Marlies Sullivan

President

 

 Marlies Sullivan is the Executive Director of Leadership Initiatives at the University of Rochester, with a focus on professional fundraising. Since 1990, she has been passionately involved in animal rescue, beginning as a volunteer at the Bridgeport Animal Shelter in Connecticut. She later served as the town-appointed chair of the Oxford Animal Shelter in Oxford, CT, where she led the Dog Days of Oxford Event, a major tri-state fundraiser dedicated to helping homeless cats and dogs and rebuilding the shelter (2000-2011).

 

From 2018 to 2023, Marlies served as Vice-President and Director of Fundraising at Pet Pride of NY, a no-kill cat sanctuary in Victor, NY. During her tenure, she successfully raised over $1.2 million and managed an expansion project that tripled the sanctuary's capacity, resulting in a dramatic increase in cat adoptions from 125 in 2018 to 850 in 2023.​

 

In addition to having five cats and two dogs of their own, Marlies and her husband Chris manage eight cat colonies in Victor, NY. Over the past seven years, they have constructed and donated over 150 insulated wooden cat houses to various cat rescue organizations and colony managers. They have extended their impact by conducting Zoom training sessions on building insulated cat houses for out-of-state rescues and training local rescues to build emergency shelters.

 

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