Catherine Ellsmere – President and Executive Board Member
Catherine has been involved with RAPS for more than 15 years and has served on the board for almost the entire time. She brings to the organization a strong business management, marketing and communications background, having worked in management and supervisory capacities for several large retail chains and having owned and operated her own successful business for the past 25 years.
In addition to serving on the RAPS Board, Catherine has volunteered with the Sanctuary and with the Thrift Store. She is committed to seeing RAPS continue to grow more efficient, provide more opportunities, and improve the quality and care for all animals in the community.
Fearn Edmonds – Vice-President and Executive Board Member
Fearn has been with RAPS for more than 20 years (since it was Richmond Homeless Cats) and has been instrumental in the organization’s growth as it has become the large, multifaceted organization it is today.
She is proud of the diverse and talented team of individuals RAPS attracts, each of whom is advancing the mission of the organization every day. Fearn believes in providing the tools and opportunities for all individuals to reach their greatest potential. She brings a background in marketing, public relations and community social services to RAPS and is committed to continuous learning and development to improve the various ways she benefits the animals and people she serves. As Chair of the Board, Fearn is a leader and a role model in the community, educating the public and providing advocacy for animals.
Margaret Leathley – Secretary and Executive Board Member
Being on the RAPS board for more than a decade has equipped Margaret with knowledge of all the important facets of the organization and confirmed how important animal welfare is to her and all who volunteer beside her.
The vision that has always driven RAPS as an organization is now ensuring even more achievements and seeing dreams become reality. Margaret has spent three decades working at the University of B.C., most of those years in the Pension Office, where her first love is helping the staff at UBC in their plans for retirement. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Management and Professional Staff as a member-at-large and sits on various committees dealing with benefits, employee engagement and policies and procedures. On the animal side, Margaret has two cats who love her husband (who is allergic to them) more than they love her, which is why she loves her time at the RAPS Cat Sanctuary – “cats that will let me pet them and want to be with me! What a wonderful feeling – nothing like it in the world.”
Ariel Lioznyansky – Treasurer and Executive Board Member
Ariel (Ari) Lioznyansky is the P3 Operations Manager for Angus Consulting Management Ltd., with overall responsibility for the operations, costs, and profitability of a portfolio of facilities in B.C., including a large commercial complex in downtown Vancouver and a Public-Private Partnership acute care hospital and long-term care facility in Northern British Columbia. Ariel has extensive experience in the social infrastructure sector, having worked in the construction, design and engineering, project management, and currently the facility operations of these large and complex facilities across the aviation, healthcare, justice, corrections, education, and civil sectors.
As an Operations Manager, Ariel provides leadership, strategic direction, and contractual interpretation for his portfolio of facilities. On a day-to-day basis, he directs and oversees functions associated with human resource management, budget control, contract negotiations, client management, dispute resolution, contractual compliance, and regulatory compliance.
Ariel has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration with a major in accounting, as well as having recently passed the Common Final Examination (CFE) which is one of the last requirements to achieving the CPA designation. In addition, Ariel has had his Project Management Professional (PMP) designation since 2018, as well as his Plumbing Red Seal since 2010.
In his spare time, Ariel enjoys wildlife photography, as well as outdoor sports like snowboarding and hiking, and cycling.
Rebeka Breder B.A. Joint Honours, J.D. – Board Member
Rebeka Breder has been recognized as one of Canada’s 25 most influential lawyers. She is possibly the country’s foremost expert in animal law. Rebeka has extensive experience in animal law litigation and in the animal protection movement. She founded Breder Law, Western Canada’s first law firm to focus exclusively on animal law.
Rebeka has experience at all levels of court and various tribunals. Rebeka’s passion for animal protection and welfare started at an early age, while she was growing up in Montreal. Rebeka is known as a trailblazer in developing Animal Law in Canada. She founded the first Animal Law section of the Canadian Bar Association in Canada and is the founder and current Chair of the Animal Law section, B.C. Branch. In her “spare” time, she dedicates a lot of her time to animal protection causes, including having sat on the Board of the Vancouver Humane Society for over 10 years..
