Our Team
Our Founder
Beca Thompson
Founder
Animal Care Director &
Volunteer Manager
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.
Our Board Of Directors
Sandi Swiss
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.
Sandi first visited the original sanctuary property for the first time in 2018, and volunteered at a few workdays at the current property in 2019 and 2020. She became an animal care volunteer in 2020, joined the board in November of 2020, and took on the role of Vice President in May 2021. Sandi remains an animal care volunteer to this day in addition to her board duties and it’s still one of her favorite things to do for the animals.
In her free time, you can find her in her garden, growing both food and native plants. She also loves supporting local coffee shops and eating her way through the vegan and gluten free foods of Milwaukee and Chicagoland.
She shares her home space her with her husband Brian and Frankie the cat. Goats are her favorite farm animal, but don’t tell the other residents, especially the Moo Crew.
Emily Hasler Kunaschk
Vice President/Secretary
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.
Erin Manders
Treasurer
Erin is an entrepreneur and small business owner based in Racine, WI. Shortly after going vegan in 2009, she started a plant-based, palm oil-free soap company - Perennial Soaps. She loves traveling the US to attend veg fests and has enjoyed meeting many compassionate animal activists along the way. 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.
Since joining the board in 2022 Erin has designed and built our on-site gift shop featuring Tiny Hooves apparel, art and accessories handmade by our own volunteers. She also created and manages our online merchandise shop and handles shipping orders to our friends and supporters near and far! She is co-chair of our Pumpkin Palooza committee, member of the Gala committee, manages our donor database and enjoys helping out during our volunteer work days.
Certifications:
Fundraising Essentials (2024)
Online course - Center for Nonprofit Management
Nonprofit Board Member Essentials (2024)
Online course - Center for Nonprofit Management
Financial Management Essentials (2024)
Online course - Center for Nonprofit Management
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.
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.
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, 8.0 y.o. Princess Checker and her two kitties ~ 15.5 y.o. ginger boy of joy and love, Woodstock and 5.5 y.o. HRH Paddlefoot Pierre the Destroyer, lover of all things plastic, the Tuxedo Kitty."
Are you interested in joining our Board of Directors? Please submit your information below, with a message regarding the director position.