Hello HASS Community, 

My name is Elkie Wills and I’m proud to share that I’m leading the HASS project as the new Maddie’s® Director of Human Animal Support Services. Formal titles aside–I really want to take this opportunity to introduce myself and share why I’m thrilled to be not only a part of this community, but to help mobilize the HASS movement this community has built! 

While I call the snowy state of Michigan home now, I had the honor of most recently hailing from sunny San Diego as the Senior Director of Community Engagement for San Diego Humane Society, focused on developing new collaboration efforts with the local community and brand partnerships to increase support for people and pets. In my 20 years of animal welfare, I experienced all the ins and outs of programming development, volunteer engagement, shelter operations–you name it. Where my passions grew the most was seeing the tangible impact that leaning into community engagement really does for people AND pets. To me, community engagement really means dialing in to the pulse of the people within that community by identifying their needs from both a day-to-day and systemic perspective to provide solutions that create impact. I’ve seen first hand how people problems are pet problems, as the HASS team often says, and I want to take my passion for animal welfare and people to create widespread impact. 

To do so, my path led me to the Human Animal Support Services project. I’ve worked with HASS since 2020 and know many of you from former working groups or my time leading the community engagement job-alike. HASS has grown substantially since the early days and I’m honored to work with this team to continue the mission of helping pets by helping people. We have a lot of exciting opportunities in 2025 to do just that with continuation of major HASS-led projects like Competitive Pet Placement, Intake Triage, implementing the HASS Playbook and even some new projects! I look forward to working with you on the next phase of HASS!

Here’s to a great year ahead, 

Elkie 

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Source: Human Animal Support Services