Liana is a Research Associate with the Institute for Human-Animal Connection at the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work. She earned a Master of Social Work and a Human-Animal-Environment Interactions in Social Work (HAEI-SW) Certificate from the University of Denver in 2022. Most recently, Liana was the Keeping Families Together Implementation Coordinator with American Pets Alive!. In this role, she helped animal welfare organizations and communities access the tools they need to keep pets with their families and avoid preventable surrender. While leading a working group of animal welfare experts, she helped create the Eviction Response Toolkit. Previously, Liana was the Community Outreach Specialist with Pima Animal Care Center in Tucson, Arizona, where she worked with people experiencing homelessness and those facing extreme poverty to keep and care for their pets. She developed and coordinated multiple community outreach programs, including those created in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Liana seeks to help communities build and challenge power to make change, connect to existing networks of community care, and dismantle barriers to pet partnership. She is particularly drawn to engaging in social science research at the intersection of animal welfare and social justice issues, as she wants to contribute to the advancement of the field and evidence-based findings that support the community she comes from and addresses historic, systemic inequities.