(Click HERE to view Larry Mendoza's presentation on Virginia's snakes at the February 2023 Member Meeting.)

Larry Mendoza was born in Sicily, Italy in 1976 while his father – a Filipino national serving in the U.S. Navy – was stationed overseas and met Larry's Sicilian mother. He has dual citizenship as an American and as an Italian. “I can actually vote in both countries,” he noted. Larry learned English when he attended the American School on base in Italy.

When Larry's family moved to the Northern Virginia area, he enrolled at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) with the intention of getting a degree in biology. He took a job as a student worker in the Fire Safety department while in school, and when he was later promoted to Biosafety Specialist after graduation, he found that he truly enjoyed and valued the work that this profession offered.  He explained that the academic community never fully appreciated the role that the safety department plays – especially enforcing safety rules dealing with hazardous materials - which Larry’s team had to monitor. “While folks didn’t like to see us coming before COVID hit,” Larry stated, “their whole attitude did a “180” and our reputation skyrocketed” during COVID.  Larry and his team were able to assist the university and its leadership in keeping the transmission rates to one of the lowest in the Virginia public universities, an accomplishment of which he is rightly very proud.