Doors Wide Open: Successful Program Profiles: Neighborhood Pets and their Community-Centered Well-Being for People and Pets - On Demand

Aimee St.Arnaud's focus is on increasing access to spay/neuter and veterinary care across the nation. Previously she was the Director of National Veterinary Outreach Programs for Best Friends Animal Society and Director of Programs at ASPCA Spay/Neuter Alliance where she oversaw spay/neuter training programs of 1,000 professionals a year. She is the founder of Humane Ohio, a spay/neuter clinic performing roughly 18,000 spay/neuters a year and Partner in two full-service access to care veterinary clinics in OH and NC.

Dr. Janet Hoy-Gerlach has extensive experience as a social work practitioner in the public mental health service system and is an avid advocate for the inclusion of human-animal interaction considerations within social work practice. Her current research is focused on: benefits of the human-animal bond; facilitators of mental health recovery among individuals living with mental illness; and the use of qualitative research to inform intervention research. She is on the board of the Toledo Area Humane Society (TAHS), where she developed and supervises MSW internship placements that facilitate benefits of human-animal interaction. She helped develop the TAHS Hope and Recovery Pet Program (HARP), which places shelter animals as Emotional Support Animals (ESAs); this is one of the only such programs in the United States. Dr. Hoy provides expert witness testimony for the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Department on benefits of human-animal interaction.

With work experience in three continents and over 10 years of operational leadership, Geraldine has a passion for building innovative community programs and strategic partnerships to bridge the gap between human and animal well-being, to increase access to care. She led a small non-profit through a merger & acquisition with one of the largest animal welfare organizations in the US, and over 8 years strategically helped integrate the services throughout the 140-year-old animal shelter, enabling it to pivot to the new community-centered model that is now unfolding. Brought up in India, she did her B.A. in Sociology which took her to remote villages to study the caste system and women’s empowerment. She has an M.B.A. from the Edinburgh Business School in Scotland and a background in research consultancy, advertising and branding.

Becca Britton, native to Cleveland Ohio, has been working in animal welfare since 2003. Outside of animal welfare, her work experience includes over ten years in the non-profit sector with a focus on community development, art-culture community programming, public art & program management. In 2003 Britton founded (2003) and ran Friends of the Cleveland Kennel, a non-profit organization that served as a support agency for Cleveland Animal Control. Through her non-profit, she funded supportive care and programming for animals in need. She also led the efforts to host large scale pet vaccine clinic events throughout the city of Cleveland.

In 2016, Becca founded Neighborhood Pets Outreach and Resource Center, a community based non-profit focused on supporting low income pet owners. Britton used her community outreach experience & training, certification from HSUS Pets for Life program, and experience in nonprofit management to create a dynamic & intuitive model based on relationship & trust building within the community, while providing accessible and affordable resources to low income pet owners. Ms. Britton is a graduate of the Leadership Development Program Initiative and has attended Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management. She was recently awarded HSUS Humane Leader of the Year award and has been highlighted in various Northeast Ohio media outlets showcasing her work in the community. Becca’s focus as a “big picture thinker” is to create sustainable change in the animal welfare sector by being an advocate for animals and the people who love them.