Wednesday, September 21

Noelle Almrud began working at Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch in 2011 and now serves as its Director. The Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch is one of the largest and most diverse sanctuaries in the country.  With almost 1,000 animals and over 40 different species, Noelle ensures that the animals and staff have what they need to thrive. Before that, she spent many years as the Director of Animal Care for a large sanctuary and wildlife rehabilitation center in central Texas. Noelle left a career in commercial mortgage banking to dedicate her life to the care of rescued animals and has never looked back. She holds degrees in history and wildlife and fisheries sciences from Texas A&M University. Additionally, Noelle serves as the Vice President of the Board of Directors for the Mindy’s Memory Primate Sanctuary.

Sarah Baeckler Davis is a primatologist, a non-practicing lawyer, a nonprofit professional, a fundraiser, and a bridge builder. She has worked with and for chimpanzees since 1997, when she met Washoe, the famous “sign language chimp,” in grad school. She has a graduate degree in primatology from Central Washington University and a juris doctor from Lewis and Clark Law School. She led Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest (as its Executive Director) for its first five years, taking it from its infancy to an established and respected member of the professional chimpanzee sanctuary community. She then spent a year and a half leading the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance – which she co-founded in 2010 along with 6 other sanctuary directors. She encountered an opportunity she couldn’t pass up in 2014, and now happily leads the amazing team at Project Chimps.

Kari Bagnall is Founder and Director of Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary, a non-profit organization offering a safe haven for over 300 new-world monkeys in need of permanent sanctuary care. Kari was working as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for abused and neglected children when a ‘pet’ monkey named Samantha was placed in her care in 1993. Soon after Samantha came into Kari’s life, more monkeys followed and Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary was born. Kari was introduced to a vegetarian lifestyle nearly 40 years ago when she moved into a yoga ashram in Phoenix. Today, vegetarian communal living is a part of the Jungle Friends experience for interns and volunteers from around the world. As part of the sanctuary culture, people are encouraged to adopt a vegan lifestyle, to have compassion for all of the Earth’s remarkable inhabitants, and to join in the hope that these individual acts of kindness across species will one day reach the ‘critical mass’ needed to transform the world.

Tanya Barr is the Enrichment Coordinator and Assistant Supervisor of the chimpanzee house at Fauna Foundation in Quebec, Canada. After graduating McGill University with a Bachelors Degree in Biology and Anthropology, her curiosity and passion for primates brought her to South Africa. She interned at a vervet sanctuary for several months and then returned to Montreal three years ago, where she discovered her dream job at Fauna Foundation.

Kaitlyn Bock is the Communications Officer for the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance. She holds a Bachelor’s in Environmental Studies from New College of Florida. Her passion for primate conservation started with internships at the Center for Great Apes and Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch. After working various animal caretaking jobs and traveling around the country, she moved to Indonesia to serve in a communications capacity for Orangutan Foundation International (OFI) and Sun Bear Outreach. In addition to her work with PASA, Kaitlyn works as a full-time editor and writer for an international travel publication and serves on OFI’s Volunteer Committee.

Christine L. Buckmaster is a research program manager in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. She earned a degree in animal behavior at the University of California at Davis and has experience with various primate species in zoo, research, and sanctuary settings.  For fifteen years she was responsible for the welfare of a captive-born population of squirrel monkeys used in biomedical research.  She recently obtained retirement status for this population and they are living at a NAPSA member sanctuary. She is a member of the American Society of Primatologists and mentors fellow scientists interested in retiring monkeys from research.

Leilani Case is a Behavior Specialist at Chimp Haven and has been with the organization for 3 years, where she provide enrichment for their 203 residents every day of the year, and monitors behavioral aspects of the colony. To help better manage the colony she assists in the collection of behavioral data, and she contributes to the publishing and presenting of their findings at professional conferences and journals.

