Vera started at Taronga Zoo in 1996 and worked as a senior keeper on primate, ungulate and elephant sections. Prior to immigration to Australia in 1987, she worked for many years in Prague Zoo, Czech Republic. In 2006, she was seconded to the Behavioural Studies Unit to study and report on newly arrived Asian elephants.

In September 2008, she joined the Behavioural Studies Unit on a permanent basis and coordinates all volunteer activity. She submitted her PhD thesis “Sex allocation in captive mammals” in early 2010. Besides her continuing work on Asian elephants, she investigates the role of the Zoo environment on sex ratio variation in various species.