Interview! Jim Tedford, President and CEO of SAWA

Jim Tedford is the president and CEO of the Society of Animal Welfare Administrators (SAWA). In the early 1980s, fresh out of college with a degree in  animal science, he found his first job in animal welfare at a tiny humane society that was “held together with duct tape and love.” Since then, Jim has seen the animal welfare game change drastically in the last few decades—Jim’s last job at a shelter in New York assisted 12,000 animals a year with a staff of 70 people and over 700 volunteers. We owe much of that to SAWA’s network of professionals and resources, which has grown exponentially since its inception nearly fifty years ago. According to Jim, SAWA is the only organization of big leaders in animal welfare who also work “in the trenches,” to use his parlance.

Jim and Stacy discuss the many resources, programs, scholarships, and conferences that SAWA has to offer up-and-coming animal welfare organizations, as well as the online support community that has sprung up in recent years in SAWA Facebook groups. You can find all of these resources and more at sawanetwork.org—and stay tuned for the website relaunch coming in July!