IAABC Board of Directors

Danielle Basciano

Danielle is a professional dog trainer and behavior consultant, working with dogs and cats through her business — CNY Pet Training & Behavior in Upstate New York. An active volunteer in her community, she consults regularly with local shelters, animal rescues and governmental and animal welfare agencies.

Danielle has served on the board of the IAABC since 2012. She has also served on a variety of committees, task forces and non-profit boards, including her local SPCA and PAWS of CNY, a therapy dog organization with approximately 180 teams where she was president and lead evaluator for 12 years. Since her retirement from the board in 2015, Danielle continues to volunteer with PAWS of CNY as a therapy dog class instructor.

Danielle is a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant (CDBC) and an Associate Certified Cat Behavior Consultant (ACCBC) with the IAABC as well as a Certified Professional Dog Trainer (CPDT-KA) and a Certified Behavior Consultant Canine (CBCC-KA) through CCPDT. Additionally, Danielle is a Professional Member of APDT, an AKC Canine Good Citizen evaluator, a mentor trainer for CATCH Canine Academy, a mentor for the IAABC Animal Behavior Consulting Principles & Practice Course and a member of the IAABC Application Review Committee.

She currently resides in Upstate New York and along with the humans in her life, shares her home with a dog and four cats.

Barbara Davis, CPDT-KA, CDBC

Barbara Davis, CPDT-KA, CDBC, owner of BADDogsInc Family Dog Training & Behavior, is a certified dog behavior consultant. Barbara specializes in working with families to resolve serious behavior problems with their companion dogs; she also works extensively in rescue dog rehabilitation and integration with fosters and permanent placements. Her company also offers a wide range of individual, group and boarding training programs, as well as a comprehensive trainer development program.

Barbara is a Professional Member of APDT, and holds a CPDT-KA from the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers. She’s an Advisory Board Member of AABP, and an AKC CGC evaluator.

Barbara has been a contributing columnist for the APDT Chronicle of the Dog’s “On Behavior”, which featured several of her challenging case studies. She’s also been featured as a contributor to the IAABC Journal.

Barbara has been actively involved in large breed dog rescue, and supports many canine rescue organizations in her region. She has served on the boards of two charitable foundations supporting large breed dog rescue and the local county animal shelter, and has accumulated 20 years experience volunteering for 3 local animal shelters.

Barbara’s been with IAABC since 2004, motivated to join by her desire to contribute to an organization poised to promote standards and professionalism in the field of animal behavior consulting. In her tenure with IAABC, she has served in a number of volunteer roles, including Regional Coordinator, Exam Committee, RPC/ARC, and Dog Division Chair.

Barbara lives in Corona, CA with her husband, Wayne, and the family’s three golden retrievers.

Fernando Diaz, CPDT-KA

Fernando Diaz is the Behavior and Training Manager for Pasadena Humane Society. He has over 12 years of experience in the animal care industry, having worked with marine mammals, reptiles, fish, cats, and dogs. He directly oversees the training, development, delivery, and evaluation of the organization’s behavior programs, working with staff and volunteers to do so.

Fernando is a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant (CDBC) and a Certified Shelter Behavior Specialist (CSBS) through IAABC and a Certified Professional Dog Trainer (CPDT-KA). He works with cats, dogs, and reptiles through his business Building Better Bonds Pet Consulting in California. He focuses predominantly on fear-based behaviors and aggression. Fernando is also a Professional Member of APDT.

Fernando lives in California and shares his home with two hounds and a cat.

Renee Hall

Renee Hall is a professional dog trainer and certified Dog Behavior Consultant through her business Let's Speak Dog Training & Sports Studio in Nazareth, PA. Renee is an active member of her community, offering pet, sports and behavior modification at the Studio as well as consulting services for local veterinarians, rescue and shelters. An active mentor, Renee enjoys working with instructors new to the field and introducing a scientific approach to animal training to new students. Teamwork and team development has been paramount to her business plan and offering the best educational environment for learners the theme for continued growth of the business. Renee has been involved with animals most of her life, switched gears from Property/Business Management to open Let's Speak Dog ten years ago.

An active member in dog sports, Renee currently lives with 5 golden retrievers, 2 cats and is usually out playing with the dogs on her day off. A long time sports enthusiast, Renee is currently an active obedience and rally judge, working with NATE developing a competitive venue for Treibball, as well as mentoring for a number of organizations.

Professional Credentials/Affiliations: CPDT-KA, CDBC, APDT Professional Membership, IAABC certified member, IAABC BOD, NATE BOD, NATE CC Chair, P&P Mentor, CWRI, PPG member, AABP, Dogs & Storks, AKC CGC evaluator, CDSP judge, WCRL judge.

