Shelby came to the Kentucky Humane Society in 2014, after four years working a crisis line for a local domestic violence shelter. Having worked as a Crisis Intervention Counselor right out of college, Shelby came to the Kentucky Humane Society with experience in assisting clients in emotional and urgent situations as well as how to track and report data on the success of a program. After a year as a KHS admissions clerk, and with a new master’s degree in nonprofit management, she was promoted to Pet Help Line Coordinator. Shelby implemented data tracking, program changes and initiatives that increased the scope and achievements of the Pet Help Line. As a result of the growing program and Shelby’s ingenuities in her department, she was promoted to Pet Resource Manager. She now supervises three full time employees to handle the ever-increasing call volume and meeting various needs of their clients. 

Kat Albrecht is a former police detective turned “pet detective” and Director of the Missing Animal Response Network. Since 1996, Kat has been training search dogs to find lost pets and is widely known as the leading authority on lost pet recovery training. Kat is the author of two books: Pet Tracker and Dog Detectives: Train Your Dog to Find Lost Pets. 

Anna Murrin is the project manager for Metro Denver CAT, where she has worked on designing and implementing effective solutions to cat overpopulation and welfare concerns since 2016. Her experience in animal welfare has focused on a variety of outreach-based programs, including spay/neuter outreach with the ASPCA in New York City, and she is passionate about connecting directly with communities to help people improve the lives of the animals in their care.

Karalyn Aronow is the East Bay SPCA’s Vice President of Operations. Karalyn attained Master of Science degrees in biological science and animal behavior. Since joining the East Bay SPCA, Karalyn has been working with an incredible team to create and sustain programs that serve the East Bay community through improving animal welfare, and promoting and preserving the human-animal bond.

Raquel Bernaldo holds a Masters in Social Welfare and has dedicated her social work career to providing direct service in underserved communities. Since 2016, Raquel has served as the Manager of Humane Advocacy at the East Bay SPCA. Here, she oversees programs that promote the human-animal bond by providing people with the resources they need to care for their companion animals as well as reduce the number of animals surrendered to local shelters.  

Linda Anderson serves as the Senior Manager of Animal Care and Experience at the Arizona Humane Society, where she oversees a team of 40 employees and more than 300 Animal Experience volunteers. Linda has 16 years of experience in animal welfare in varying roles. She has made it her mission to educate against prejudices and outdated philosophies in an effort to improve the lives of shelter pets through education, culture change, and improving the human-animal bond.

Mik Moeller serves as anEnrichment Specialist at the Arizona Humane Society. Mik’s expertise is increating cat and dog enrichment programs for staff and volunteers in an effortto reduce stress, build confidence and make positive associations for pets inshelters while waiting for their forever homes. Mik graduated from the renownedSan Francisco SPCA Dog Training Academy in 1999 as a professional certified dogtrainer. Prior to coming to AHS in 2016, Mik worked at the San Francisco SPCAas the canine behavior specialist for 18 years. Mik has produced instructionalvideos, lectured both nationally and internationally on leash reactivity,canine body language, dog play, off leash dog aggression, dog park etiquetteand how to work with shy/fearful dogs and is also the author of Reactive Rover- An Owner’s Guide to On Leash Aggression. For more information about AHS orMik, please contact mmoeller@azhumane.org. 

As Foster Care Specialist for Maddie’s Fund, Kelly's focus is on helping shelters and rescue organizations increase lifesaving through the implementation of robust foster care programs. Her role includes creating and providing training for organizations and their foster coordinators, writing, assisting with research on foster care and consulting with shelters. Her work with foster care and marketing has been featured in many national publications, websites and networks, including Animal Sheltering magazine, the Huffington Post, Best Friends magazine, BarkPost, Catster Magazine, iheartdogs.com, HuffPost Live and Fox News.

