Our Team

Esther Mechler

Esther put her community-organizing skills to work by founding Animal Rights Hawaii in the early 1980’s. Faced with a myriad of animal issues, the ultimate decision was to focus on companion animal problems, specifically the surplus of cats and dogs – since prevention of unwanted litters was not on the public radar in the 1980’s; at the time over twelve million animals were being euthanized annually for lack of homes.
Over the years, Marian’s Dream founded programs which were later taken on by other organizations such as the Focus on Animals film and video center, now run by the National Humane Education Society. In 1990, she began SPAY/USA as a program of Marian’s Dream. Since then, SPAY/USA helped hundreds of thousands of people looking for low-cost, high-quality spay/neuter options. SPAY/USA is now a program of N.S.A.L.

Esther has assisted with the start-up of hundreds of affordable spay and neuter programs and clinics, both fixed-site and mobile throughout the United States. Thanks to the SPAY/USA model and willingness to share and empower other groups, similar programs have started in other countries as well.

For her work, Esther Mechler won the prestigious Geraldine R. Dodge Award for Humane Ethics in Action in 1995, Outstanding Women of Connecticut in 2003 and the Bates College Alumni Community Service Award in 2014.

Elizabeth Anderson Byers

Elizabeth Anderson Byers has long been interested in animal advocacy. She has been a teacher in the West Chester area near Philadelphia for over 30 years. Her background in education also helped channel her interest to development of materials for schools in this area. She developed curriculum packets for elementary students entitled ALL ONE COMMUNITY that were distributed to educators throughout the state of New Jersey. The curriculum emphasized modeling kindness and respect for all beings and the earth. In collaboration with another educator she developed a program that examines and addresses the problem of school bullying through the use of ethology (the study of animal behavior as it relates to human behavior). She has taught Talented and Gifted classes, and always encouraged environmental activism in the classroom. And most recently she was a marketing specialist for CASENEX, an on-line learning company.

Elizabeth has Masters degrees in Teaching and Education from West Chester University, and has been very active in various environmental projects such as The Rainforest Action group, Tri-state Bird Rescue, and encouraged learning about old growth forests, and endangered species.

Elaine Fougere

Elaine Fougere comes to us with an MBA and over twenty years’ experience in IT working in insurance, investments, distribution, logistics, merchandising, replenishment systems, forecasting and planning, customer relationship management and business intelligence/analysis. She is a team player passionate about enabling projects – and peers – to succeed. Elaine combines her interest in technology with an equally strong interest in the outdoors, nature and animals.

Len Mitchell

Len is an attorney and a philosopher. He spent the first 25 years of his career as a lawyer, primarily with Time Warner in New York City. He then returned to graduate school and earned a Ph.D. in philosophy. He has taught at several universities, and is now teaching at Brooklyn College and Pace University. All his life he has had an intellectual and emotional attachment to animals, and is very happy to be associated with Marian’s Dream in its work on improving the plight of companion animals.

Laura Simon

Laura Simon is a Wildlife Ecologist who specializes in helping communities resolve problems with wildlife. She is also the president of the Connecticut Wildlife Rehabilitators Association and previously, the wildlife ecologist for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). She has lectured all over the country on various urban wildlife topics, ranging from how to stop beaver-caused flooding to how to prevent problematic interactions with bears and deer. Laura ran a national wildlife hotline for 12 years focused on practical and effective solutions to a wide range of “nuisance” wildlife conflicts (the biggest challenge: to show how problematic human behavior was what needed to be fixed!).

Laura’s work with wildlife has been featured on the Ellen DeGeneres show, the New York Times, NPR and other national media. She has served on a number of deer task forces and provided urban wildlife consulting services and training programs for municipalities, land trusts, animal control facilities, garden clubs, state agencies, animal shelters, and various not-for-profit organizations. Laura graduated from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies with a Master’s Degree in Environmental Management (1990).

Joy Macrina

Jody has been involved in animal protection as a freelancer until she joined a rescue organization in 1995 and became a strong advocate for pediatric spay neuter. She moved to Protectors of Animals, Inc in 2000 and became president in 2001. Her program is a model in Connecticut. Since that time all cats and dogs have been S/N prior to adoption; pediatric s/n was not a common practice back then in CT. In 2010 the Hope Spay Clinic was launched by POA acting as fiscal sponsor. The clinic is still in operation, now under different management. POA has become home to SPAY CT, and is becoming active in the United Spay Alliance.