Ensuring Transparency While Keeping Marketing and Adoption Counseling Separate

As Senior Community Solutions Initiative Specialist, Kelly's focus is on helping shelters and rescue organizations increase lifesaving through the implementation of robust foster care programs. Her role includes consulting with shelters, creating and providing training for organizations and their foster coordinators, writing and assisting with research on foster care.

Kelly previously coordinated a foster program that brought orphaned children to the United States in order to find them permanent adoptive homes, worked as the Foster Expansion Coordinator for a national study of foster care, and assisted with the behavioral foster study that was conducted at the Fairfax County Animal Shelter. Her work with foster care and social media has been featured in many national publications, websites and networks, including Animal Sheltering magazine, the Huffington Post, Best Friends magazine, BarkPost, iheartdogs.com, HuffPost Live and Fox News.

Clare Callison is the Maddie’s® Director of National Pet Supply and Demand for American Pets Alive! and serves on the Board of Directors for CARE (Companions and Animals for Reform and Equity). She provides guidance and support to help organizations build robust lifesaving programs and improve operations to better serve people and pets. Clare specializes in helping organizations grow their transport relationships and increase their lifesaving through rescue partnerships and open adoption practices. Before joining American Pets Alive!, she was the Director of Operations for San Antonio Pets Alive for 5 years. Because of her heavy involvement, San Antonio has gone from a 28 percent live release rate to a 90 percent live release rate in over three years. Clare enjoys helping others seek lifesaving solutions to common challenges that exist in working in a high-volume, fast-paced animal welfare organization.