Cat Town’s Board and staff have experience spanning a broad array of disciplines. In addition to the core team, we rely heavily on our dedicated volunteers and receive advice from a variety of outside advisers to help us develop best practices that can be replicated at a national level.
Board of Directors
After 20 years working in the financial services industry, Cynthia made a big career pivot to animal welfare. She joined the San Francisco SPCA in 2010, where she served 10 years in senior leadership including as Chief Operating Officer between 2017 and 2020. Now retired, Cynthia has been a long-time supporter of Cat Town’s mission to help hard-to-place cats. She has a BA from Pomona College and an MBA from the Haas School of Business.
Cynthia moved to the Bay Area when she was 13 and has lived in Oakland for nearly 30 years. She married her husband Steve because he's a "cat guy". They have two old, cranky, and very entitled cats named Tormo (short for Jacopo Pontormo, the 16th century Mannerist painter) and Ella (in honor of Ella Fitzgerald).
Photo by Shelly Waldman
CYNTHIA KOPEC
President
During her 26 years as a professional dancer, Devon performed with numerous companies throughout California — including Oakland Ballet, Moving Arts Dance Company, Menlowe Ballet, and Caminos Flamencos. She's been passionate about animal welfare her whole life and has volunteered extensively with local rescues since childhood. Devon deepened her knowledge of companion animals, while gaining invaluable experience, working as a veterinary assistant at Sexton Clinic in Alamo, California for more than 5 years. Currently, she serves as CFO/Secretary of The La Russa Family Foundation, which provides financial assistance to nonprofit organizations that work in areas of animal rescue and welfare.
Devon and her husband Ryan share their home with their family of cats, dogs, rabbits, and fish. Together, they have fostered more than 100 dogs and cats to date! She's a proud "cat lady" through and through.
Photo by Shelly Waldman
Devon LaRussa
Vice President
With almost 20 years of animal welfare experience, Willow was a founding member of the Cat Town Board and of the Board for Friends of Oakland Animal Services. As part of the volunteer cat crew at Oakland Animal Services, she has a deep understanding of the cats who rely on Cat Town. Willow also brings more than a decade of operations and systems management experience to Cat Town.
Willow has called Oakland home for most of her life. When she’s not playing volleyball, she’s snuggled up with her cats, Lavender, Pepe, and Piper watching a good movie.
Photo by Shelly Waldman
Willow Liroff
Secretary
Jamie is Of Counsel with the Alioto Law Firm in San Francisco. She has been prosecuting antitrust actions on behalf of private plaintiffs since 2011 across various industries, including the airline, beer, banking, pharmaceutical, and health and beauty industries. She represents small businesses and consumers in litigation in federal and state courts, with an emphasis on appellate advocacy, and has been admitted to practice in numerous federal district courts in California, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court.
Jamie currently resides in Alameda, but grew up in Maytown, Pennsylvania, a town so small that the only places for kids to hang out were by the post office and in front of a small general store that sold penny candies. She loves reading, basketball, and Broadway shows, has a serious disdain for lima beans, and is owned by an almost 15-year old kitty named Broch.
Jamie Miller
Treasurer
David is a Principal at Arcview Consulting, a cannabis management consultancy. A passionate advocate for social justice and cannabis reform, he’s worked in the cannabis industry since 2009. David teaches Economics of Cannabis at Oaksterdam University, and co-owns a miniature golf company, Subpar Mini Golf.
In addition to his service on Cat Town’s Board of Directors, David serves on the Boards of the Marijuana Policy Project, Oaksterdam University, The Arcview Group, and is a Trustee for Ecole Bilingue de Berkeley, a French American bilingual school in Berkeley. David enjoys learning, solving puzzles, science fiction, and exploring the world. He and his partner Molly live in Oakland.
Photo by Shelly Waldman
David Abernathy
Director
Nara grew up in Oakland in a family deeply involved in East Bay politics. She has served as Councilmember Linda Maio’s appointee to the Berkeley Commission on the Status of Women, as well as the Anti Trafficking Task Force, and was Mayor Bates’ appointee to the Animal Care Commission. She has also worked on, managed, and ran campaigns for ballot measures and candidates in Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco. Currently Nara is Vice President of the government affairs firm, Milo Group of California, and prior to that was an External Affairs Manager and Research Analyst at the San Francisco Committee on Jobs.
