Board of Directors
Anne Lindsay, President
Anne Lindsay is the Founder of MAC, which was established in 2000. In 2010 she earned her Masters degree in Counseling Psychology from Lesley University. Anne has worked in animal welfare since 1988. She ran a dog rescue organization for many years and spent 12 years as Director of Public Relations and Special Projects for the Northeast Animal Shelter in Salem, MA. She is also a past President and was a longtime Board Member for the New England Federation of Humane Societies and is currently a Board Member for the State of Massachusetts Animal Response Team (SMART). With her animal welfare experience and counseling skills, Anne offers mediation, team building, and other services tailored to the needs of animal welfare organizations. She is particularly interested in helping organizations and individuals to address the very real issue of “compassion fatigue.” Over the years, Anne has spoken at national conferences on a variety of animal welfare issues and has consulted with states, smaller communities, and individual shelters to help them form animal welfare coalitions and work on board development, compassion fatigue, and related issues. She and her veterinarian husband live with 2 dogs, 3 cats and 4 hens.
Alice O’Connor, Vice President
Alice has served on the MAC board since 2012. She currently serves on the AniMatch Operations Committee helping to shape the policy and protocols of the Program and also serves on various other MAC Programs, Task Forces and Committees. Alice is particularly interested in helping to establish and foster collaborative relationships and programs that provide a safety net for marginalized animals. Alice’s professional career involved investigating insurance claims, managing insurance investigators and customer service team members, as well as consulting for outside groups on best practices for insurance case handling and workflow. Alice also serves on the Virginia Federation of Humane Societies Board of Directors and is Program Manager for their animal transfer initiative, ‘High Five VA’.
Adrienne Linnell, Treasurer
Adrienne Linnell is a life-long cat lover who has been actively involved in Massachusetts animal welfare since 2004. In addition to being MAC’s Treasurer, she serves as Chair of the Human Resources committee of the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society and is a Program Administrator at Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester. Adrienne served for 7+ years on MRFRS Board in various roles including President, Treasurer and acting Executive Director. Adrienne holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University and received her MBA from the University of Michigan. She has extensive corporate business experience, having held senior leadership positions in finance, operations, program management and consulting for a Fortune 100 company. Adrienne & her husband Tom share their Worcester area home with their spoiled senior rescue cat Buttons. They cherish their memories of Panda Bear and Sundae, two special tuxedo kitties who are frolicking over the rainbow bridge.
John Perreault, Clerk
John has spent most of his working life in animal welfare and in one place! He has been the Executive Director at Berkshire Humane Society in Pittsfield, MA for 18 years was shelter manager for 6 years prior to that. BHS began operations in 1993 at the site of a former MSPCA shelter in Pittsfield. Prior to the formation of BHS John worked for the MSPCA from 1984 to 1993, when MSPCA ceased its Berkshire County operation and turned the building over to BHS. Work began on a new facility in 2001, and the following year BHS moved from its original location to a 26,000 square foot facility. John has also been responsible for many educational and outreach programs that continue to make a difference in the lives of animals and their people in the Berkshires!
John and his wife Laurie currently reside in Pittsfield and have opened their home to many foster children and animals. John and Laurie currently live with their 4 daughters and many BHS alum.
Dr. Edward Schettino, DVM, PhD
Dr. Edward Schettino oversees the Animal Rescue League of Boston’s (ARL) organizational operations and leads the implementation and execution of its strategic plan as ARL strives to be an unwavering champion for animals in need, committed to keeping them safe and healthy in habitats and homes. Through its innovative programs and strategic partnerships, ARL has become the leader in providing affordable veterinary care in underserved communities and treating over 20,000 sick, injured, behaviorally challenged, and abused animals each year. Dr. Schettino has served at ARL since 2013, most recently holding the position of Vice President of Animal Welfare and Veterinary Services.