Michelle Mullins, KPA-CTP, CPDT-KSA

Michelle Mullins is the owner and Director of Training at Honest To Dog, LLC in Richmond, Virginia. Michelle has been training dogs for 15 years and all of her work has the same objective—developing long, enriching relationships between pets and their people. Michelle offers training and behavior consulting through Honest To Dog including in home training for new pets being added to a family, as well as training animals calm, fear free cooperative husbandry for veterinary and grooming care. She has recently added additional behavior consulting having worked closely with certified behavior consultants and veterinary behaviorists for many years. She continues to pursue education and certification in dog behavior consulting.

In addition to her qualifications as a Karen Pryor Academy (KPA) Certified Training Partner (CTP), Michelle is a Certified Professional Dog Trainer - Knowledge and Skills Assessed (CPDT - KSA), TAGteach Level One Certified and a Fear Free Certified Professional. Michelle is a video contributor to the Fear Free Animal Trainer course. She has been speaker and writer for the association of Professional Dog Trainers. Michelle is guest speaker for both Ohio State University and University of Tennessee.

Prior to launching her private, in-home training business Michelle taught puppy and adolescence dog classes at the Richmond SPCA, private lessons, and worked as the Training and Behavior Education Manager for Premier Pet Products and later PetSafe, after their acquisition of Premier Pet. Over her ten years in the pet product industry she provided expertise and education in training and behavior for new product development and instructions, PetSafe associates, and retail partners such as Amazon, PetSmart and Chewy.com. She was also a resource for tradeshows, veterinary clinics and schools, animal shelters and community groups. Michelle was the liaison for trainers and veterinary professionals for product needs and educational resources and is honored to have worked with top professionals in our industry.

She enjoys participating in rally, agility, tricks, and tracking with her dogs, preferring to find which sport the dog enjoys most.

Outside of training her dogs, she enjoys traveling and photography.

Mara Velez

Mara Velez is a Certified Professional Dog Trainer who specializes in training fearful dogs; helping families with dogs recently adopted from a shelter; managing and training leash reactive dogs; and modifying fear-based aggression behaviors. Mara has spent more than a decade in sheltering at both open-admission and limited-admission facilities. Most recently, she was a behavior and training consultant at Contra Costa Animal Services in Martinez, CA. At CCASD, Mara trained new volunteers and collaboratively developed behavior program structures for the shelter, including the behavior evaluation and playgroup guidelines. She is now the Executive Director for the Shelter Playgroup Alliance (SPA), a shelter enrichment organization that helps shelters implement enrichment programs, including playgroups. Mara is also the Executive Director of Humane Dog Training Advocates (HDTA), an owner-education focused non-profit. At both SPA and HDTA, Mara’s key functions are strategic planning, fundraising, and tactical planning as well as co-leading the boards of directors. She previously served on the board of Give a Dog a Bone, a shelter enrichment program in San Francisco.

In addition to training dogs, Mara also enjoys training other species because it expands her training and observation skills. To date, she has worked with cats, bunnies, wolves, foxes, guinea pigs, coyotes, buffalo, donkeys, goats, alpacas, chickens, birds, and a fish. In addition to completing KPA, LLA, IAABC Principles and Practice, and several other animal behavior and training-related programs, Mara continually develops her skills and knowledge of canines by attending seminars and reading science-based canine literature.

Mara holds both a bachelors and masters degree in psychology and completed all of the course work for a doctorate in education. Mara is also a learning and development consultant to corporations across a variety of industries, where she advises and works on projects related to leadership development, process improvement, and learning program management.

Kristy Gibson Simmons

Kristy is a Certified Dog Behaviour Consultant, and has been consulting for around 8 years, starting with vet clinic puppy classes, and eventually running her own successful consulting business on the Sunshine Coast, Australia. She has also worked as a vet nurse in both avian specialty and small animals for the last 10 years, and remains passionate about holistic animal health and behaviour.

She has concentrated primarily on fearful and aggressive behaviour for the past 2 years, but also loves the science of animal cognition, voluntary cooperative vet care across domestic and captive exotic species, and the importance of pharmaceutical vet intervention when necessary.

She currently resides in Florida, working at Steve Martin's Natural Encounters Inc. and is concentrating on her love of avian training.

Sarah Filipiak

Sarah Filipiak is a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant (CDBC) through IAABC. Sarah is a past president of and served a five-year term on the board of the IAABC, where she also serves on the Education Committee and offers a Beginning Behavior Consulting mentorship. She has been a member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers since 2001 and teaches the APDT's popular course, "Dog Training 101: What Every Dog Trainer Should Know."

Sarah raised and trained European-line German Shepherd Dogs for more than 12 years, and has competed in disc, agility, AKC and UKC obedience and rally. In 2010, she obtained her first whippet, Fanfare's Crazy Train RA BN RL1 CGC.

Sarah holds a bachelor's degree in magazine journalism from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University.