Photo by Shelly Waldman
Nara Dahlbacka
DIRECTOR
Through her professional experience as a UX designer and former business owner, as well as through her contributions to animal welfare organizations since 2007, Stefanie understands the challenges of running a nonprofit organization. Being able to wear many hats and to work under resource constraints is necessary in both the startup world and nonprofits. Empathy is key. A strong team is the foundation for success.
An animal advocate at heart, Stefanie has been involved with a variety of animal welfare organizations. In addition to her service on Cat Town’s Board of Directors, she serves as the Board Chair for WildCat Ridge Sanctuary and does pro bono work — including photography, online communications, graphic design, and more — for a number of animal sanctuaries across the US.
Stefanie grew up in Germany, and while she loves all animals, she admits to a special adoration of cats, both domestic and wild. Stefanie lives in beautiful Lake Oswego with her partner, Michael, and their rescue cats.
Photo by Shelly Waldman
STEFANIE KRAUS
DIRECTOR
STAFF
Andrew was born in Canada, and grew up in San Luis Obispo. With a BS in Electrical Engineering from California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo, he worked nearly 20 years designing, managing, and executing complex multi-million dollar projects as a registered electrical engineer in the energy industry before switching to cats. That change started when he became a volunteer at Oakland Animal Services (OAS) in January 2014, where he helped create OAS’s working cat program. Since 2016, the program has placed more than 200 feral cats. Over the years, Andrew has deepened his involvement in the animal welfare community by joining the Board of Directors for Friends of Oakland Animal Services, and becoming IAABC Accredited as a Shelter Behavior Affiliate. Andrew was a member of Cat Town’s leadership team for two years prior to becoming Executive Director in January 2020, and served as a volunteer for the organization before that.
Besides cats, Andrew has a love for kayaking, photography, krav maga and hiking — unless there is poison oak. His own cats include Sinatra, Coraline, and Pepper. He lives with them and his partner, Katrina, in their home in Oakland, where they have fostered more than 100 cats and kittens (and counting).
Photo by Shelly Waldman
Andrew Dorman
Executive Director
Dilara grew up in Istanbul, Turkey and holds degrees in Psychology and in Comparative Literature from Oberlin College. She is a Certified Cat Behavior Consultant and has worked with animals since 1991.
In her career, Dilara observed that cats with behavioral challenges were considered “untreatable” and “unadoptable” in the rescue world, and realized that by supporting these cats, she could fill an unmet need to help pets and families thrive together. She co-founded Feline Minds as a result, and was later drawn to Cat Town’s mission to help cats who struggle in a cage.
Since 2011, she has advised Cat Town on individual cat behavior plans, our cage-free Adoption Center, the Forgotten Kitten Project, and more. Now, as Program Manager, Dilara is excited to shepherd shelter cats in need along on their journey to adoption.
Dilara shares her life in Richmond with her family of humans, dogs, cats, and chickens. When she is not helping cats live their best lives, she can be found pursuing a multitude of hobbies, including drawing, playing piano, cooking, and exploring the Bay Area’s hiking trails with her dogs.
Photo by Shelly Waldman
Dilara GökseL Parry
Program DIRECTOR
Quinn grew up with cats, dogs, rats, and a bird, but in the end, cats won her heart. She began volunteering with Cat Town in 2014 as an adoption counselor, foster, and fundraiser. She joined as staff in 2018. As Cat Town's Development Director and Deputy Director, Quinn draws on more than a decade of fundraising and communications experience with donor stewardship, grant funding, and corporate sponsorship to support Cat Town’s mission. She has a soft spot for Cat Town's "In It for Life" program, which helps hospice shelter cats, loves sharing stories about Cat Town’s mission, and can often be found guiltily over-using em dashes, despite the many other punctuation options out there.
Quinn holds an MS in Environmental Management, loves the smell of a salt marsh, tries hard not to hate raisins, and her motto is “it’s a good day when you learn something new.” She also enjoys tabletop games and reading when she and her partner, Chad, aren't snuggling their two Cat Town cats, Phoenix and Peanut.
Photo by Nicole Dial
Quinn White
Development & Deputy Director
Adam grew up in San Bernardino with a variety of pets over the years, including cats, dogs, rabbits, fish — even a turtle and a green parrot! He loves that cats are so chill, and in his job, he enjoys how relaxing it is to work with them. When he's not at Cat Town, Adam enjoys listening to his vinyl collection, watching movies, and playing video games. His taste in music is as eclectic as his taste in animals, so when he's not singing death metal, you might find him listening to 90s hip hop or video game soundtracks. He is happy to have traded the hot summers of Southern California for the beautiful weather of Oakland.