Prior to joining ARL, Dr. Schettino worked for 12 years in general veterinary practice as well as in shelter medicine, providing both medical and surgical care for family pets and those animals seeking their forever homes. He serves on the Massachusetts Animal Coalition Board and the Tufts at Tech Advisory Board at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, and is a member of the Massachusetts Veterinary Medical Association Government Relations and Advocacy Committee, the Shelter Medicine Steering Committee at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, and the Veterinary Technology Advisory Committee at North Shore Community College.
Dr. Schettino received his Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, and holds a Master of Business Administration from Clark University. Additionally, he earned a Doctorate of Philosophy in Molecular Oncology and Immunology and a Master of Science in the Basic Medical Sciences from New York University. He is currently an Adjunct Instructor in the Department of Clinical Sciences at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University.
He has a strong passion for animal welfare, finding resources to keeps pets and people together, exploring the link interconnecting human and animal health, and working collaboratively both locally and nationally.
Alexis Trzcinski
Alexis Trzcinski is a 2002 graduate of University of Massachusetts- Boston. She has worked in animal welfare for over 20 years and currently works for the City of Boston in the role of Director of Boston Animal Care and Control. Alexis is responsible for overseeing Boston’s Animal Control officers and the City’s animal care facility.
Alexis is committed to connecting with the community and implementing public facing programming to encourage responsible pet ownership. A Boston resident for most of her life, Alexis lives in the City with her husband, twin sons, two cats- Mack and Bowser- and her dog, Otter.
Advisory Council
Mark Bappe
Mark Bappe is Sr. Vice President and Creative Director at CTP, a communications company based in Boston’s North End, and has been a MAC member since 2001. He serves in an advisory role for MAC’s marketing and communications. His design can be seen on Animal Friendly license plates, billboards, the website and shelters, pet stores and vet offices across Massachusetts. Prior to joining MAC, he helped establish AnimalKind in North Carolina. AnimalKind’s mission is to solve overpopulation through prevention by subsidizing surgeries to low income families. Mark spends his spare time fostering dogs and cats and volunteering at Cape Ann Animal Aid in Gloucester. Mark lives on the North Shore with his dogs Elsa and Guin, his cats Prim and Tess and his wife and kids Jen, Owen and Kate.
Kara Holmquist
Kara Holmquist is the director of advocacy for the MSPCA, and has a law degree from Suffolk University Law School. Kara has been a member of the Massachusetts Animal Coalition (MAC) since 2001. Her work with MAC focused on the Advocacy Committee and the “I’m Animal Friendly” license plate program. Kara is on the steering committee of the Mass Voters for Animals, which seeks to elect humane-minded legislators to office. Kara is a part of the Animal Law Practice Group of the Massachusetts Bar Association. Kara lives with her dog (Finley), cats (Benson and Speckles), husband (Kiko) and daughter (Story).
Stacy LeBaron
Stacy LeBaron has been involved in animal welfare for over 20 years. She currently hosts a weekly podcast called the Community Cats Podcast (www.communitycatspodcast.com) where she interviews nationally and internationally renowned experts helping with the problem of cat overpopulation and cat welfare. In addition to the podcast, Stacy is committed to the model of virtual education by holding three weekend conferences, the Online Cat Conference, The United Spay Alliance Conference and the Online Kitten Conference. She hosts day-long sessions covering specific topics around Feline Leukemia, Behavior and Fundraising. At the end of 2020, she also partnered with Neighborhood Cats to hold monthly virtually trapper training and certification workshops to better introduce individuals to best practices for trapping community cats.
Previous to starting the podcast, Stacy served for 16 years as president of the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society (MRFRS). Under her leadership, the MRFRS assisted over 105,000 cats and kittens through a variety of innovative programs. Among the MRFRS’s programs are two mobile spay/neuter clinics, known as the Catmobiles, and an adoption center in Salisbury, MA. Stacy ran the MRFRS Mentoring Program, which began in 2011 and assisted 11,000 cats through its work with 77 different animal welfare groups in 14 states.
