Lisa Buehler has always loved animals. She grew up in Kansas City, Mo., and the Kansas City Zoo was one of her favorite places. In Little Rock, she took her daughter, Amanda, to the Halloween-theme Boo at the Zoo at the Little Rock Zoo. She volunteered the next year, passing out bowls of candy.
SELF PORTRAIT
Lisa Buehler
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: Sept. 24, 1966, Kansas City, Mo.
A BOOK I RECENTLY READ AND LIKED: Dr. Seuss’ My Book About Me — my grandson read it to me
WHEN I HAVE DOWN TIME I LIKE TO spend time out by my pool because it’s relaxing. Most of the time I’m picking up toys, which is fine. It just means they’re having a good time. Sometimes I like to ride in the cart while my husband goes golfing.
THE EXHIBITS I MOST ENJOY WHEN I VISIT OTHER ZOOS ARE the ones we don’t have in our zoo. I like to watch the elephants and the giraffes and the big cats, but if they’ve got something we don’t have I like to go see those and spend time learning about those animals.
THE ANIMAL I MOST IDENTIFY WITH IS the cheetah. They have a lot of high energy, and they’re fast-paced. They go for a long time, and then they rest. I would love to be a big cat sometime and get as much rest as they do.
MY FAVORITE TIME OF DAY IS morning because my grandkids wake up and they have big smiles on their faces. It’s good to see them before they’ve gone to school and gotten worn out.
SOMEDAY I WANT TO go to New Zealand.
I ADMIRE my parents. My mom spent a lot of time volunteering and doing things at the school when I was younger. I may not have appreciated those things like I should have at that age. And my dad just spent a lot of time working, and his work ethic was instilled in me.
MY TOP PICK FOR A SPLURGE MEAL: fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy
THE BEST ADVICE I EVER RECEIVED: My mom said, “If you stay focused you can do what you set your mind to do.”
THREE THINGS I ALWAYS HAVE WITH ME: my sunglasses, my iPhone and my passport
ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP: tenacious
“I wanted to know how to get more involved because I wanted my daughter to grow up having that same love for animals that I had,” says Buehler, vice president of Allegra Print and Imaging of Arkansas Inc./Image 360, the company she co-owns with her husband, Darwin.
Within a year, Buehler had completed training to become a docent and show the zoo’s birds of prey, reptiles, mammals, parrots, insects and more to visitors.
“At that time my daughter was 5,” she says, “and if I was just in there helping clean cages for the education animals she could be there with me, so she got to play with ferrets and rabbits and little creepy things. She loved it.”
As her daughter grew and developed more diverse interests, Buehler’s volunteer focus at the zoo evolved into serving on committees and organizing fundraisers like Zoo Brew and Wild Wines. Now she is chairman of the Arkansas Zoological Foundation, the nonprofit group that raises money and community awareness for the Little Rock Zoo.
Buehler is on the event committee for the 11th annual Wild Wines, which will raise money to renovate the education building where she spent so much time during her early relationship with the zoo.
The two-night Wild Wines includes a VIP Reserve Room event 7-9 p.m. Friday in the zoo’s Cafe Africa with wines selected by Jonathan Looney, owner of O’Looney’s Wine and Liquor. Dinner and desserts will be provided by the Capital Hotel, Cache Restaurant, So restaurant, YaYa’s Euro Bistro and Cocoa Belle Chocolates and Cupcakes on Kavanaugh. Penguins and other animals will make appearances during the event.
Tickets to the Reserve Room are $150 and include admission to the second event, the Wild Wines Grand Tasting, 7-10 p.m. Saturday on the concourse at War Memorial Stadium, which is near the zoo.
The latter event will feature tastings of 150 wines, also selected by Looney; food from about 50 area restaurants; music by Rodney Block and the Real Music Lovers and Synergy; and a stage where animals will perform throughout the evening. Tickets to the Grand Tasting are $75.
“Something unique is that we will fly one of our birds on the War Memorial field,” says zoo director Susan Altrui. “It’s going to be really dramatic.”
The education building will not just get a face-lift with these funds — it’s to be transformed into a conservation education center.
“Right now our education building is not open to the public, and we think that’s a shame,” Altrui says. “Our education building should be open to the public whenever the zoo is open, so that’s our goal with this fundraising project. We want to raise enough money so that we can turn it into a place that encourages conservation play.”
HER EAR TO THE GROUND
Altrui met Buehler shortly after Altrui became the zoo’s director of marketing and development 12 years ago.
“I immediately came to know her as someone who was very passionate about the zoo and its mission for conservation education,” Altrui says. The zoo director also knew about Buehler’s work with some other nonprofits around town, such as the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas.
Buehler served as a Women’s Foundation board member from 2007 to 2010 and was chairman of the organization’s annual Power of the Purse luncheon in 2008.
Margy Niel of El Dorado met Buehler through the Women’s Foundation.
Niel, a past Arkansas Zoological Foundation board member, and Buehler were kindred spirits from the beginning.
“Lisa is bubbly and funny and involved in a lot of different things. You just gravitate toward her. Most people just can’t help it,” Niel says. “She is such an encourager. Even if she’s had a bad day she’s going to find something good in it.”
The pair are also travel buddies. Most recently they visited Cuba to celebrate Buehler’s 50th birthday, and before that they went to Costa Rica.
