@Karen Green
Executive Director
Cat Adoption Team
Portland, Oregon
Tell us about you and your history in animal welfare.
I live in Portland, Oregon, where I’m the executive director of the Cat Adoption Team. CAT is the largest cat-focused shelter in the Pacific Northwest; we’ll find homes for about 3,300 cats and kittens this year. CAT is a founding partner of the Animal Shelter Alliance of Portland (ASAP). Working together since 2006, our coalition has increased the live release rate for cats in the Portland metro area from 49% to 94%. Today, most of our cats come to our shelter from over 50 shelter and rescues across Oregon and beyond.
I started my animal welfare career in 1996 as a veterinary assistant in the cat areas at Best Friends Animal Society. During ten years at Best Friends, I managed the organization’s help desk and helped run the national outreach program, then called “No More Homeless Pets.” I also fostered dozens of cats and dogs, focusing on neonates and undersocialized adolescents (though also including one piglet). After moving to Portland in 2006, I worked for the Alliance for Contraception in Cats & Dogs, an organization advancing non-surgical fertility control options worldwide (think: “spay shot”). After serving on the board of directors for Cat Adoption Team, I became the executive director in 2012.
What are you most proud of in your career?
CAT had gone through a lot of changes and was struggling when I became the executive director. I worked hard alongside an incredible team of staff, board members, and volunteers to “right the ship.”
Since then, we have increased adoptions, improved cat care and people care, strengthened our culture, built programs and partnerships, and ended every year in the black.
Name something related to animal welfare that you are super passionate about and want others to learn?
Some special areas of interest for me in animal welfare are organizational culture, communication, and conflict resolution. I’m passionate about increasing our field’s capacity for creating healthy and happy organizations and for getting along. After moving to Portland I completed a degree in Organizational Communication and a Certificate in Conflict Resolution and Mediation from Marylhurst University.
Since then I’ve taught many workshops on conflict resolution at animal welfare conferences and meetings. Building and supporting a positive culture and happy workforce at CAT has been a priority for me. It’s people who are saving the animals, and we need to take care of our people! (Also, I just like people as much as I like animals, so I believe in being good to them.)
Tell us something about yourself people might be surprised to learn.
I don’t have a cat! Because of allergies in my family, I’m not able to have a cat at home (which is a huge bummer). Fortunately, I always have an office cat. There’s a sweet old lady cat named Star supervising my typing right now, actually. (I do have a silly lazy old dog named Tank.)
Who in animal welfare would you most like to collaborate with?
I am honored to call Kate Hurley a colleague and friend. She is smart, strategic, willing to ask tough questions, humble, funny, and warm. She’s saved roughly a bajillion animals, influenced countless animal advocates, and as far as I can tell has a bottomless reserve of energy. She has absolutely made me and my shelter better. I don’t know how she does it all, but I’m glad she does!
CatAdoptionTeam.org
Thanks for all you do for the cats of the Pacific Northwest and for being such a resourceful member of our community. Be sure to follow @Karen Green and ask questions or comments on this thread!
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