Rebeka’s animal law practice includes acting for individuals such as defending dogs, pet custody disputes, veterinary malpractice suits, strata and condominium disputes, and breeder disputes. Rebeka also acts for organizations as a consultant, and to challenge government for failing to protect animals, such as suing the government over the live transportation of horses and the BC wolf cull. Rebeka acts exclusively in matters that can develop the rights and welfare of animals.
Rebeka is a founder of the UBC Animal Law course, and she has been an Adjunct Professor. Rebeka is also a frequent lecturer at various speaking engagements and schools. The media also often interviews her on various topical issues locally, nationally and internationally.
Joe Dasilva – Board Member
Joe Dasilva is the former Director, Corporate Communications, for Richmond’s Ebco Group of Companies. Joe recently retired from his 43 years (1977-2020) of service to Ebco founders Helmut and Hugo Eppich.
Joe’s ancestral family originated from Portuguese Goa in India but he was born and grew up in Uganda Africa. He is a grateful immigrant to Canada having fled the brutality of Ida Amin as a refugee.
The Ebco Group of Companies comprised of 15 affiliated companies and approximately one thousand employees at its peak . Joe was responsible for Ebco’s community relations which included multicultural events, religious diversity and community projects involving the fundraising and philanthropy that were, and continue to be, an integral part of Ebco’s Corporate Values program. Joe was instrumental in introducing Ebco’s multicultural, racial, religious and gender diversity awareness, long before such awareness became popular. The company won an award from the Government of Canada for this program, the first in Canada to do so.
Joe is the founder and CEO of Hope House, based in Goa, India, his ancestral home which he started 25 years ago with another non-profit group ASRO (which means shelter). Hope House is a charitable organization helping HIV orphans. Hope House is wholly funded by Joe since 1995 and the two organizations provides food, shelter, education, social and work skills for approximately 22 kids.
Joe is a past board member of the Richmond Museum Society (2007 to 2017). He is currently a board member of the Bayit (Richmond Jewish Synagogue), serving since 2012.
Joe is the father of Dax and Tasha Dasilva. Dax is the founder and CEO of Lightspeed Inc. Lightspeed is a multi-billion-dollar Canadian enterprise that Joe helped his son start. Joe was the first angel investor and Director of this unicorn company (in business, a unicorn is a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion that is a statistical rarity of such successful ventures). His daughter Tasha is the founder and CEO of Infuse I.T. Inc. a technology company partnering with Lightspeed to offer point-of-sale systems to retail and restaurant businesses.
Joe and his wife are the proud parents of Siena, a nine-year-old Hungarian Vizsla dog. Joe has been supporting his son’s endeavour, through Dax’s non-profit Age of Union organization, which is resolved to start building a kinder, greener and more livable world where everyone and everything can thrive in union, including to save endangered species in Africa, especially Gorillas and Elephants.
Joe is a strong believer in RAPS’ no-kill mandate and is joining the RAPS Board of Directors because of his love for animals and his desire to see the success for RAPS’ cat and dog sanctuary projects and the expansion of the RAPS Animal Hospital.
Jeff Klos – Board Member
Jeff is a lover of nature and animals, who devotes a fair bit of attention acting as a personal assistant, hall monitor to his two feline kids, Miss Puddin and Mr Latte.
After a 34 year career as a accountant, retiring in his mid 50’s, he experienced a fair bit of changes in his life and eventually became aware of RAPS as part of his interest of animals. He is quite impressed with the RAPS organization, its personnel, and growth, with the overall model of the up to 500 member Cat Sanctuary, its no kill shelter policy, educational efforts, along with the operation of the RAPS thrift stores and the Not for Profit Veterinary Hospital helping to support the Cat Sanctuary and the human community at large.
He considers himself fortunate to have spent a fair bit of his younger and teen years on his grandparent’s farm, where he experienced the realities of the life of various animals, from cats, dogs, chickens, pigs, cows and horses; all with an expression of a different personality. As an adult he has and still does spend a fair portion of his life living rurally in nature. He became more comfortable with reference to his pets as kids, for his wife and partner for several decades just saw their two canine dogs Mr Joe (Sir (sure) barks a lot), and Miss Gem, who went wild over the smell of hand cream, as our kids.
