Exploring Life & Business with Julie Castle of Best Friends Animal Society

Can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today? You can include as little or as much detail as you’d like.
I was fresh out of college and on my way home after a summer in Mexico when I stopped at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary thanks to my friend, who had been sponsoring an animal living at the Sanctuary. 

Between the breathtaking views of Angel Canyon and the Best Friends’ mantra of a better world through kindness to animals, I knew I needed to join in. Simply put, it was love at first sight.

So, I called off my commitment to the University of Virginia, where I had been slated to start law school that falls, and jumped in as Best Friends’ 17th employee. I worked six days per week doing whatever was necessary—caring for animals, answering phones, leading tours, and tabling at grocery stores for donations, among other responsibilities. It didn’t pay much. I slept in a van and showered at a local gym for months because I believed so strongly in what Best Friends was doing and I needed to be a part of it.

It was a humble beginning, but it provided me with an opportunity to help build this organization and work with animals (and learn how to do just about every other job, too). 

That’s why I appreciate every employee on our team and strive to provide staff with the best possible work experience. Our employees are our greatest asset and the key to achieving Best Friends’ goal of making America a no-kill country by 2025.   

Has it been a smooth road? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The expression “flying by the seat of the pants” has taken on a whole new meaning for me after becoming Best Friends Animal Society’s first female CEO in 2018. I never could have imagined the major obstacles we would face or the need to constantly adapt to a pandemic, but we’ve made it through stronger and better.

Much of our impact has been fueled by innovation. It’s part of our DNA and one of the ingredients of Best Friends’ secret sauce. This was never more evident than when we began to map out our goal to achieve no-kill nationwide by 2025. We quickly learned that no one in the country inside or outside of animal welfare even knew how many animal shelters there are in the U.S., let alone how many dogs and cats were being killed, and where and for what reasons. You can’t solve a problem if you can’t define and quantify it.

We needed data and information and we needed it fast. In a matter of months, our data team created the pet lifesaving dashboard, the only data visualization tool of its type created by any nonprofit, animal-related or otherwise. This project was no easy feat, with our business intelligence, enterprise data, digital, web, programs, and communications teams all taking on the monstrous task of collecting, analyzing, presenting, and sharing the information in the dashboard with everyday individuals so that they can help their local shelters save more pets.

Thanks to their efforts, we now have the data to guide and target our work and enable animal lovers everywhere to engage with and support their local shelters. Because of our team’s work, Best Friends was named one of Fast Company’s top 10 most innovative companies in the world in the data science category, a crowning achievement in which I take enormous pride. It is clear that our pet lifesaving dashboard is changing the game when it comes to saving animals’ lives. Best Friends has prioritized data-driven work; we have proven to be a powerhouse in data and the world is taking notice.

Another big highlight of these past three years has been seeing Los Angeles enter the ranks of our nation’s no-kill communities! After many challenging, inspiring, grueling, heartwarming, tear-jerking, lifechanging years of working, we have taken Los Angeles from a place where less than 60% of dogs and cats were making it out of shelters alive to the biggest no-kill city in America. The NKLA (No-Kill Los Angeles) Coalition and animal lovers throughout the city have achieved a saving rate of 90.49%.

Our mission-focused accomplishments have fueled tremendous growth, thanks to the work of our dedicated staff, volunteers, and supporters. Today, we are saving more lives and reaching more people and communities than ever before, which is in keeping with our lofty goal of leading the country — every community, every shelter — to no-kill by 2025.

Along with these triumphs, we have also faced great challenges. Soon after taking over as CEO, I learned that a frac sand mining operation had staked claims on 12,000 acres of public land adjacent to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, the heart, and soul of our organization. They had also struck a deal with local city and county officials to access the aquifer that nurtures the Sanctuary. This would have turned our beautiful and verdant Angel Canyon into a parched wasteland and the surrounding land into a pit mine.

