At our most recent ECHO Digital session, we sat down with the 2025 Zoo & Aquarium Professional Troublemakers of the Year, Jennie Janssen, President and Managing Director of Minorities in Aquarium and Zoo Science (MIAZS), and Nik Dehejia, CEO of the Oakland Zoo, to talk about what drives them, what they've learned, and what it really means to make trouble for good. This session also officially launched nominations for the 2026 Professional Troublemakers of the Year, a partnership between TESSERE and SSA Group.
The conversation was wide-ranging and honest—about identity, institutional culture, and community—and grounded in the belief that meaningful change happens when people are willing to question what's always been done.
Here are five takeaways that have stuck with us.
TESSERE’s Take
Stirring the Pot Isn’t the Point, Making Things Better Is
There’s a difference between making trouble and making trouble for good. Jennie drew a line that set the tone for our conversation – one stirs the pot to stir the pot, the other is driven by solutions, impact, and collective advancement. That work is slower, sometimes quieter, and built one relationship at a time. It means considering perspectives that aren’t your own, honoring what’s been built while asking what’s possible now, and if you’ve already pushed a door open, holding it open for the person behind you.
“No” Doesn’t Have to Mean “Never”
For those feeling stuck, there was a particularly practical and powerful refrain: a “no” today doesn’t have to mean no forever. It means not right now, with these resources, under these conditions. Circumstances shift, priorities change, and the savvy troublemaker’s job is to hold the idea, track what’s changed, and know when to bring it back. What wasn’t possible five years ago may be exactly what’s needed today.
Trouble Is Easier to Make When Someone Has Your Back
Making trouble carries different risks depending on who you are and where you sit. These risks shape whether, and how, people feel safe speaking up. For those with more security, there’s a responsibility: create space, amplify and credit ideas that might otherwise go unheard, and stand with people when the stakes are higher for them. And for everyone, finding your fellow troublemakers is part of the work. As Nik put it, it’s hard to make trouble on your own, but we can do it together.
Even Systems-Level Change is Built One Conversation at a Time
The thread that connected everything in this conversation was relationships. Jennie’s approach starts at the individual – one conversation, one shift in perspective, one person choosing to consider a reality different from their own. Nik described a decade-long relationship with the Blackfeet Nation around buffalo that has fundamentally reframed how the Oakland Zoo thinks about its own expertise. Whether it’s one person or an entire community, the pattern is the same. Change that lasts is built on trust, and trust is built slowly.
Transparency Is the Infrastructure for Innovation
Many organizations say they value innovation, but what does it truly take to cultivate a culture where people feel safe enough to speak up, ask hard questions, and try things that might not work? At Oakland Zoo, that’s been a long-term commitment to people and transparency, like sharing leadership meeting notes with managers, distributing decision-making rather than bottlenecking it, shifting HR into a true people-and-culture function, and adopting equity-based compensation. Sounds simple, but not easy. Building a team with the trust and confidence to try new, hard things requires conviction, consistency, vulnerability, and moral courage.
A Closing Invitation
Professional troublemaking isn’t about rebellion; it’s about responsibility. It’s about choosing curiosity over comfort, people over process, and action over inertia. The future of the zoo & aquarium profession will be shaped by those willing to ask, “How could this be better?” and brave enough to pursue the answers together.
Nik & Jennie each left the group with an invitation. Jennie’s: What if we all made it a habit to consider someone else’s perspective before our own? Nik’s: In the next 30 days, reach out to a leader, start a conversation, and test your thinking together. Don’t wait for someone else to make the first move.
Nominate a Candidate for 2026 Professional Troublemaker of the Year!
This session also marked the official launch of nominations for the 2026 Zoo and Aquarium Professional Troublemakers of the Year. If you know someone who is making good trouble in service of the collective good, this is your chance to help recognize their work! Visit https://echo.tessere.com/troublemaker/ to learn more.
Let’s celebrate the courageous leadership & bold thinking that moves our field forward.
