Behind the Scenes

Board of Directors

Kerry Oldridge / Founder & Director

Kerry Oldridge, a native Canadian, is the founder of United Hope for Animals. Her love of animals and dogs in particular started in childhood. Art, music and animals are her three loves, but helping animals is her driving passion, and connecting people who can help animals in need her primary goal with United Hope for Animals.

United Hope for Animals was born out of Kerry’s desire to help neglected dogs in Mexico, and she expanded the organization following a realization that many dogs in Southern California were suffering under adverse conditions as well. Kerry is an accomplished painter, enjoys photography and walking her coterie of hounds around the trails of the San Gabriel Valley.

Laura Knighten / President & Program Director, Shelter Support Program

Laura is a San Diego native who came to Los Angeles after graduating college. She currently teaches writing at UC Irvine and shares her home with dog-loving hubby and a naughty but talented Coton de Tuléar dog and a Corgi-Spaniel mix rescued while she was volunteering for UHA.

She began doing rescue work while doing her dissertation. She thought she was just going to walk dogs but is now essential to the organization’s operations, and there isn’t any aspect of UHA she hasn’t conquered though many hours of trying. Just for fun she and her dogs compete in agility, and the whole family are Ireland-o-philes and love to travel to the Emerald Isle.

Charity Rieck / Secretary

Charity Rieck, a Chicago native, holds a Bachelor’s degree in Math from Notre Dame, and a Master’s in Business Administration from UCLA. Charity currently works for Yahoo! Inc as Director of Planning and Insights.

She is an avid runner, and proud mom to Leo, a Bichon. 

Fera Mostow / Treasurer

Fera Mostow is a retired lawyer who also holds a marriage and family therapist license. She grew up and went to school in Chicago getting her law degree from Chicago-Kent School of Law. She started her career doing tax litigation for the Internal Revenue Service and then moved to Paramount Pictures where she was a Vice President, specializing in music copyright law.

After leaving Paramount, she went to The Walt Disney Company and was Vice President, Music Business and Legal, in charge of the music legal work for their children’s television programming. After retiring, she began volunteering at the Palm Springs Animal Shelter where she now is in charge of scheduling animal spay/neuter surgeries and running their surgical recovery room.

Holly Browde / Director

Holly Browde is a New Yorker turned California transplant. After graduating from Wellesley College and the Columbia University School of Law, she became an entertainment lawyer and held positions including V.P. of Business Affairs for Polygram Records, V.P. of Business and Legal Affairs for Polygram Music Publishing and V.P. of Music Business and Legal Affairs at the Walt Disney Company.

Holly has always been passionate about dogs – as a small child her favorite TV show was “Lassie” and her parents joked that when she grew up she would have a kennel called “Holly’s Collies”. She has come to adore Chihuahuas and cannot resist buying sweaters for her Chi, reasoning that Chihuahuas are Barbie dolls for grownups.