Photo by Grace Fujii
ADAM SUAsTEGUI
Cat Care Attendant
Adam was born outside of Washington DC, and the iteration of him that existed there would be astonished to learn that he currently works a job where he takes care of cats. He was not raised with proper exposure to cats, and was actually quite wary of them until, at the age of 20, he moved into a house with one and fell in love. Since then, he has been making up for lost time.
Adam has been active for the past 15 years throughout the Bay Area operating as a sustainability consultant, helping businesses and local governments reduce their trash footprint. In addition to cats and environmentalism, Adam is a dedicated audio and visual artist and is currently establishing himself as a sound designer.
Photo by Nicole Dial
ADAM HEFFLER
Cat Care Attendant
Adeline was born and raised in the Bay Area, and splits her time between helping the cats at Cat Town’s Adoption Center and completing her Sociology studies at Berkeley City College, with aspirations of making her community a better place and helping others. In 2018, she started fostering kittens, and has helped more than 40 little ones find great homes.
Adeline has had cats her whole life — and when she’s not befriending every cat she meets in her neighborhood, you can find her reading, roller skating, and photographing the world around her. She loves to spoil her family’s cats — Bob, Snowbell, Seamus, and Nessie — and hopes to have a cat of her own someday soon.
Photo by Shelly Waldman
ADELINE NEVES
Cat Care Attendant
Arielle grew up in the North Bay, spending their time looking for bugs and hanging out with cats. They started volunteering at Cat Town and Oakland Animal Services in 2018. Arielle has one cat — a Cat Town foster fail who's a fiend for tortilla chips named "Mr. Wallace (Wally) Waluigi Wobbles."
When they're not at Cat Town caring for the resident cats, Arielle likes to be at their desk working on illustrations or video game assets for personal projects. Some of their favorite things are history books, 2D platformers, and surreal anime. Their favorite animals are still spiders.
Photo by Shelly Waldman
AriellE Lehmer
Cat Care Attendant
Belle grew up in Richmond, Virginia and has worked in animal rescue up and down the East Coast for many years. They've had the pleasure of rescuing and caring for all sorts of animals — from pot-bellied pigs on farm sanctuaries to sea turtles in a marine turtle hospital to Syrian hamsters rescued from a lab.
Belle and their partner, Beau, moved to Oakland from Virginia in 2022, and loves the people, vegan food, and lack of humidity in the Bay Area. When not helping care for Cat Town's cats, Belle can be found window-shopping at the nearest plant store, building shelters for community cats, or doing a Pigeon Patrol with friends to help feral pigeons with stringfoot.
In addition to their work in animal rescue, Belle is currently working towards their MA in Visual Anthropology, Media, and Documentary Practices. They hope to someday contribute to the growing body of work on non-human animals and rescue work within the field of anthropology. Belle and Beau live in a plant-filled apartment with their two Virginia-born rescue cats, Gogo and Jojo, as well as their four rescue mice — Hoppla, Zucker, Kürbis, and Blitz.
Photo by Shelly Waldman
BELLE CIFU
CAT CARE Coordinator
Bill always thought they were a dog person until feral cats started showing up in their backyard and informed them otherwise. They began feeding them, then worked with ICRA to get them fixed, and moved on to TNRing other feral cats in their neighborhood. After fostering a litter of kittens, two refused to leave their heart, so they foster failed and kept their precious babies, Penelope and The Boy. They later added Tina and Star to the family.
The more energy Bill devotes towards cat care and learning about cats, the more they realize that this is what they want to do with their life. They feel grateful every day that they get to be at Cat Town.
Bill also enjoys making jewelry, buying every celebrity memoir they can get their hands on, and arriving everywhere 5 minutes late because they met a cat on the sidewalk on the way there. Their family has lived in the Bay Area for four generations, and yet Bill has still never visited Alcatraz.
Photo by Shelly Waldman
BILL Zitzmann Smioly
Lead Cat Care Attendant
Genevieve grew up in Atlanta, Georgia surrounded by a dog-loving family who were taken aback at her love for and insistence on sharing their home with cats. She has Master’s degrees in Design from UC Davis and in Library and Information Science from San Jose State, as well as a still-to-be-completed-someday PhD in Humane Education at Saybrook University. She started volunteering with the East Bay SPCA (EBSPCA) in 2009 and volunteered with Cat Town in 2015-2016 while working in art collection management at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. She started working in animal welfare in 2016, first at Tony La Russa’s Animal Rescue Foundation as an Adoption Specialist, and then as the Customer Care Lead at EBSPCA. She returned to volunteering at Cat Town in 2021 while also working at her favorite local bookstore in Oakland, joining the Cat Town staff in 2022.
