Juliana Castañeda Turner - Co-founder and President
Juliana co-founded the sanctuary in 2006, from that moment on, she has given her life to saving animals. Vegetarian since she was 5 and vegan from 2006, and a lifelong activist. Juliana is also the regional coordinator for Food for Life Global, the world’s largest vegan food relief.
Contact Juliana
Ekala Das - Co-founder and Manager
Ekala cofounded the sanctuary, put aside his career as an artist to dedicate his life to saving animals. He currently oversees the well-being of all the animals. Recently, he has started creating artwork of the animals to help support the sanctuary.
Contact Ekala
Paul Rodney Turner - Animal Caretaker and Chef
Paul cares for the larger animals on the sanctuary and is also the in-house vegan chef. He is the founder and director of Food for Life Global, the world’s largest vegan food relief, a social entrepreneur and founder of the feedOM Kindness Ecosystem. He is a 10-year veteran of the World bank, former monk and author of 5 books.
Contact Paul
Jorden Meade Ruggles - Secretary
Jordie is a long-time animal activists and graphic designer who lives in Seattle. She began doing pro-bono graphic design for JAS in 2016 and soon after took over the role of charity president for 3 years. Jordie has also helped us bring 8 dogs to the US to their forever homes!
Contact Jordie
Dianne Hall - Social Media Manager
Dianne loves animals and has been involved in animal activism since 2011. She has been a long-time donor to JAS and 3-years ago took up the role of managing our social media and newsletter. Dianna lives in Denver, CO and loves the outdoors.
Amelia - International Volunteer Recruiter
Amelia is an animal-loving environmentalist from Canada. Since going vegan in 2014 she has dedicated all her free time to saving animals. She has traveled around the world volunteering for Sea Shepherd, Elephant Nature Park, Esther the wonder pig and JAS. She is so inspired by Juliana’s work and is thrilled to be part of the team.
Contact Amelia
Camilo Arias - Assistant to Director
Camilo is a professional musician, who also has a great love for literature; this interest in writing, added to his love for animals, led him to become involved with Juliana’s sanctuary.
For him, working in this wonderful place means giving a greater meaning to life, since he thinks that giving his skills for a just cause is something that rejoices anyone. Not everyone has the opportunity to do something worthwhile every day, and for Camilo, it means getting up every day to fight for the other species that live with us.
His plans for the future involve creating music and art that helps more people become aware of the importance of animal liberation and continue supporting the Sanctuary in every possible way.
Contact Camilo
Tabitha Kelly - Grantwriter
Tabitha was born in Connecticut, where she began to recognize the beauty of the natural world, which led to her pursuit of a Natural Resource Management degree at Clemson University. After several years, she began pursuing her Masters of Nonprofit Management at Northeastern University. Tabitha manages our grant-writing team. In her spare time, she enjoys backpacking with her two dogs in the wilds of Utah, practicing daily yoga, and reading fiction books.
Contact Tabitha
Carolina Ruiz - National Volunteer coordinator
Vegan since 2017, Carolina or Helena Fox as she is known for her artistic work is a passionate animal rights advocate, a lionheart. She’s a well known cruelty free & vegan makeup artist in Colombia, she has been investigating cruelty free beauty and lifestyle for about 5 years now. She’s been leading our national volunteer group since 2018 who clean, fix and maintain all the areas of the animals once a month.
She is also mother of one of our sanctuary habitants: our calf Simón David, which she rescued with her friends. She says working at the sanctuary is an honor and will be forever grateful to be able to be part of this family. We are her favorite place in the world.
Lizzie Schaeffer - Accountant
A vegetarian for 20 years and vegan for 6, Lizzie is an avid traveler, lover of all things nature, and passionate about animal rights .She currently lives at the beach in Charleston, SC. New to the JAS team, Lizzie is excited to do meaningful work and make a difference in the fight for species equality. A CPA for 10 years, with non-profit experience, she is looking forward to helping JAS as the new accountant
Sara Stacey - Grantwriter
