Dr. Scarlett Magda is a veterinarian with a passion for raising awareness about the interconnectedness of human and animal health and tackling the root causes of zoonotic disease transmission and animal welfare issues. She has over 20 years of international experience working with organizations ranging from the Department of Wildlife Conservation, Sri Lanka, Thai Elephant Conservation Center, Elephant Family, UK, the Belize Zoo and the Ministry of Environment in Costa Rica. She had sat on the board of directors for Veterinarians Without Borders Canada for five years prior to moving to the United States.

Her involvement in international veterinary medicine started in 2007 while she was a veterinary student designing an elephant saddle project investigating skin wounds in Thailand and India. This project honored her with the Ballard Award for Wildlife from Morris Animal Foundation and is the only work on the topic that has been published in the scientific literature to date. She later participated in a goat health project in Mbarara Uganda which demonstrated to her the clear link between human and animal health through brucellosis prevention work. After graduating from the Ontario Veterinary College in 2009 she moved to New York City to understand how the veterinary profession was engaging in global health issues.

Spending years researching she realized there was a need to unite the strengths of the United States into a single network of veterinary health professionals which could provoke and support a national and global health platform for change. With a passion for raising awareness through multiple platforms, emphasizing collaboration, and a strong belief in “not reinventing the wheel” Dr. Magda wanted to create an organization that emphasizes enhancement of sound international animal projects that lack funding, training and support thus in 2014 Veterinarians International was created. After 7 years of reflection, the mission of VI has narrowed to empowering and training veterinarians in ecologically sensitive regions.

Dr. Magda also practices emergency veterinary medicine in numerous specialty hospitals across New York State.

Dr. William “Billy” Karesh is the Executive Vice President for Health and Policy for EcoHealth Alliance. He is also the President of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) Working Group on Wildlife and chairs the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission’s Wildlife Health Specialist Group, a network of hundreds of wildlife and health experts around the world. He serves as the inter-project liaison for the USAID Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT-2 program.

Dr. Karesh has pioneered initiatives focusing attention and resources on solving problems created by the interactions among wildlife, people, and their animals. He coined the term “One Health” to describe the interdependence of healthy ecosystems, animals and people and the term has been adopted by many organizations, including the United Nations, in local and global health efforts. Dr. Karesh has created dozens of initiatives to encourage linkages among public health, agriculture and environmental health agencies and organizations around the world. He has personally lead programs and projects in over 60 countries, covering terrain from Argentina to Zambia. In addition to his work in the private non-profit sector, Dr. Karesh has also worked for the USDA, US DOD and DOI, He serves on the World Health Organization’s Roster of Experts, as a consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N., and on the Steering Committee of OFFLU (OIE-FAO Network of Expertise for Animal Influenzas).

Dr. Karesh is internationally recognized as an authority on the subject of animal and human health linkages and wildlife. He has published over one hundred and sixty scientific papers and numerous book chapters, and written for broader audience publications such as Foreign Affairs and The Huffington Post.

Dr. Grace Angeline Watene is a veterinarian and post-graduate student with a MSc in Veterinary Public Health at the University Of Nairobi, and a MSc in Veterinary Epidemiology at the University Of London; Royal Veterinary College (UK).

She has been a Graduate research Fellow at ILRI involved in Coxiella burnetii-sero-prevalence work, in the Horn project as a pioneer grant holder in an Antimicrobial Resistance multidisciplinary research project to be conducted in Oloitoktok, Kenya, and in a number of volunteer projects: USAID one Health programme in Kajiado; where they assessed the one Health needs of the Maasai community in 2017, and has been part of the veterinary team that leads the Laikipia Rabies Vaccination campaign at Mpala research Centre (Nanyuki) since 2016.

She is now the Kenya Representative at Veterinarians International, where she is part of our community based team; Sauti Moja, in Marsabit (Northern Kenya) where she renders professional support to the indigenous agro-pastoralists living in the area, aids in community needs prioritization, and actively monitors project implementation and progress.

She is a disciplined public health enthusiast and an avid epidemiologist with a One Health focus. Dr. Watene aspires to take on a leadership role in confronting the socio-economic elements that determine the health and wellbeing of both animal and human populations.

