Our Team
Our Board Of Directors
Beca Thompson
Founder and President
Beca has been caring for animals her entire life. She has a strong animal care background, with extensive experience. She has worked as an animal caretaker for many different species of exotic and farm animals, and has been helping people care for their goats and sheep for many years. Beca has been a vegan for over a decade, and is extremely passionate about all animal welfare, particularly our farm animal friends. Tiny Hooves Sanctuary is her dream come true, helping spread compassion.
Sandi Swiss
Vice President
Sandi is a vegan & gluten free baker/chef and event organizer. She became an ethical vegan in 2009, when she watched a YouTube video about factory farming and made the choice to align her actions with her ethics. Some of the events she has been involved in organizing are Sunday Funday Market, Chicago VeganMania, Vegan Prom Chicago and sanctuary workdays. She has volunteered, done street activism and toured with numerous organizations over the years and believes that local grassroots activism, education and community building are the driving force behind every movement. She shares her home space with Frankie the cat. Goats are her favorite farm animal, but don’t tell the other residents, espically the Moo Crew.
Mandie Capps
Secretary
Mandie has been volunteering with various rescues & sanctuaries since 2009. She went vegan in 2016 after being a long-time vegetarian. Her compassion for animals started at a young age when she saw pigs as friends, never food. The more she researched about animal agriculture practices, the more it made sense to ditch all industries that involved cruelty to animals & treating them as products not beings. She loves educating others in hopes that more people choose a compassionate lifestyle. Passionate about the current grow – your – own – food movement, she is an avid organic gardener who encourages everyone to give gardening a try for a more sustainable future food supply with a vegan focus. Mandie resides in Washington state; she shares her home with Tank, the needy shihtzu, Tiger, the elderly orange kitty, & guinea pigs Hamilton, the bulldozer, Flynn, the shy one, and Timmy, the loudmouth
Kelly Sasso
Director
While Kelly’s background and career is in marketing, her heart is always with Tiny Hooves— anxiously awaiting her next visit there. Her love of animals started at a young age, and now she strives to spread the word of love and compassion for them. She started her plant-based journey in 2016 becoming a vegetarian. In the past couple years, she became vegan after learning more about the farming and dairy industries. She started volunteering at Tiny Hooves in 2019 and the animals bring her such peace, happiness and of course laughter. Whenever she leaves the farm, her heart is full. When she’s not at the farm you can find her reading, looking up new vegan recipes, baking, teaching fitness classes, helping refugees study to become citizens and cheering on the Packers and Bucks. She lives with her two cats Coco and Ziggy.
Emily Hasler Kunaschk
Director
Being a Tiny Hooves volunteer is new to Emily, but she has been admiring the organization from afar for years. She fell in love with the residents after her first visit and is looking forward to applying her skills toward their support. Animals have been an important part of her life since she was a baby. Her parents taught her a lot about being compassionate towards animals, respectful towards wildlife and being a good environmental steward. She was the only kid in her grade to carry a reusable lunch bag filled with Tupperware and a cloth napkin. No plastic baggies for her! Emily and her husband share their home with Apollo, a standard poodle rescued from an unethical doodle breeder, and Pearl, a tiny cat with a big personality who runs the house.
Marisa Merkl
Director
Marisa has had the pleasure of volunteering with Tiny Hooves since 2019 and now enjoys being involved helping the team with fundraising efforts. Animal welfare and ethics quickly became near and dear to her heart and life's purpose in 2016 when she transitioned to a vegan lifestyle (which was easier than she thought it would be!). As an art director, graphic designer and filmmaker, she loves putting her creativity to good use with important causes whenever possible, especially concerning the residents of Tiny Hooves.
Erin Manders
Director
Erin is a long-time animal lover and entrepreneur based in Racine, WI. Born crafty, she grew up sewing her own clothes and crocheting hats which she eventually turned into a business. Shortly after going vegan in 2009, she started a plant-based, palm oil-free soap company. She loves traveling to vend at veg fests/indie craft events and has enjoyed meeting compassionate animal activists. She is thrilled to be working with a local, woman-led sanctuary that she admires. In her free time, Erin enjoys crafts of all kinds, road trips with her husband Denny, drag, Thai food and horror movies.
Allison Bauman
Director
Allison has always been passionate about animal welfare and educating people about what it means to make a compassionate choice. She likes to refer to herself as a lover of challenges and willing explorer of things that scare her; fitness enthusiast; practitioner of alternative wellness modalities; stream of consciousness and deliberate writer; a plant-based devotee; lifelong animal advocate; stubborn believer in personal choice(s); and a recognizer that all sentient beings are entitled to kindness, compassion, comfort, care and freedom. Professionally she categorizes herself as a Jaqueline of all Trades, specifically, but not mutually exclusive, in the Advertising and Marketing arena. From Director, to sales, account management, creative, finance and media, she has covered it. She lives in Chicago IL with her partner and rescued companions: her Bernese Mountain dog,7.5 y.o. Princess Checker and her two kitties ~ 14.5 y.o. ginger boy of joy and love, Woodstock and 4.5 y.o. HRH Paddlefoot Pierre the Destroyer the Tuxedo Kitty."
Animal Care Team Leads
Jamie Deetjen
Animal Care Team Lead
“Animals have always been a huge part of my life. I love to learn, and I’m always trying to learn more about animals and caregiving for them. I share my home with a rescued hound dog, three lizards, and a ball python.
I started volunteering at Tiny Hooves in the autumn of 2021. I quickly fell in love with all the animal residents and the mission of spreading compassion. Even though it’s hard work sometimes, caring for the residents is incredibly rewarding. Seeing them living their lives in sanctuary brings me so much peace and joy, and they have taught me so much about healing and living in the present moment.”
Are you interested in joining our Board of Directors? Please submit your information below, with a message regarding the director position.