“If you can travel together and not kill each other, you know it’s going to stick,” Niel says. The Buehlers are the perfect people to travel with “because they want to immerse themselves wherever they are,” she said. The women jokingly call each other Thelma and Louise “because if she’s not talking me into something, I’m talking her into something.”
Buehler persuaded Niel to support United Cerebral Palsy of Arkansas. “I think there are a lot of things in my life that I wouldn’t be involved with if it weren’t for Lisa Buehler,” Niel says.
Aaron Perkins, owner of Face Your Day Salon, met Buehler when she was chairman of a fundraiser for United Cerebral Palsy three years ago. “I started styling her then,” he says. “She’s a retainer client, which means we get her ready for anything she has coming up.”
Buehler’s involvement with United Cerebral Palsy, the University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College’s Diamond Chef fundraiser and Wild Wines led to Perkins’ support, as well, whether in the form of sponsorships or auction items.
Buehler’s company printed the product labels for the Aaron Charles cosmetics line Perkins recently launched.
“Just like I trust her to do what she knows is best, she trusts us to do what we know is best,” he says. “When she is in my chair she says, ‘Just do what you do because I know you won’t steer me wrong.’”
FAMILY TRADITION
Buehler makes time for her friends like Altrui, Niel, Perkins and others, and she remains on the United Cerebral Palsy board as well as boards of the Zoological Foundation and Women & Children First.
“I like being involved with things that are good for the people in the city,” says Buehler, who dashes between appointments in a sporty Mercedes SLK hardtop convertible that Darwin gave her for their 25th wedding anniversary three years ago.
She says United Cerebral Palsy helps more people than just those with cerebral palsy. And Women & Children First has one of the largest shelters in the state for individuals and families who are survivors of domestic violence.
Her daughter, now 25, enjoys taking her own children — 6-year-old Russ and 11-month-old Jackson — to the Little Rock Zoo. Buehler, of course, is there often.
“I love the fact that it’s interactive — it gets the kids involved, it gets the parents involved. It’s fun to see their faces when you go out,” Buehler says.
Her grandchildren spend several nights a week with her while Amanda works as a chef.
Darwin was Lisa’s supervisor at a Hardee’s in Kansas City, Mo., when she was 16. They got married in 1988 and moved to Little Rock in 1990 when Lisa was 24. Darwin was a district manager for Hardee’s, and she was opening one of their restaurants in west Little Rock.
When Darwin was asked to take on more responsibility for the same pay, he decided it was time to do something different. Darwin left his job 10 months after they got here.
“That’s how we got into the printing business, in a nutshell,” Lisa Buehler says.
FROM SCRATCH
While Darwin set off to learn the printing industry and open their business, Buehler worked in the restaurant business, at Applebee’s, for three years to bring in money while he got things up and running.
Much as she de-emphasizes the amount of time she spends volunteering, Buehler downplays the effort it took to learn a new industry and open a new business.
“It’s all customer-service related, and we already knew customer service,” she says. “But clearly we were stepping out of our comfort zone and getting into something we had never been in the middle of. The learning curve was pretty steep. The printing business was not then nearly what it is today. It was a lot of fun. It’s still a lot of fun.”
The day Darwin came home from a franchise training session, she informed him that she was pregnant. They adapted quickly after the baby was born.
“There were a lot of Saturdays when [Amanda] was at work with him and he would take her to daycare and bring her home if I was working weird shifts,” Lisa Buehler says. “We had a lot of help from our parents, too.”
Buehler’s mother, the late Dorothy Hauser, was a dedicated volunteer at Buehler’s elementary school when Buehler was young, assisting with the girl’s extracurricular activities. Buehler’s mother and father, the late Wiley Hauser, took their only daughter on many a road trip.
“The one I remember distinctly was with my cousin for two weeks,” she says. “We started in Kansas City and went through Nebraska and South Dakota and North Dakota and Montana and up into Canada and down through Colorado and Wyoming and back across Kansas, so it was a lot of fun.”
She and Darwin have done a fair amount of traveling with their own only child as well.
“She did six countries in 10 days with us,” Lisa Buehler says. “And she went to Alaska with us on a cruise when she was 9 or 10.”
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Wherever she roams, Buehler makes a point of visiting an area’s accredited zoo. She went to the one in Rome, and she has gone to zoos in Chicago and Seattle, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson.
“I’m interested in the conservation and seeing what they do,” she says. “I just still have a passion for animals and I just like to go see how they’re doing their zoo and their exhibits and what animals they may have that we don’t have.”
She is proud of the conservation efforts championed by leaders of the Little Rock Zoo and the foundation board she chairs.
For example, the Little Rock Zoo has agreed to make contributions over the next three years to an Association of Zoos and Aquariums program called Saving Animals From Extinction (SAFE), and the Zoological Foundation will match those donations.
The Somali wild asses on exhibit at the Little Rock Zoo are endangered animals.
“They are on a species survival plan,” Buehler explains. “We have made conservation donations to organizations that help support them in the wild to help keep them from being extinct. The Cheetah Conservation Fund is another one we support.”
Darwin is also engaged in the nonprofit scene. He serves on the Pulaski Technical College foundation board and was the co-chairman of Diamond Chef with Lisa a few years back.
“I’ve always said that there is a group of about 30 to 50 women that run the city. If you need something done, you call one of those women. Lisa is one of those women,” he says.
Her superpower, Darwin implies, is community service.
“You’ll think there’s no way she could get involved in another charity, but then someone will call and she’s off and running to do whatever needs to be done,” he says.