Martine Colette is the Founder and Director of Wildlife Waystation, an organization that was the first to accept chimpanzees from biomedical research in 1995. Wildlife Waystation, the largest chimpanzee sanctuary in the Western United States, has rescued, rehabilitated and given permanent sanctuary to over 76,000 wild and exotic animals since its founding in 1976. Martine grew up surrounded by wild and exotic animals as she traveled the world with her father, who was a Belgian diplomatic and an avid naturalist. Ms. Colette often went on safaris to observe wild animals and spent considerable time in “catching camps” that furnished animals to zoos around the world. It was during these formative years of witnessing the plight of the animals, and their mistreatment in hunting and trapping camps that she decided that helping them would be her life’s calling. In the 1960’s, after building a successful Hollywood costume design business, Ms. Colette began caring for exotic animals in a three bedroom house – animals given to her by people who suddenly realized an ocelot was not intended to be a house cat. When the number of animals reached 50, she purchased 160 acres in the Angeles National Forest, officially incorporating the Wildlife Waystation in 1976.

Katie Conlee-Griffin is Vice President for Animal Research Issues with The Humane Society of the United States and has been with the organization for 17 years. She has a bachelor’s degree in zoology and a master’s degree with a specialization in public policy. Katie previously worked at a primate breeding and research facility and at the Center for Great Apes. Her advocacy work focuses on the long-term goal of replacing the use of animals in harmful research and testing and the ongoing development of non-animal alternatives. Much of her time is spent on ending chimpanzee research and ensuring lifetime sanctuary care for the animals, including her role taking care of 69 chimpanzees in Liberia and serving on the Board of Directors of Project Chimps.

Lesley Day is Founder and President of Chimps, Inc. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, Lesley grew up taking care of various different farm animals and native wildlife. After earning a degree in art from the University of Oregon, Lesley raised her family.  She started Chimps Inc. in 1995 with the arrival of chimpanzee Topo, and is proud to be able to offer permanent homes to chimpanzees and big cats.

Karen Emmerman has a PhD in Philosophy and is a part-time lecturer at the University of Washington.  Karen’s area of study is ecofeminist animal ethics. Her main focus is on human/animal conflicts of interest and she has written on the ethics of captivity in sanctuaries in her paper “Sanctuary, Not Remedy: The Problem of Captivity and the Need for Moral Repair.”  She’s had a relationship with Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest since 2011 and is delighted to call the Cle Elum Seven her friends.  In addition to writing and teaching college students, Karen is the Philosopher-in-Residence at a public Seattle elementary school.

Dr. Gregory Engel enjoys a career that has straddled academic medicine, infectious disease epidemiology and humanitarian work for medically underserved populations. As an epidemiologist he continues to collaborate on long term research on diseases transmitted across the human/primate interface, in addition to recent work with  Medecins Sans Frontieres on Ebola virus in Liberia.  He is currently an attending physician at Samuel Simmonds Memorial hospital on Alaska ‘s North Slope.

Allison Farley is a recent graduate of Central Washington University, where she received her masters in primate behavior. She is a volunteer caregiver at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest and is pursuing a career in captive primate care.

Jen Feuerstein is an independent consultant serving the sanctuary and animal protection community. She is a graduate of Kalamazoo College and a biologist with 25 years experience in the behavior, care, and socialization of captive non-human primates, particularly chimpanzees. Jen has also worked with prosimians, monkeys, and great apes in zoo, laboratory, and sanctuary settings, and was fortunate to be mentored for many years by the late Dr. Carole Noon, founder of Save the Chimps, Inc. A co-founder and former Chair of NAPSA, Jen is honored to serve on NAPSA’s Council of Professionals.

Erika Fleury is Program Manager of the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance. She graduated with a Bachelors degree in English from the University of Delaware, where she focused her studies on ethics while also discovering primatology. After an internship with the Primate Rescue Center, volunteering with New England Primate Conservancy, and undergrad and graduate primatology coursework, she published the book “Monkey Business: A History of Nonhuman Primate Rights.” Prior to joining NAPSA, Erika worked in business administration and accounting, as well as serving as an independent consultant to primate sanctuaries – a position she still very much enjoys.

