Pima Animal Care Center has hired Kristen Auerbach, who currently serves as deputy chief animal services officer at Austin Animal Center in Austin, Texas, to serve as its department director. Auerbach, who is a nationally recognized expert on creative lifesaving solutions for municipal shelters like PACC, begins her new role July 10.

“We are excited that Ms. Auerbach has decided to join the PACC team and make Pima County her home,” said Dr. Francisco García, assistant county administrator for health services & chief medical officer. “She has the vision, passion, and leadership skills we need to take PACC to the next level of lifesaving and public service.”

Auerbach will join the team at a time when PACC is constructing its new campus, has become its own Pima County department, and is working to push up its save rate. Last year, PACC saved 90 percent of the pets who entered its shelter* and is actively working to increase its save rate for baby animals and big dogs. 

In her current role at Austin Animal Center, which takes in 18,000 pets annually and is a municipal shelter like PACC, Auerbach has helped lead the organization to a save rate above 96 percent**. Prior to her work in Austin, Auerbach served as the assistant director of the Fairfax County Animal Shelter in Fairfax, Va., where she helped lead the efforts to overturn breed-specific adoption restrictions, double adoptions, and cut euthanasia in half. She is a nationally recognized expert on a variety of subjects including shelter intake reduction, innovative foster care, community-based animal welfare, and lifesaving social media. Her work has been featured in numerous national publications, websites, and news outlets.

In her previous two positions, Auerbach successfully reduced intake and increased live outcomes. In Austin, she brought intake down by more than 10% in just one year. In both Fairfax and Austin, she worked with the local field services officer teams to start and manage groundbreaking community programs like the Austin Pet Resource Center, return-in-field for stray pets, and free spay/neuter and microchip clinics for owned pets.

"I'm excited to join the team at Pima Animal Care Center, which is already well-known for leading the way in lifesaving animal services,” Auerbach said. “I can't wait to build on the momentum of such a great organization and help save even more lives by engaging the community.”

*PACC's 90% live outcome rate is based on Asilomar data calculation.

**Austin Animal Center’s save rate does not exclude pets who were surrendered to the shelter for euthanasia.