I never anticipated having to go toe-to-toe with the oil and gas interests and some of the most powerful interests in the state, but I had no choice if we were to fend off this existential threat to Best Friends. 

The proposed mine would also have created a toxic silica-contaminated environment, endangering the health of our staff and our animals. It was the greatest fight of my career thus far, and it took over a year of incredibly hard work to resolve. Ultimately, we prevailed and protected the land, the water, and our organization while still driving our mission forward, thanks to our amazing team.

Little did I know, a sand mine threatening to swallow up the Sanctuary would only be the beginning of obstacles to come.

No one could have imagined the way that COVID-19 would flip the world upside down. With quarantining and working from home, we, like everyone else, struggled to move forward. Our work at its core is based on in-person interactions. Adoptions, events, and volunteer engagement had all been based on face-to-face relationships. But COVID-19 dictated new terms, and as a team, we had no choice but to adapt and use that innovative spirit to change course and change the way we worked while keeping our focus on saving animals’ lives.

Early on, it appeared that the pandemic would doom 2020 to being a lost year in terms of lifesaving, but we saw tremendous strides in increased save rates, more foster homes, and more community engagement than ever before. For years now, Best Friends has been championing the belief that the best shelter is a compassionate community. When the call went out to take up the slack created by pandemic-related shelter closings, the public responded. We got a glimpse of the kind of community-supported sheltering we have been promoting for years. It’s nothing short of amazing, and it’s work we intend to build on.

In addition, during the height of the pandemic, racial inequity and a need for greater diversity came to the forefront of our national conversation. It has given us the opportunity to reflect on our own organization and the impact diversity, equity, and inclusion have on the work we have set out to do. If we are to engage every community in every city, we need to bring in staff and volunteers who reflect every community. There is still much to be done, but I’m proud of the steps we are taking to ensure a more diverse and equitable organization to enhance our lifesaving work.

Our ability to push through this tough time and continue to work toward achieving our mission is the reason we have seen such fantastic success both externally and internally. So much so that Best Friends was recognized as one of Fast Company’s Brands that Matter in 2021 and 2022. What we have learned during these trying times will only make us better moving forward.

Please tell us more about your business or organization. What should we know? What do you do, what do you specialize in/what are you known for? What sets you apart from others? What are you most proud of brand-wise? What do you want our readers to know about your brand, offerings, services, etc.?
Best Friends Animal Society is a leading animal welfare organization working to end the killing of dogs and cats in America’s shelters by 2025. Founded in 1984, Best Friends is a pioneer in the no-kill movement and has helped reduce the number of animals killed in shelters from an estimated 17 million per year to around 355,000. 

Best Friends runs lifesaving programs all across the country, as well as the nation’s largest no-kill animal sanctuary in Kanab, Utah. Working collaboratively with a network of more than 4,000 animal welfare and shelter partners, as well as with community members nationwide, Best Friends is working to Save Them All®. 

At Best Friends, it’s in our cultural DNA to always practice kindness. We are an animal welfare organization, but our bigger desire is kindness. Kindness to animals builds a better world for all of us. But not just animals, kindness also extends to our fellow humans, our planet, and everything around us. You cannot go wrong betting on kindness. This focus is just one of the reasons Best Friends Animal Society was named one of Utah’s Top Places to Work by the Salt Lake Tribune in 2021 and 2022.  

There are so many rewarding aspects of animal welfare, but at the end of the day, it’s the simplest thing that motivates us most: the moment when a person falls in love with a shelter animal and brings them home. We get so many emails from people, usually accompanied by an adorable photo, who tell us their new dog or cat completely changed their life by providing unconditional love and companionship. Oftentimes, we hear that instead of rescuing a pet, the pet rescued them. It’s really the best feeling in the world to know we’re making these connections.

If you’re an animal lover, there are so many ways to help homeless pets in your community. By fostering, adopting, volunteering, donating, or sharing on social media, you’ll save lives and be part of the movement to make America a no-kill by 2025. It’s so rewarding. For more information, visit bestfriends.org.