Amy Fultz is Director of Behavior, Research and Education at Chimp Haven. She co-founded Chimp Haven in 1995 and has been at the sanctuary itself since 2004, prior to the first chimpanzees arriving. Amy has worked with various primates since 1986 and with chimpanzees since 1992 and has experience in zoos, sanctuaries, and research facilities. Her area of expertise is introductions, having conducted over 200 introductions at Chimp Haven alone.  Amy has also spent time doing conservation related field work in various countries through Miami University’s Global Field Program and is passionate about chimpanzee conservation issues.  She has published and presented a number of scientific papers based on her research and is currently an instructor for Project Dragonfly and Earth Expeditions through Miami University.

Lauren Glickman, a former board member at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northweest, founded FORAY Consulting in 2007 out of a commitment to support those dedicated to inspired missions.  Her specialty is addressing issues of trauma exposure response and self-management in the face of high-urgency and high-anxiety situations.   With a B.A. in geography from Clark University and an M.A. in Applied Behavioral Sciences from The Leadership Institute of Seattle, Lauren has served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua, the Volunteer Program Manager at the Progressive Animal Welfare Society and was the Executive Director of Feral Cat Spay/Neuter Project. With over 20 years of experience as a trainer she is committed to helping individuals, teams, and organizations develop resiliency so they can do the work they love and stay healthy.

Diana Goodrich is Co-Director of Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, where she oversees fundraising, donor relations, and marketing, in addition to directly caring for the chimpanzees. Diana has MS degrees in psychology and animals and public policy. After working with chimpanzees who had been taught American Sign Language, she spent three years as a caregiver and executive assistant at the Fauna Foundation in Canada. She completely failed to learn French in her time in Quebec, but she did fall deeper in love with chimpanzees (as well as farm animals) before moving onto her involvement at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest.

Dr. Bethany Hansen is a research fellow of Lincoln Park Zoo, conducting non-invasive, behavioral research on the chimpanzees at Chimp Haven has part of a new collaborative partnership between the sanctuary and the zoo’s Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes. She became interested in primates while obtaining a B.S. in zoology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Following graduation, she served as a chimpanzee caretaker and enrichment coordinator at an animal sanctuary and was a research assistant with the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project in Kibale National Park, Uganda. The goal of Dr. Hansen’s current research at Chimp Haven is to better understand the behavior of its chimpanzees and how to best care for them.

Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel is Director, Evolutionary Emergence of Infectious Diseases Laboratory in the Department of Anthropology’s Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington. Dr. Jones-Engel likes to think of herself as a macaque—the consummate generalist!  For 30+ years, together with her spouse Dr. Gregory Engel,  she has worked at the human-primate interface in Asia, characterizing the way that humans and macaques interact and developing strategies to detect the infectious agents that are transmitted at this porous boundary.  She began her career with Dr. Birute Galdikas and has managed primate sanctuaries in Asia and Africa. As a Professor at the University of Washington she teaches courses on primate behavior and ecology and continues to develop novel diagnostics that can be used to promote primate and human health.

Dr. Shirley McGreal is the Founder and Executive Director of the International Primate Protection League, which was founded in 1973. She received her doctorate in India, and after coming across dozens of infant stump-tailed macaques held in a Thai airport cargo space, she began her decades-long work by forming the first organization focused on helping primates other than apes. The IPPL gibbon sanctuary was founded in 1977. Committed to ending animal smuggling and aiding conservation, she has been active in the Conferences of the Parties, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and the International Primatological Society. Dr. McGreal is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Order of the British Empire in 2008 for “services to the protection of primates.”

