Hello all,

As some of you may know, the current shelter director of DAS, Paul Ramon, is retiring next month. I’ve been watching, but the city of Dallas has not opened a role online for this position. This leads me to believe that they plan to promote internally, without checking into other options. 

I am officially announcing my intention to be considered for the shelter director position of DAS. I’ve reached out to the city of Dallas HR already, but unfortunately, with no response back. 

I have numerous qualifications that would make me ideal for this role, versus simply promoting from within. 
-Bachelor’s in Business (also Masters in Accounting)
-Management experience in roles of over 14 years
-Active volunteer at DAS since 2018, consistently the most hours over all other volunteers
-Dog foster since 2020, the majority of which have been large dogs with “behavior” notations 
-Close relationship with many staff members, which puts me in a good place to understand and see what changes need to be made to improve 
-Social media accounts of over 60,000 followers, in which I post, network and highlight tons of dogs out of this shelter, which has led to many adoptions, fosters, and even new rescues joining DAS
-I have strong relationships with multiple 501c3’s, locally and out of state, that regularly pull from this shelter 
-I have lived in Texas most of my life, and have been in DFW since 2013. I am currently engaged to a Dallas Police Officer, who did grow up in DFW. So I have very strong ties to this community as well.
-I genuinely care about the animals, they are not “inventory” to me, and I would work harder than the current administration for positive outcomes. 

Some of the initiatives that I want to put in place are:
-removing the open adoption platform and replacing with a minimum of a background check
-educating staff and volunteers on behavior with actual required classes 
-enhance the foster program with educational resources so that fosters actually feel supported, and ultimately reduce the enormous amount of foster returns 
-put processes in place to say “yes” to rescues’ requests versus an automatic “no”, and become comparable to the ease of rescue from shelters like FTW
-work with DPD to actually treat animal cruelty like the massive horror that it is, versus ignoring it as is currently happening 
-create new relationships with businesses, such as vet and boarding facilities, to give more options that will take dogs straight from the shelter, which will help rescues and adopters 
-have public communication forums, not just during budget season, to give people a platform to raise their concerns, so things can improve, and the community can feel like this shelter is a partner

While the city of Dallas HR has not gotten back to me, I am hopeful that there are people here that may have connections to get me the right contacts and a chance to plead my case. 

Sincerely,
Florence M DiGennaro, MAcc