Allie Phillips

Allie Phillips

Allie Phillips is an attorney licensed in Michigan and Maryland. As a former prosecuting attorney, she has dedicated her career to helping victims of crime, particularly animals and children. She is an author and consultant assisting others on innovative methods to protect animals and to promote more compassionate connections between animals and humans.
She worked for the American Humane Association as the Vice President of Human-Animal Strategic Initiatives, and previously as Vice President of Public Policy. She drafted and analyzed federal and state legislation to protect animals and children, including being the author of the 2009-10 legislative bill to ban pound seizure in Michigan. She oversaw special initiatives related to human-animal interactions, including overseeing the Pets and Women’s Shelters (PAWS)® Program which she created in 2008. The PAWS Program helps domestic violence shelters create on-site housing for family pets so that families in crisis do not have to be separated from their pets or leave them behind in an abusive home. Allie appeared on The Today Show in March 2009 for an interview about the PAWS Program. Her work on the PAWS Program has also been featured in numerous publications including USA Today, The Washington Post, Cat Fancy Magazine and Chatelaine Magazine in Canada. She also oversaw the Therapy Animals Supporting Kids (TASK)™ Program that she co-created. The TASK Program sets forth guidelines on how to effectively incorporate therapy animals into work with abused children, especially children going through the court process.

Allie was an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney in Michigan for over 8 years and then a Senior Attorney with the National District Attorneys Association’s National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse and National Child Protection Training Center in Alexandria, Virginia. She specialized in the investigation and prosecution of child abuse, created a training program on the co-occurrence between animal abuse and intra-familial violence, authored numerous professional articles, and traveled the country training prosecutors, law enforcement and child protection professionals on best practices to benefit child victims.

Allie is a nationally recognized trainer, author and media commentator on issues involving pound seizure, animal prosecution issues, the co-occurrence between animal abuse and violence to humans, compassionate human-animal interactions, pets caught in the recession crisis and innovative ways to help animals. Since 2003, she has conducted over 150 trainings across the United States to prosecutors, judges, child, family violence, and animal protection professionals, and has authored more than 45 publications. She is a graduate of Michigan State University and received her Juris Doctorate cum laude from University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. She is an active council member of the Michigan State Bar Animal Law Section, Vice President of No Paws Left Behind, a member of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys Animal Cruelty Advisory Committee, and a professional member of the Cat Writer’s Association.

In 2000, Allie co-founded Friends of Ingham County Animal Shelter in Lansing, Michigan, an organization that increased the adoption/rescue rate of cats and dogs at the animal shelter by 400% in 2 years, and led the advocacy effort to successfully ban pound seizure at the shelter in 2003. She provides pro bono legal advice to advocates and animal rescue organizations in Michigan and assisted three additional Michigan counties in their successful campaigns to end pound seizure. Allie now volunteers with King Street Cats in Alexandria, Virginia, a free-roaming no-euthanasia cat orphanage, where she manages the website, photographs the cats, assists with publicity and marketing, and fosters cats and kittens. She also assists the St. Croix Animal Welfare Center Pets from Paradise Program by having shelter cats flown from St. Croix to Virginia so that they can be adopted into loving homes. After visiting the island of St. Croix in January 2009 to train at an animal welfare conference, and seeing the pet overpopulation epidemic and the need for mainland transfers and adoptions, she has helped numerous St. Croix cats travel to Virginia to be adopted through King Street Cats.

Allie is a Usui Reiki Master Practitioner, Advanced Integrated Energy Therapy Practitioner, Practitioner Member of the Shelter Animal Reiki Association, and is a Certified Law of Attraction Counselor. She provides energy healing to abandoned/abused cats and pets, coaches people to manifest their best life through universal laws, and enjoys ballroom/swing dancing, gardening, yoga, and practicing healthy eating and lifestyles.

 




 

Pets and Women’s Shelters (PAWS)® Program

 

Therapy Animals Supporting Kids (TASK)™