Before joining the excellent team at Groveway Veterinary Hospital, I held a long career working in nonprofit animal rescue as the Director of Volunteer Services at Oakland’s Hopalong Animal Rescue, where I built a program of dedicated volunteers who provided animal care for cats and dogs in the shelter, animal socialization, pet chauffeuring, and held adoption events. During the pandemic, I decided to expand my work in nonprofit rescue as a program manager at the SF SPCA, where I managed the teams that oversaw the day-to-day operations of the Community Cat TNR program, Shelter Cat program, and Shelter Dog program, ensuring excellence in fear-free animal practices.
While growing up in Southern and Central California, I was raised by parents who always took home the stray dogs they found behind a parking lot dumpster and fed the feral cats who took up residence under the front porch. I learned pretty early what it meant to form deep bonds with four-legged loved ones. As a teen, I also found a passion for bottle-feeding neonatal kittens.
As an undergraduate at UC Davis, I started working with animals as a Tank Technician at the UC Davis Center for Aquatic Biology, where I fed fish and cleaned aquariums- including the tank of three 800-pound sturgeons. I also held a position in the Behavioral Psychology Department looking after rats, snakes, and owls. After graduating from UC Davis I moved to the Bay Area to attend Graduate school at St. Mary’s College. I also began volunteering with wildlife at the Lindsay Wildlife Experience, and with parrots through Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue. I
completed my MFA in Creative Writing in 2011, and my fiction pieces have been published in over a dozen magazines and literary journals, across three different countries.
In my free time, I write short stories and love to relax while reading a good work of literary fiction. I live in Oakland with my zoo of four cats: Beli, ShiShi, Bobby, and Biff; my West Texas rat snake Goliath; and a ctenopoma named Frank.
