Kimberly Teal
Kimberly grew up on a small ranch in the foothills of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles with horses, dogs, cats, rabbits, a goat, and chickens next door. She chose to stop eating red meat at age 15. Now living in San Anselmo she has a rotation of foster cats in and out of her home. She and her then-teenage daughter adopted a fully-vegan lifestyle in 2015 after giving up all meat and most dairy over the years prior. They dreamed of one day owning a small pig sanctuary together when Kimberly learned about Rancho Compasión and started volunteering in 2019. She loves the challenge of getting all the residents dinner and putting them to bed by herself. She has arranged contributions of unsellable fruits and vegetables from local markets twice a week to help supplement the resident’s diets. Kimberly has a master’s degree in Health Education and experience as a grant writer. She spent some years flipping homes and looks forward to helping with construction projects around the ranch. She works full-time as a Real Estate Broker serving residential sellers and buyers across the San Francisco Bay Area.
Samantha Miller
Samantha grew up nearby in the hills of Fairfax. She has always loved animals, which led to a study of biology and a vegan lifestyle. She’s had a successful career as a biopharma entrepreneur, and now realizes that her ultimate calling is to help animals, especially ‘farmed animals’, and the planet, by working to convert the world away from using animals for food and other products. She sees animal sanctuaries playing an important role in helping people develop compassion for these beautiful creatures. She lives with her husband, son, and 2 dogs in Piedmont, and loves to experiment with whole food plant-based cooking.
Dave Osborn
Dave Osborn lives in Point Reyes, is a retired Contractor and currently performs mold and water damage investigations throughout the Bay Area. He became a vegan after being diagnosed with cancer over 11 years ago. Because of his plant-based diet he conquered the cancer but also became aware of the effects of animal-based diets on the environment and the terrible treatment of the animals raised for food.
Dave has written and published articles in the local newspaper to bring awareness to the local dairy and ranch based populace of the negative effects of animal agriculture. He was fortunate to meet Miyoko Schinner, the founder of Rancho Compasión, and they hatched a plan to hold a film festival focusing on the many harms that a meat-based diet does to our health, the environment and the animals with the help of the volunteers and Board members of Rancho Compasión. At that time Miyoko asked Dave to serve on the Board of Directors and he readily accepted.
Because of his construction background and ranching experience he helps oversee the maintenance and new improvement projects for Rancho Compasión.
Brad Widelock
Brad lives in Fairfax with his wife and dog and, when he's home from college, his son. Now that Brad has retired from teaching middle school math, he is able to dedicate more time to both vegan cooking and baking and helping out at Rancho. Brad has been volunteering at Rancho from the beginning, and has loved being a part of its growth. Brad has been vegan since 2002, and loves planning events, helping out in the kitchen, and being with the animals.
Camellia Schinner
Camellia Schinner was previously the Sanctuary Director of Rancho Compasión, and has been around since its inception when her family moved to Nicasio in 2015. Having had very little farmed animal caregiving experience prior to her involvement with the sanctuary, her love for nonhuman animals motivated her to learn on-the-job to enrich and organize the animal care, volunteer, and outreach programs.
She is deeply invested in matters of social justice and embodies a consistent anti-oppression, total liberation framework in her vegan praxis. Applying this to her work at the sanctuary, she asks how farmed animal sanctuaries can be transformative spaces for reshaping and reimagining our relationship to the other-than-human world, while modeling radical interspecies community care.
Camellia boasts no accolades nor credentials, but is a regular recipient of Goober’s “hot breath” (a gorilla grunt-like greeting pigs give to their friends), which is all that really matters to her.