Building more equitable, community-centered animal services

That Animal Services Transformation was founded to help animal services organizations evolve into equitable systems, more responsive to community wants and needs. Through engaging the entire community of staff, volunteers, and residents, I partner with agencies to strengthen internal systems, audit practices, and implement progressive, data-supported approaches to create more humane communities where everyone is working together toward that goal.

Values

Equity

All of us interact with animals, therefore all of us should have a say in our community animal services. This means ensuring that the sharing of information goes both ways and is accessible to all both within teams and in our community.

Continuous Learning

True expertise and best performance are gained in an environment of constant curiosity and rigor about gathering information. While we work in a field of high emotion – which is beautiful – we must remain open to changing our minds with new information.

Intersectionality

The wellbeing of non-human animals is deeply tied to other issues. We cannot ignore the needs of people or the environment as we advocate for the better care of pets, wildlife, and community animals.

Transparency

If we truly want to invite a diverse group of people to share ideas, and make the work both lighter and more impactful, we must create spaces where voices are heard. We must be impeccable with our word. Assuming positive intent is powerful and enabled by an example of radical transparency.

In practice: holding community and staff meetings at different times, at locations people are already comfortable, and in multiple languages. Allowing multiple ways to get feedback from staff and the community.

In practice: while it used to be considered good practice to “flood” animals with attention to teach them to enjoy people, many studies have shown this can backfire, and we now have more consent-based ways of interacting with fearful pets.

In practice: as AI uses a large amount of water and undercuts employee contributions in many fields (such as the arts), we do not use artificial intelligence.

In practice: That Animal Services Transformation provides timelines for expected next steps and guidance for partners to questions courses of action.

Founder & Principal

Emily Wood, MSc, CAWA has worked across non-profit and governmental organizations (including non-profit organizations with governmental animal sheltering and control contracts) and is a leader in progressive, community-centered animal services. She is known for shepherding organizations through challenging times, including leading Broward County Animal Services after years of public scrutiny resulting in a comprehensive audit, and leading Oakland Animal Services through a time of deep budget cutbacks. She understands the realities that staff, leaders, and communities face and enjoys engaging all in building sustainable solutions. She lives with house rabbits and a rotating roster of foster animals, often neonatal or fospice.

More than animals

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