Our Mission

Our History

Our mission is to strengthen individuals, teams, and organizations within the zoo and aquarium industry by providing proactive programming, support services, and crisis response.

Growing Resiliency for Aquarium and Zoo Employees, LLC better known as GRAZE was founded in 2020 by Erin McNally and Shannon McKinney.

Both Shannon and Erin were planning to present to the AZA community on various mental wellness topics when Shannon made a post on the AZA network looking for others to present on a panel for the Annual Conference in 2020, which is how the two united.

The two quickly realized, as many others in this industry have, that there is a need for something more in regards to mental health support for the zoo & aquarium industry.

GRAZE was created with the intent to bring mental health support to those in the zoo and aquarium industry by raising awareness, sharing ideas, resources, and tools.

Since it’s creation, GRAZE has presented at multiple industry conferences about supporting the mental health of aquarium and zoo staff, assisted facilities with critical incident response and animal loss, and created training modules to help develop resiliency and peer support within individual facilities.