ARF Team


About The Animal Rescue Front

Until there are none, save one. Through transport, education, adoption, and spay/neuter initiatives, ARF is committed to ending the senseless killing of healthy, adoptable animals in Mississippi and Louisiana.

ARF Board of Directors


Chris McLaughlin

Chris McLaughlin’s life’s purpose became clear when the floods of Katrina receded. The toll the disaster took on the lives of the animals of the Gulf Coast ignited a passion and purpose that continues today. “ARF’s work will live on because of the lives we met, the lives we saved, and the lives we lost.” …Read More

Jan Mitchell

Jan Mitchell resides in Boulder, CO and has been fostering animals for her local humane societies and rescues since 1991. She met Chris in New Orleans while doing post-Katrina animal rescue work and she has worked with rural farmers in a small village in Ghana since 2001 teaching gentle handling of their working animals. Eventually, …Read More

Albert M Wisialko

Albert M Wisialko, ARF’s accountant, works at A. Wisialko and Co., a successful accounting firm in Massachusetts. He has adopted (from ARF) one rescue dog, Chet, from Mississippi. He has three children and promotes the Animal Rescue Front’s commitment to rescue animals in any way that he can.

Gabby Savage

Gabby Savage, our Transport Coordinator, discovered ARF in 2015 when she adopted her first ARF dog Maverick. Over the next four years she and her husband Tom, a firefighter, adopted two more ARF dogs. With over fifteen years of experience in veterinary medicine and a passion for rescue the next natural step was to join the …Read More

Liz Stillman

Liz Stillman, JD

Liz Stillman, JD, is a graduate of Tufts University (Social Psychology) and Northeastern University School of Law. Currently she’s an Associate Professor of Academic Support at Suffolk University Law School. Liz is a proud human companion to Leo and Sasha (from ARF!) as well as Toni, Java and Coco and three amazing human children. Liz lives …Read More

ARF Team Members


Sharon Stone Smith

Sharon is ARF’s Mississippi Regional Coordinator, and has been working with us for close to two years. In 2006 while employed with AT&T she was a member of the community services group “Telephone Pioneers” that were looking for a worthwhile community project when a friend suggested helping the local animal shelter, a dismal place that …Read More

Travis Johnston

Travis Johnston, of Shelburne Falls MA, lives with his daughter Lillian, and his adopted ARF dog Lola. Travis had been working as a Web Systems Architect at an educational collaborative in Northampton when he first met Chris McLaughlin and was excited to find out that Lola was one of the animals being offered by The …Read More

Katie Wiggin

Social Media Content Manager Katie has loved animals since the day she was born. In 2021, she fulfilled a life dream of rescuing her own ARF fur baby, Homer. Besides being a dog mom she works in the advertising department for the New York Times as a video director and producer. Katie and her husband …Read More

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