// Academy / Faculty
The people who teach.
Pioneers and practitioners leading the charge — working keepers, breeders, veterinarians, and field researchers who built and shape the field. The founding cohort below; more announced ahead of the Class of 2026.
Kevin McCurley
Chief Academic Officer
Zoological operations · Behavioral science · Breeding · Genetics · Venomous · Conservation
Founder of NERD. Revolutionized trust-based husbandry and produced landmark morphs — the cow retic, the first Pastels — the modern hobby is built on.
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Tom Crutchfield
Principal Advisor
Breeding · Herpetology · Reptile history · Venomous
Breeder and exporter for 50+ years — the pipeline countless species first came through, and a partner on the genetics behind the first albino Burmese python.
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George Van Horn
Principal Advisor
Venomous · Venom milking · Reptile history
Founder of Reptile World Serpentarium — six decades milking cobras and rattlers by hand for the antivenom that saves lives.
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Ty Park
Principal Advisor
Tortoise · Iguana husbandry · Zoological operations
Built Iguanaland — 250+ species and the largest reptile zoo in the world; a global authority on iguanid and tortoise husbandry.
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Steve Angeli
Senior Advisor
Venomous · Heloderma · Breeding
One of the world's foremost beaded-lizard breeders — a Heloderma specialist on hot-keeping and the most demanding venomous lizards alive.
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Stacy Crutchfield
Senior Advisor
Behavioral science · Venomous
Keeper, educator, and conservationist — decades bringing the public face-to-face with the giants, from crocodile monitors to the animals people fear.
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Dr. Steve Dinkelacker
Senior Advisor · Ph.D.
Field research · Anatomy · Conservation
Ph.D. herpetologist, biology professor, and field researcher specializing in reptile populations and habitat associations. Since 1998 he has studied turtle populations across the United States — bog, spotted, common snapping, Blanding's, alligator snapping, and Eastern and Western chicken turtles — and published peer-reviewed research on American alligators, including broad-scale habitat associations in North Carolina and Arkansas and the influence of climate change on population stability at northern latitudes. Since 2011 he has led an ongoing mark-recapture program on American alligators across the Albemarle Peninsula of North Carolina. A professor at universities across the country and a pioneer of online science teaching since 2015, he pairs rigorous field science with the classroom — and, for over a decade, the breeding bench, producing scrub pythons (Barnecks and Southerns), yellow-tail cribos, reticulated, blood, and ball pythons, among others.
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Tyler Bevers
Faculty
Keeper · educator
Joining the Citadel faculty — full profile announced ahead of the Class of 2026.
View profile →Jasmyn Brilliante
Faculty
Keeper · educator
Joining the Citadel faculty — full profile announced ahead of the Class of 2026.
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Braxton Warren
Founder & CEO
Lifetime enthusiast · Zoo-grade animal handler
Founder and CEO of Citadel Culebra — building the institute the field has waited on.
View profile →Jeremy Aldas
Chief Technology Officer
Platform engineering · Product · Systems
Jay Aldas, a Computer Scientist and lifelong reptile enthusiast whose career sits at the intersection of cutting-edge technology and the exotic animal industry. A Cum Laude graduate of CSU Channel Islands, he spent years building cybersecurity and data systems for the DoD before channeling that expertise into his true passion — reptiles. As the owner of Goliath Reptiles, Jay has spent years in the trenches as a breeder, product engineer, and community educator, giving him an insider's understanding of the industry that few technologists can match. He serves as CTO with a mission to bring modern software solutions to a space he knows and loves.
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