With also having lived in the city, he loves the opportunities that RAPS provides for us humans to connect with each other, and the expression of nature in our beloved feline, canine and other furry, feathered, or other non human friends we may have.
Jeff’s career started at eleven operating his own franchise of a paper route learning customer service, sales promotion, and cash management. He later worked in retail, then spent his first eight years as an accountant in office management activities for a larger retail franchise. In these first years he also worked in public accounting, and performed activities in financial management, cost accounting for an agricultural food manufacturer.
Still too young to retire, he spent an additional 26 years working for the federal government as an auditor, focused on financial reporting and tax compliance of small and medium private entities, and larger public organizations. This allowed for him to observe and learn from many different individuals in a diverse range of economic activities, circumstances, and stages of change for these entities, and their personnel.
With the dynamic and extremely challenging level of change society has been going through, Jeff’s understanding is that change is necessary even for an organization to maintain ongoing operations. Over its life, RAPS has navigated quite the growth, with wonderful potential opportunities on its horizon.
As such, Jeff is grateful to be a part of the RAPS organization and their efforts to enhance the lives of both humans and non humans alike.
Daniel Lay – Board Member
The Regional Animal Protection Society is delighted to announce that Daniel Lay has accepted reappointment as a member of the Board of Directors after a three-year hiatus.
Daniel brings many years of experience in animal welfare, including having been on the RAPS Board for three years 2017-2020, as well as extensive previous involvement in animal welfare. It all started in Ontario decades ago, when Daniel and his wife got involved with an animal welfare group called Animal Alert. They fostered, rehabilitated and socialized dogs to prepare them for forever homes. Daniel also loves cats and has spent many hours volunteering at the RAPS Cat Sanctuary.
Daniel has devoted a great deal of time and resources to many other organizations in his community, including volunteering with Prostate Cancer Canada, as a dog-walker at the Vancouver animal shelter, transporting injured animals for B.C. Wildlife Rescue, as director of neighborhood emergency planning for the Cowichan Valley Regional District for five years, and as a B.C. Provincial Emergency Planning volunteer.
Daniel is a former Regional Director of Operational Readiness for BC for River Rock Casino Resort, overseeing multimillion-dollar construction projects across British Columbia. He brings to the Board of Directors a wealth of experience in operations, new building projects and development. His previous years of experience on the RAPS Board of Directors, having served in numerous committees, include:
- RAPS Animal Hospital Capital Campaign and Building committee
- RAPS Cat Sanctuary Upgrades & Renovations Committee
- RAPS Foster Program Committee
- RAPS Development Committee
- RAPS No-Kill Commitment Committee
Daniel is excited to be rejoining the Board of Directors as RAPS continues to expand its operations to better serve animals and their people.
Ayelet Weil – Board Member
Ayelet is currently the Executive Director of the Louis Brier Foundation. She comes to the Board of RAPS with more than 15 years of substantial not-for-profit management experience both in B.C. and in Israel. She has an impressive track record of fundraising and relationship-management, strategic planning, community engagement, relations and development.
In her current role, she works closely with an incredibly high-caliber Board of Directors of the Louis Brier Foundation (LBF), the Louis Brier Home and Hospital Executive Leadership, as well as current and potential donors, towards growing the foundation as the second most important funding body of the Snider Campus, after government. The foundation supports the Louis Brier Home and Hospital and the Weinberg Residence, which encompass the Snider Campus, the only Jewish care facilities in Western Canada providing superior long-term care and assisted living. She guides and leads the foundation and all of its revenue-generating programs, and has developed a high-level fundraising strategy while ensuring its successful implementation, and has enhanced the relationship between the foundation and these agencies.
Prior to joining the Louis Brier Foundation in February 2021, Ayelet held the position of Associate Director of Community Engagement at the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver. She was also the Manager of Women’s Philanthropy and Manager of Major Gifts for Jewish Federation’s Annual Campaign. Her previous experience includes working in academia at the Interdisciplinary Centre (IDC) Herzliya and Managing Director of Hillel BC. Ayelet holds a Master’s Degree in Public Policy – Conflict Resolution and Mediation with International Mediation Certification, with distinction, from Tel Aviv University, and a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Victoria.