Valerie Benka, MS, MPP; Program Consultant
Valerie Benka is a Program Consultant for ACC&D, focusing on two collaborative research projects with Banfield Pet Hospital.
Valerie has been involved in the animal welfare field for 15-plus years, and with ACC&D for over 11. Prior to her current consultant role, she served as ACC&D’s Director of Programs, where she had a leadership role in developing and implementing the organization’s strategic plan, projects, programs, and symposia and think tanks.
As a student in the Animals and Public Policy Program at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Valerie 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. Valerie also has graduate degrees in Conservation Biology and Public Policy from the University of Michigan, where she focused on human-wildlife coexistence in rural Kenya.
She has published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, Journal of Feline Medicine & Surgery, Animals, Ecohealth, Frontiers in Veterinary Science, and Human Dimensions of Wildlife. She is very interested in animal welfare ethics and spearheaded creation of Ethical decision-making: Practical guidance & toolkits and ethical decision-making and considerations for field projects targeting dogs and cats, which was a key output of ACC&D’s ethical decision-making flagship initiative.
