Embracing Change

Successful organizations embrace change. They continually examine their place within a changing world and adjust themselves accordingly: expanding or re-focusing activities, taking on new initiatives, finding new ways to collaborate. All organizations, large and small, new and old, face challenges like these. Organizations that don’t take on this hard work all too often fail.

2016 was the time when our organization needed to change how we present ourselves to the world. After 43 years, we set out to change the “ISIS” brand. We all know the immediate global driver behind this change, but our Board of Trustees also understood that with such change comes a broader opportunity.

Our organization is a dynamic organization, and one that has been adapting to our rapidly changing environments, both technological and ecological. Re-branding enabled us to reflect better our emerging capabilities to our members and the wider world. Accordingly, after much work and consideration, we rolled out our new brand in July: Species360. Global information serving conservation.

With this new brand comes a strong re-commitment to helping our members not only use ZIMS as a powerful record-keeping and collaboration tool—which it was designed to do—but also helping members dig into the rich database in ways that can be uniquely valuable to conservation and research efforts.

As 2017 continues, we are eager to begin identifying and acting upon the unique ways in which ZIMS can serve our members, researchers and conservation partners. We also welcome the fresh perspectives of three new trustees: Rasem Babem, Director and CEO of Munchener Tierpark Hellanbrun (Munich Zoo); Lynn Clements, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center and Foundation, USA; and Rodolfo Raigoza Figueras, Experiencias Xcaret, Mexico.

We hope that you are looking forward, as we are, to an exciting and fruitful 2017.

Best,

Jonathan Wilcken,
Chair, Species360