Melanie Sartore-Baldwin, PhD, is an Associate Professor within the Department of Kinesiology at East Carolina University where she teaches in both the undergraduate Sport Studies program and the graduate-level Sport Management program.  To date, Dr. Sartore-Baldwin has researched numerous social justice and diversity-related issues within sport and physical activity including weight discrimination, sexual prejudice, gender ideology, and the use of non-human animals.  Her current focus is on how the relationships humans form with non-human animals within the contexts of sport and physical activity can be leveraged to promote change.  Recently, Dr. Sartore-Baldwin entered into her eighth year as coordinator for the Fitness Walking/Dog Walking program and is the contact person for the recently developed human-animal interaction minor at East Carolina University.  

With over 20 years of experience in education, animal welfare and volunteer management, Jennifer is currently responsible for a variety of programs that engage more than 6,000 volunteers annually. During her time at the Oregon Humane Society, she formalized the Second Chance program that now transfers nearly 8,000 at-risk pets annually from partner shelters to OHS for a second chance at a loving home. 

Working in collaboration with the OHS Investigations team, she helped develop a curriculum to train and certify staff and volunteers in Emergency Animal Sheltering, EAS. The group now includes 125 members who are among the first to be called during disasters and to assist with large scale rescues in Oregon led by the OHS Investigations team. OHS’s EAS team is frequently recruited by national and international partners to help during disasters and ongoing rescues. Under Jennifer’s leadership, 56 teams have deployed in the past four years to assist during Hurricanes Maria, Florence, Harvey and Irma, plus the recent Camp Fire in California.

Lila has been with the Oregon Humane Society for over 13 years and in her current position as an Investigations Coordinator since March 2012. Since beginning her position in the Humane Investigations Department, Lila has been the liaison between the Oregon Humane Society Technical Animal Rescue Team (OHSTAR) and Humane Investigations. Lila became a Certified Property and Evidence Specialist in 2015 and is currently one of two evidence technicians for the department.

Throughout her time with the OHS Humane Investigations Department, Lila has helped create and implement dozens of training opportunities for not only OHS staff and volunteers, but also for other law enforcement agencies, veterinary practices, law students, legal professionals, and animal welfare organizations. Topics that Lila has been involved in the training and certification for are Criminal Justice Information Systems (CJIS), Law Enforcement Database System (LEDS), confidentiality, evidence handling and processing, chain of custody, large scale animal seizure, search warrants, trial testimony, veterinary forensics, crime reporting and others.  Lila has been an OHS certified Emergency Animal Shelter (EAS) staff member since February 2013 and involved evidence collection and chain of custody documentation for several OHS criminal case EAS operations. 

Kim Korona has been working in the humane education field for 13 years. With H.E.A.R.T. she has taught K – 12 students and designed in-school, after school, and summer camp programs. Additionally, she has developed educational resources for educators, created and facilitated professional development workshops and courses, and provides humane education webinars. For several years she conducted humane education and humane living workshops for the Institute for Humane Education. Kim has presented at various professional development conferences such as the WNET conference, the Santana Learning Conference, and the Association for Professional Humane Educators (APHE) Conference. She previously worked for the Michigan Humane Society (MHS) where she reached about 9,000 students in three years. She expanded the MHS humane education offerings by developing an anti-violence program and summer camps, among other lessons and activities focused on reducing animal homelessness and increasing responsible animal guardianship. She created and provided their first ever adult humane education presentations and trained volunteers to offer the presentations as well. She received her M.Ed from Cambridge College in affiliation with the Institute for Humane Education, along with a Certificate of Humane Education from the Institute for Humane Education and earned her B.A. from Goddard College via Green Mountain College in Vermont. 

Fraily Rodriguez started in animal welfare as a Humane Educator in 2006. Through the years, he has fallen in love with the work at Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando, and has led the agency in an amazing transformation. He played a huge role in starting summer camps, increasing volunteer hours, starting a customer care center and increasing the save rate of an 80 year old agency. He currently oversees the operations including 2 shelters, 3 clinics, outreach, volunteer management, strategic planning, Customer Care Center, IT and much more. He has guided the agency into a 21st-century leader in animal welfare. He is a seasoned professional with over 20 years of experience in nonprofit management and possesses a B.S. Degree in Counseling. His professional affiliations include Chairman, Westside Tech Veterinary Advisory Board, Graduate of Leadership Orlando Class 80, and a volunteer in several nonprofits throughout the area