Genevieve lives in Oakland with her musician husband Robert, their 4 cats (Misty, Marble, Butterscotch, and Pugcat — 3 of whom are foster-fails from the more than 100 cats they have fostered), and a very cat-tolerant dog, Einstein. Genevieve loves books, cooking, almost any kind of arts and crafts project, and talking about cats with anyone and everyone.
Photo by Shelly Waldman
Genevieve Cottraux
Adoption Coordinator
Cat Town first came into Julie's life when she adopted her beloved cat, Sophie, from us in 2018. She became a Pet Food Express volunteer in 2023, where she found fulfillment witnessing shy and scared cats transform into confident and curious companions under the care of our staff and volunteers.
Before joining Cat Town, Julie worked in nonprofit program management and urban agriculture for food justice organizations, designing and managing urban farms and community gardens. Now, Julie balances her role as a Cat Care Attendant while pursuing further education. In her free time, you'll find her learning to play the drums and experimenting with creative cooking projects.
Photo by David Yeung
JULIE PAVUK
cat care attendant
Kristin grew up in Santa Maria, California, and has lived in the Bay Area since 2010. She started volunteering at Cat Town in the summer of 2017, and just two days later fell hard for and adopted her first Cat Town cat, Futaba, as a friend for her cat Niko. She later adopted one of Cat Town’s longest-term residents, Buffy. Kristin joined Cat Town's staff as a Cat Care Attendant in 2018, and began supporting our foster program in 2021 — assisting with foster cat placement, adoption, and everything in between.
In addition to tending to cats at home and at work, Kristin loves acting, and has a passion for seeing the world. She and her husband, Tyler, try to travel somewhere new in the world every year, and they make it a point to visit any cat cafes they find on their travels.
Photo by Shelly Waldman
KRISTIN Jacques
Foster Program Coordinator
Kristine grew up with a gray tuxedo tabby named Pepper, border collie mixes named Indie (a Hurricane Katrina rescue) and Pearl, and two snakes named Pinky and Arrow. She is a self-proclaimed “dog loving cat person.” Her background in journalism, filmmaking, marketing, and community outreach aptly reflects her love for storytelling and advocacy, and as Development Associate, she loves using these skills to engage with Cat Town supporters and champion the impactful work this organization does.
A Bay Area native with a B.A. in Communication and International Relations from UC Davis, Kristine has worked as a marketing and content manager in tech, and a director, producer, and photographer for short documentaries and music videos. She once owned a wedding photography business, and also performed and taught with San Jose Taiko from 2016-2024. Kristine currently lives in Oakland with a pitty puppy named Charlie (Charlize Theron), and spends her free time kickboxing, painting, practicing yoga, or planning her next trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. She anticipates a Cat Town adoption in her future.
Photo by Nicole Dial
KRISTINE LEE
DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE
Bio coming soon!
Photo by Nicole Dial
Maria Szmagalski
social media Coordinator
Born in a small town, serendipitously bordering Los Gatos, California, Suzanne is a lifelong Bay Area resident. As a child, she was adamant she wanted to be a cat when she grew up, but much to her chagrin, this failed to materialize. So instead, she attended San Jose State and spent the ensuing years working as a corporate trainer and restaurant manager in a variety of fine dining establishments.
In 2005, inspired after a trip to the Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary in Rome, Suzanne began volunteering at the San Francisco SPCA, working with under-socialized and medically compromised cats. When the organization wanted to shift to a more client-centered adoption approach, she was brought on as staff and spent over a decade heading Adoptions, first as manager, then director, where she collaborated closely with Shelter Medicine, Behavior, and Volunteer Services. Suzanne continued volunteering by fostering a series of hospice cats in her home.
While cats are her main passion, Suzanne also enjoys photography, visiting unlikely roadside attractions, meditation, and her work on the board of the SF Dharma Collective. She's honored to help advance the Cat Town mission in a role that dovetails with her belief that volunteers are the heart, soul, and lifeblood of animal welfare.
Photo by Nicole Dial