Dr. Romain Pizzi is currently the senior vice-president of the British Veterinary Zoological Society and president of the Scottish branch of the British Veterinary Association. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and a recognized specialist in zoo and wildlife medicine. He completed his doctorate in wildlife surgery and was elected a life member of the Association of Laparoscopic Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland.  He was honorary associate professor in zoo & wildlife medicine at the University of Nottingham for 15 years, ran the vet service for the Scottish national wildlife rescue center for 18 years (overseeing over 100,000 wildlife casualties), worked as specialist surgeon for the Royal Zoological Society for Scotland for a decade, and was previously the pathologist at London Zoo. He is a board trustee of the Animal Welfare Foundation, a board trustee of Chester Zoo, and a member of the UK government’s Animal Welfare Committee. He has worked training wildlife veterinarians for wildlife conservation organizations, government departments, and zoos in over 40 countries on 5 continents for a quarter of a century, working with everything from elephants to critically endangered snails.

Dr. Malaka Abeywardana is a veterinary surgeon working in the Department of Wildlife Conservation, Sri Lanka. He obtained his basic degree in veterinary medicine from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. He also holds a postgraduate degree in Fish and Wildlife Conservation. He received training in Wildlife Pathology through the Royal Veterinary College in 2022 with scholarship support from Veterinarians International. Since 2016, he has been working as a veterinary surgeon at the Udawalawe Elephant Transit Home (ETH), the world’s only Asian Elephant Orphanage.

Dr. Malaka is interested in researching Asian elephants and Leopards and has performed many breakthroughs in Sri Lanka including the first elephant blood transfusion, creation of the first elephant prosthesis and remote sensor collaring of a black leopard. Dr. Malaka is working towards enhancing the services offered and infrastructure at the ETH with support from Veterinarians International.

Kalani Samarakoon was born in Galle, Sri Lanka, in 1988. She spent her childhood with her family in the suburbs of Columbo, the capital of Sri Lanka, completing her education at Visakha Vidyalaya, one of the top schools for girls. Upon completion advanced level examinations with honors, she chose to join the faculty of Veterinary Medicine & Animal Sciences at the University of Peradeniya.

Her family watched her grow, talk to, and show a special relationship and care for animals, and supported her throughout her undergraduate journey, where she graduated in 2012 with merits. She completed internships at the National Zoological Gardens and the Department of Wildlife Conservation in 2013, where she had the opportunity to meet many of the giants in wildlife conservation. While gaining hands-on experience working with the wildlife and zoo veterinarians, she decided that she wanted to dedicate the rest of her life to wildlife conservation. She set herself up as a small animal veterinarian in 2014 expanding her veterinary skills, and then joined as a government veterinary surgeon at the Department of Animal Production & Health, Sri Lanka in March 2015. She was assigned duty in the Eastern province of Sri Lanka, where she also took on the challenge of actively contributing to facilitating the welfare of fellow humans who have been undergoing the harshness of 30 years of civil war. She has had the opportunity to work with a multi-cultural, multi-religious society, manage regional government projects and use her veterinary knowledge to intervene in the small-scale farming industry, all helping to improve her community skills.

In 2016 she was called upon to service at the Department of Wildlife Conservation Sri Lanka – her dream. She was assigned to the Elephant Transit Home, Udawalawa, where more than 50 orphan elephant calves were undergoing continuous rehabilitation, reintroduction and post-release monitoring programs. In addition to being responsible for elephant calves, she was able to participate in wildlife medicine and conservation projects including veterinary duties in the field and at hospitals for native wildlife, wildlife-human conflict management, and conservational translocations and public awareness projects. She was specifically assigned duties at the confiscated elephant unit at the Department of Wildlife Conservation, where primarily subadult elephants pending legal clarifications were held under regular monitoring and reporting, managing their nutrition, health and welfare.

During her duties at Elephant Transit Home, she contributed to several research projects for wildlife medicine and conservation, which eventually led her to receive the “2021/22 Commonwealth Shared Masters Scholarship” to complete her MSC, Wild Animal Health, a year of study at Royal Veterinary College, London, United Kingdom.

Dr. Garde is originally from Canada and holds a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, as well as a Masters of Science in International Animal Health from the University of Edinburgh, Centre for Tropical Animal Diseases. Her interests include disease ecology at the interface between humans, domestic animals, and wild animals, with a particular focus on free-roaming domestic dogs and cats.

Elena, together with her husband Guillermo Pérez, came to Chile from Canada to work on these issues in 2009 and later formed The Global Alliance of Animals and People (The GAAP) in 2014. The mission of The GAAP isto connect animals, people and the environment to create a healthy and sustainable world. Elena brings significant expertise and experience to the organization, in terms of project management and field team supervision, applied research, technical experience, and education.

Her passions include increasing access for all animals to quality veterinary care and developing long-term sustainable programs that address the complex issue of domestic dog zoonoses (particularly rabies and hydatid disease), population management and control, and the multiple conflicts arising at the interfaces negatively affected by uncontrolled canine populations in developing regions.