awarding Kim Podesta, a volunteer with the Marine Mammal Department, the recognition of Volunteer of the Month! Her calm and respectful personality, along with her unbeatable work ethic makes her the best choice.

Here’s what her supervisor, Kim Cummings, had to say:

This summer will mark Kim’s three year anniversary with the department. Kim is everything you could ask for in a volunteer and colleague. She is hard working, a good leader and role model, has excellent attendance, and is kind and generous. Kim never shies away from a new challenge and she continues to volunteer to take on more responsibility. Kim will come in and work extra hours when the team is in need. She will stay late and recently stayed late learning a new educational talk that she is now presenting every Tuesday morning. She is the only volunteer that has mastered this talk and is presenting at the Marine Mammal Center weekly. There is never a doubt that tasks will be done to their completion and exceed expectations when Kim is at work. 

Beautiful Burger

Because Kim has shown so much growth and development in the last three years she was recently given her own training project. She was taught how to feed and train Burger, the aquarium’s rococo toad. Years ago prior to being trained, Burger would be very stressed getting taken out of her habitat to go on educational rounds. Through training this situation was made positive for her and has been maintained by mammal’s staff. When deciding who to pass Burger’s training off to, Kim was a front runner in the staff’s minds. She has excelled at this project and has built a comfortable relationship with Burger and is moving forward with her training. 

Kim is essential in the team’s enrichment program. She is always coming up with creative and novel ideas to enrich the animals.  She will bring in items from home and spend time assembling new toys and testing them out.  She will take on repairs for broken or older toys making them new and functional again. 

Please join us in congratulating Kim!