My journey and evolution into the trauma-informed care and healing context originates from decades-long, hands-on experience in exposure and witness to nonhuman exploitative industries, such as pet stores, egg processing plants, thoroughbred horse racing and sport horse worlds as an initial, naive participant. Realizing the individuality of each being, and increasingly their capacity for physical, as well as mental and emotional suffering, I witnessed their fear and simultaneous natural drive to survive, which was cruelly understood, as they were exploited in circuses, rodeos, horse shows / breeding / racing.

To combat this, I entered criminal justice and became a California State Humane Officer as a criminal animal cruelty investigator including active rescues of animals in distress and animalrelated venue monitoring and inspections of circuses and rodeos. Having investigated and subsequently prosecuted many cases and involved with rescues where resulting trauma permeated what was left of physically surviving individual victims, I developed a keen interest in the psychology of nonhumans, their relationships among each other – especially within negative human impact, and how they navigated their lives.

I discovered Dr. Gay Bradshaw, PhD, PhD and The Kerulos Center in 2009 upon the release of her 2009 book, Elephants on the Edge – What Animals Teach Us About Humanity, drawn to it on the new releases table.

I was relieved, inspired and elated discovering research in the science of sentience, transspecie psychology and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the capacity of suffering of nonhumans, now validated by neuroscience. Becoming an intern, mentored by and close associate to Dr. Bradshaw with my focus upon captive-held Elephants and their trauma recovery within Sanctuary philosophy and practice, she arranged for me to join a close colleague and co-founder of a North American accredited Elephant Sanctuary, and commence research into psychological healing focused upon Elephants.

In 2016, Dr. Bradshaw and I implemented the Unchain The Gods project when I was invited to assist as a liaison and educator with collaborating and partnering organizations in India, with Kerulos’ The 10 Being Sanctuary Principles instruction and implementation for captiveheld Asian Elephant caregiving, trauma healing and recovery onsite for former templecaptive-held Asian Elephants within their sanctuaries for caregiving and trauma-informed mindset coming from temple to sanctuary. I also performed temple-captive-held Asian Elephant inspections while in India to include psychological welfare and trauma-induced suffering resulting from all aspects of captivity with extensive documentation and research reports. 2025 includes a collaborative rewilding project of a previously zoo-incarcerated African Bull Elephant, Duma in South Africa, with incorporation of a trauma-informed lens within his healing journey.