“Christine is a shining star on the Volunteer Team and her work can be felt throughout the organization. Her dedication ensures DPA is recruiting the best volunteers to fill our needs and this year she led the team to improve our new volunteer orientation. She is an active communicator, always follows through, a wonderful team player and is very thorough on every project she works on. The Volunteer Team is so proud of all that she has accomplished and we cannot wait for all that is to come. Thank you for choosing DPA Christine!” – Tiffany B., DPA’s Volunteer Director
As the Assistant Director of Volunteer Recruitment, Christine is dedicated to Dallas Pet’s Alive volunteers new and seasoned. Read more about her below:
What does your role within DPA involve? What do you oversee within the organization?
I am an Assistant Director of Recruitment on our Volunteer Team, my role involves a lot of project-based work having to do with our dedicated volunteers. Over the course of this year, my biggest project has involved the revamp of our new volunteer orientation which has been super fun – I love getting to interact with our new volunteers and to help them understand how the work they’re going to do connects back to the greater purpose of our organization. Every volunteer matters, whether they plan to work directly with our animals in Dallas or assist with our backend operations remotely from the other side of the country!
What is your professional background?
I work within a University Relations/College Recruiting function where I spend a lot of my time helping our company with the logistics behind campus recruitment events and recruiting for two of our corporate internship programs. I’ve gotten to be part of executing a lot of changes within our function over the past year as with the pandemic, we flipped our recruitment practices and summer internship programs to be completely virtual!
How did you get involved with volunteering at DPA?
I had been looking to volunteer for professional development reasons and stumbled upon DPA by chance during my searching The position was for a virtual Recruitment Coordinator and it checked off all the boxes for me – it involved work relevant to my career, benefited animal welfare which is my number one cause, and was virtual (I am not located anywhere near Texas, in fact I haven’t even been to Texas haha). I began volunteering and about a year and a half later was asked by our Volunteer Director if I was interested in becoming an Assistant Director!
How long have you been involved with the organization?
Since the end of 2017, in my current role for almost a year.
What drives you to dedicate your time to DPA?
Animal welfare is my number one cause, I am a HUGE animal lover and had wanted to volunteer with some sort of animal rescue or organization for a while. However, the places in my area only had roles that would take place onsite and that was tough for me to make work with my job. With DPA, I love that I can combine my passion for animals with my passion for Human Resources & Recruiting WHILE getting the flexibility I need around work and other obligations.
What are you most passionate about at DPA?
In my role I have access to our library of descriptions for all of our volunteering positions across the organization. For some reason, I have a huge obsession with job descriptions. All the individual roles we have add up to a whole thriving operation and I really enjoy getting to learn more about the areas our volunteers choose to donate their time and talent to. I am also passionate about the cause overall, I love animals and to me it doesn’t matter if I’m helping animals locally or ones located in a state many miles away from me. An animal is an animal and as long as I’m doing something to benefit them, I’m happy!
Give us a fun fact about you!
Over the past year or so, I’ve gotten really into birdwatching – I’m not by any means a serious birder, (I couldn’t even name a majority of them), but they’re just so cute and I enjoy going for hikes with my boyfriend and pointing out all of the ones I see. Since declaring my love of birds, I’ve received two birding guides and a pair of great quality birding binoculars so my new hobby has been well supported! My best bird discovery to date was getting to be about 20 feet from an owl who was sitting in a low branch. He let us stand there and stare at him for a little over 30 minutes and he even fell asleep in the middle of it!
Be Pawsome like Christine. Apply to be a Dallas Pets Alive! volunteer today!
