Our team

Our great team

Mandy (Co-founder & Executive Director.)

Mandy first visited Kyiv, Ukraine in the Summer of 2017. While there, she learned about the mass poisoning of thousands of street dogs ahead of the Euro 2012, and that exterminators still target street dogs today. She was shocked to discover this since there had been so much media attention about the dogs being poisoned in Russia before the Olympic games but nobody had heard about what was happening in Kyiv.

She started to form relationships with independent rescuers and groups and was impressed and saddened to find out, that due to a lack of resources, many sacrificed most of their time and money to rescue animals.
After the sudden death of her beloved dog, “Copper,” she decided to create an organization and adoption program to bring international attention to the plight of street dogs and volunteers in Ukraine.

Today she does a little of everything; recruiting ex-pat volunteers, coordinating adoptions, partnerships, and fundraising. She is motivated by the stories of resilient street dogs who are rehabilitated into amazing pets by selfless volunteers.

On top of being dedicated to her work with Transform a Street dog, she is busy raising her 2 toddlers, Fletcher and Coraline and taking care of her dogs, Latka, a Ukrainian rescue dog and her miniature Greyhound, Rocco.

Jena (Co-founder & President)

Jena is from Ukraine and moved to San Francisco for her career as a Software Engineer. She has always been passionate about helping stray dogs in Ukraine so it was a natural fit for her to join the Transform a Street Dog team.

Jena and her husband, Max both travel from Ukraine to San Francisco a couple times per year and will be able to transport adopted dogs to their forever homes in the SF Bay area.

She will be fostering a dog named Bonya and is so excited to be able to save one from the streets of Kyiv because of her connection to the stray animals in her home country.

In addition to fostering and transporting dogs, we are so grateful to Jena for offering her technical skills to build our website where we can now showcase our dogs available for adoption. She also helps us maintain relationships with our partners with her Russian language skills.

Maryna

Maryna has lived in Kyiv her whole life. She started rescuing dogs from the streets after she witnessed the mass poisoning of street dogs before the Euro 2012 games. As a professional videographer, she felt compelled to record what was happening so that she could share it and not let it be denied. The horrible memory of these images haunt Maryna and this is what motivates her and her mother to dedicate themselves to rescuing street dogs.

She spends most of her time and money rescuing, rehabilitating and adopting out street dogs. At any given time, she has 10-12 dogs in her apartment. We have partnered with Maryna to help relieve some of her stress with raising money and finding homes, and in turn she provides us socialized dogs for adoption, who would otherwise be fending for themselves and being at-risk on the streets.

Phoebe

While being a student at San Francisco State University, Phoebe still finds time to recruit volunteers, screen adoption applicants, and create social media and website content for Transform a Street Dog. She is dedicated to her love for animals- she is a strict vegan and works as a dog walker and dog sitter. Phoebe has been with us from the beginning, and helps us grow and evolve every day.

In her spare time, Phoebe likes to take ballet classes, explore San Francisco (while meeting lots of dogs!), cook plant based delights, and sleep in.

More about "Transform a street dog"

We need help from animal lovers like you to save more street dogs from suffering.

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Our work in numbers

We try to help as many animals as possible. Below you can see how many animals we have already helped. We hope that we can continue to help these poor animals in the future.

Rescued animals

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Working in countries

Adopted

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Created shelters