An expert in her field, Stacy is a current member of the Shelter Medicine Committee at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, an adviser to the Massachusetts Animal Coalition (MAC), President of the Board for PAWSitive Pantry in Vermont, Board member at the Vermont Humane Federation, Treasurer for the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society, program leader for the Pet Food Task Force in MA, and program organizer for HubCats Chelsea. She is a past board member of MAC and the New England Federation of Humane Societies. She serves as the current administrative trustee for the LeBaron Foundation.
Stacy graduated from Vassar College. She now lives in Vermont with her husband and son.
Carter Luke
Carter Luke was the President and CEO of the MSPCA-Angell for 15 years until his retirement in 2020. He was formerly Executive Vice President and Vice President for Animal Protection at MSPCA. Before joining the MSPCA in 1985, he was executive director of the Dane County Humane Society in Madison, WI. He was a founding board member of the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy, the Massachusetts Animal Coalition, and was a member of the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium. For more than 37 years, he has been extensively involved in research areas such as pet-population dynamics, free-roaming cats, cruelty and violence toward animals, dangerous dogs, and animal hoarding. He has published widely on issues relating to the interaction between humans and animals, including exploring the roots of violence directed toward animals. He is on the Board of the American Fondouk, an animal hospital in Morocco for working equids, and he has extensive involvement and experience in animal welfare efforts in Turkey. Luke is the Chair of the US Board of World Animal Protection.
Amy Marder, VMD, CAAB
Dr. Marder, veterinarian and Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist through the Animal Behavior Society, is a graduate of the University Of Pennsylvania School Of Veterinary Medicine and completed the first residency in veterinary behavior at the same institution. For over 20 years, Dr. Marder helped owners and their pets with behavior problems through her private practice at New England Veterinary Behavior Associates. For part of this time she also served as Vice President of Behavioral Medicine at the ASPCA in New York City, where she founded the Center for Behavioral Therapy. During her time at the ASPCA, Dr. Marder studied behavioral evaluations of shelter dogs with the purpose of developing an objective and predictive test which could be used in animal shelters.
More recently, Dr. Marder acted as Director of the Center for Shelter Dogs at the Animal Rescue of Boston. While Director, Dr. Marder oversaw the national implantation and usage of the Match-Up II Shelter Dog Rehoming Program which she developed based on her work at the ASPCA. Presently, Dr. Marder is an applied animal behavior consultant at Pet Behavior Consultations in Lexington, Massachusetts, is an adjunct assistant professor at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, is an advisor to the National Canine Research Council and is an instructor in the course on shelter animal behavior and welfare at the University of Florida.
Dr. Marder has written two books and edited another for pet owners on general pet care. She was also the author of Prevention Magazine’s “Your Healthy Pet” column and has been a frequent contributor to veterinary textbooks and journals. Her recent article “Food-related aggression in shelter dogs: A comparison of behavior identified by a behavior evaluation in the shelter and owner reports after adoption” was published in the journal of Applied Animal Behavior Science.
Emily McCobb, DVM, MS, DACVAA
Dr. Emily McCobb is Clinical Associate Professor of Community Medicine and Anesthesiology at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University. At Cummings, she oversees the Shelter Medicine Program, the Center for Shelter Dogs and the Luke and Lily Lerner Spay Neuter Clinic. She also serves as Assistant Director of the Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy. Dr. McCobb teaches animal welfare science, ethics and policy to veterinary and graduate students and supervises students and veterinary trainees in small animal anesthesia. She also works to support community programs across the school and publishes regularly on animal welfare and veterinary topics.
Dr. McCobb is a 2000 graduate of the Cummings School and completed a rotating small animal internship at Angell Memorial Animal Hospital. She obtained a Masters of Animals and Public Policy in 2002. In 2006 she completed residency training in Anesthesiology and Pain Management and became boarded in Anesthesiology.
Dr. McCobb served on the MAC board from 2006 through 2015 and was a past board President and Vice President. She currently serves on MAC’s “Whole Cat Workshop” planning committee and SMART board. She and her human family live in Clinton MA with three dogs, three cats and three guinea pigs.
