Antonieta Costa is head of education at Portugal’s Lisbon Zoo. She joined the zoo in 2007 and has more than 25 years’ experience. A pedagogy expert and strategic conservation education manager, she has 16 years’ experience in conservation education. Costa started her career as assistant professor at the University of Lisbon in teacher training degrees in education.
Her passion for how people learn prompted her to do a master’s degree in psycholinguistics in the area of learning acquisition and then a PhD in pedagogy. At Lisbon Zoo, she is responsible for defining, developing and monitoring the implementation and evaluation of the zoo’s education plan. She oversees 75,000 formal students every year, as well as informal education, with 800,000 annual visitors.
Costa oversees more than 50 different programmes for preschoolers, high school students, university students, teachers and families. She also looks after exhibitions and content for the general public and stakeholders. She handles institutional relations with the Portuguese Ministry of Education, establishes and manages institutional partnerships, increases educational policies and creates innovative learning scenarios.
She works alongside the zoo’s marketing and commercial departments to develop and promote new sponsors, and with the zoological department to create new educational programmes and visitor studies research. In addition, Costa collaborates with the architecture department on the development of exhibit design.
She is an active member of the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA), and served on the EAZA Education Committee as vice chair between 2012 and 2020. Since 2020, she has been the committee’s chair. As of May 2019, Costa has served as the regional representative for Europe and the Middle East for the International Zoo Educators Association (IZE).