Valerie Benka is director of programs at the Alliance for Contraception in Cats & Dogs. Prior to starting at ACC&D, she coordinated a feline adoption program in Virginia and interned at the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Humane Society of the United States.
Valerie has graduate degrees in conservation biology and public policy from the University of Michigan, where she focused on human-wildlife conflict in rural Kenya, and is a graduate of the Animals and Public Policy program at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, where she explored strategies to expand humane canine population control in Kathmandu, Nepal. Closer to home, she conducted research on reduced-cost feline spay/neuter, including the factors that motivate people to have their pets sterilized and both the life histories and long-term outcomes of feline clients.