Gary Patronek, DVM
Dr. Patronek is a regular contributor to the scientific literature, and was one of four editors for the Guidelines for Standards of Care in Animal Shelters, sponsored by the Association of Shelter Veterinarians (ASV), where he was a founding board member. He is an author on over 50 peer-reviewed publications as well as numerous book chapters, and was one of three editors for the first book to address the issue of forensic mental health evaluation of animal maltreatment offenders. He worked in private veterinary practice before beginning his career in shelter medicine. He obtained his PhD in epidemiology at Purdue University where he was one of the first scientists to study the problem of pet relinquishment to shelters and became a scientific advisor to the National Council for Pet Population Study and Policy. Dr Patronek was elected to the National Academies of Practice (NAP) representing veterinary medicine and was a founding board member of the Massachusetts Animal Coalition.
Dr. Patronek became the second Director of the Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy at what is now the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University and was the first Agnes Varis University Chair in Science and Society at Tufts University where he supervised the Graduate Program in Animals and Public Policy, whose graduates have gone on to leadership positions in animal welfare as well as careers in veterinary medicine and law, among others. He established the interdisciplinary Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium (HARC) at Tufts, whose work was instrumental in the listing of animal hoarding under the criteria for the new hoarding disorder in DSM-5 (Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). More recently, he was Vice President for Animal Welfare at the Animal Rescue League of Boston, during which time he helped develop their Center for Shelter Dogs. He is an avid photographer and kayaker. Following his retirement from the ARL, he currently works as an independent consultant.
Laura Klein Plunkett
Laura studied studio art and graphic design, then obtained degrees in Business Administration and Library Science. Laura’s professional career was in operations management, transportation logistics and analysis, and project management.
Laura joined the Massachusetts Animal Coalition in 2010 and served on MAC’s Operations Committee, and as a Caseworker and Volunteer Coordinator for AniMatch, where she wrote and managed grant applications, edited and compiled the AniMatch policies and procedures manual and edited the AniMatch newsletter. After moving to Central Texas in late 2012, Laura continued to support MAC by managing grants, maintaining the database contacts, and publishing the newsletter, before moving onto the Advisory Board.
Laura has served in various capacities in shelters, rescues, and animal welfare organizations, for over 40 years. She currently serves as Secretary and Board Member for her local municipal animal shelter and on the city’s Legislative Task Force. She continues to be an active legislative advocate for animal welfare issues at the local and state levels.
Bryn Rogers, MS
Bryn has been a member of the Massachusetts Animal Coalition (MAC) since 2004 and was a board member from 2009-2015. Bryn first became involved with MAC through her work promoting the spay/neuter license plates and played an integral role during Hurricane Katrina helping coordinate the reunification efforts to find the owners of the animals taken in by MAC during the disaster. Bryn currently works as the Assistant Director of Adoption Centers and Programs at the MSPCA. Bryn, her husband and two daughters live with a very special cat named Freddy and a varying array of foster animals.
William Schawbel
William Schawbel is the founder and CEO of The Schawbel Corporation, a business he formed in 1981 through the acquisition of two divisions from The Gillette Company. The Mosquito Repellent division of the company was sold in July 2014, which precipitated a name change to Schawbel Technologies, LLC.
Prior to founding The Schawbel Corporation, Bill held senior management positions with The Gillette Company, including President of Gillette-Japan and President of Braun North America. His marketing and management experience includes significant contributions to many of Gillette’s divisions within the U.S. and internationally, with particular success in the areas of acquisitions and new business development.
Bill is a 1961 graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and has served his alma mater as a Trustee, Chair of the Board of Overseers, School of Veterinary Medicine, and Co-Chair of the James Brister Society. Bill is an alumnus of the Boston Latin School where he has served as President of the School’s Foundation and chaired its Capital Campaign Committee.
Bill’s philanthropic interests are in public education, diversity, and entrepreneurship. He has also been and is involved with over 20 non-profit Boards.