J.B. Mulcahy is Co-Director of Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, responsible for overseeing the care of the chimpanzees at CSNW as well as the organization’s finances and human resources. J.B. has worked in the fields of construction and farm animal welfare, and began working with chimpanzees in 1998. His initial fascination with ape language studies led him to the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute at Central Washington University where he earned his MS in Primate Behavior. Upon learning about the plight of chimpanzees in laboratories, J.B.’s focus quickly turned from research to advocacy, and he began working for the Fauna Foundation. In addition to his work at CSNW, J.B.also serves as an adjunct instructor of anthropology at Central Washington University.

Marla ODonnell is Executive Director of Chimps Inc. After working in business and marketing, information technology and computer services Marla began volunteering at Chimps Inc in 2004. Her involvement with Chimps Inc. has been in the roles of Caregiver, Special Events Volunteer Coordinator, Fundraising Committee member, and Board Member.

Jeanne Marie Pittman, CVT is the Director of Accreditation for North, Central and South America for the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries. A wildlife veterinary nurse with over 25 years’ experience in animal husbandry, welfare and veterinary medicine, she has worked with a wide variety of animals including domestic animals, farm animals, and a wide array of exotic wildlife species including great apes, elephants, birds and large cats. She spent her early career as a native wildlife rehabilitator and an exotic animal veterinary nurse and held positions at Zoo New England and the International Crane Foundation. Jeanne Marie also spent 12 years working in Africa, where she managed the Wattled Crane Recovery Programme in South Africa, the West African Primate Conservation Action in Ghana and an elephant nursery in Zambia. Jeanne Marie has travelled extensively throughout Africa providing staff training and mentoring to help improve the welfare of wild and exotic animals housed in animal care facilities in underdeveloped countries.

Patti Ragan is Founder and Director of the Center for Great Apes. She first worked with animals when she volunteered as a docent for many years at Miami MetroZoo and served as a member of the Board of Directors of the zoo for six years. In 1984, she took a four-month sabbatical to volunteer in Indonesian Borneo at an orangutan rehabilitation center run by primatologist Dr. Biruté Galdikas. In 1990 she was approached to care for a hybrid Bornean/Sumatran orangutan infant that was ill in Miami, and she was surprised to there were no U.S. sanctuaries at that time caring for orangutans. In 1993 Patti founded the Center for Great Apes, which now cares for 45 great apes.

Cathy Willis Spraetz is President and Chief Executive Officer of Chimp Haven, the National Chimpanzee Sanctuary. Previously, Cathy served several nonprofit organizations over two decades as their CEO, focusing primarily in the area of disabilities, as well as domestic violence. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies with a concentration in Nonprofit Administration. Her areas of expertise include board development, strategic planning, fundraising, program innovation and staff talent development.

Megan Stark is the Sanctuary Manager of Jungle Friends Primate Sanctuary, a position she has held since 2014. She graduated from Lawrence University with a Bachelor’s degree in Government and French, looking particularly at the role primate sanctuaries play in rural development. She is currently continuing online studies in Nonprofit Leadership with University of Notre Dame. Megan has experience volunteering at the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Sierra Leone and Riverside Wildlife Center in South Africa.

April Truitt is Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Primate Rescue Center. She was driven to establish the sanctuary after experiencing life with an infant macaque that was gifted to her. Previously, April operated a mobile security business and served as the Director of the Safe & Vault Technicians Association, as well as editor of their monthly trade publication. Additionally, April is a past Chair of the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance.

Dr. Gregg Tully is the Executive Director of the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance, the largest association of sanctuaries in Africa, which includes 22 organizations in 13 countries. Dr. Tully earned a Ph.D. in animal behavior from the University of California Santa Barbara in 2006. He then turned his attention to the nonprofit sector, working as the Development Director of the Nepal Youth Foundation and in the Marketing and Communications department at the Marin Humane Society in California. Dr. Tully moved to Nepal in 2011 and worked as the Development and Communications Manager of the Kathmandu Animal Treatment Centre, in addition to acting as the Executive Director for six months. After receiving the Marin Humane Society’s Humanitarian of the Year award, he moved to Thailand as CEO of Soi Dog Foundation, the largest stray animal protection organization in Southeast Asia.