Betsy Saul

Betsy Saul

Betsy Saul
Senior Vice-President, Digital Media
Founder, Petfinder.com

As Senior Vice-President of Digital Media, Betsy Saul, oversees the strategic vision and leads the team responsible for the day-to-day business operations of Petfinder.com, the nation’s largest and most recognized website in the animal category.  In addition, Betsy serves as Petfinder’s leading spokesperson in the field of domestic animal welfare and is also a key strategic member of the Digital Media leadership team.

Founded by Betsy and her husband, Jared, in January 1996, Petfinder.com is the dominant pet Internet site and has revolutionized pet adoption across North America, with over 5 million unique visitors a month.  Boasting a robust nationwide network of almost 12,000 animal shelters and rescue groups, Petfinder offers the public an easy-to-use geo-coded search that targets pets for local matching.  To date, Petfinder is responsible for over 1.5 million animal adoptions each year, with over 12 million animals adopted since the site’s inception over 12 years ago.  In addition to a national US footprint, Petfinder also provides match-making services in all the Canadian provinces, Puerto Rico, Mexico, the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands, Jamaica, St. Martin, Costa Rica and Guam.

Petfinder.com was acquired by Discovery Communications in November of 2006.

Prior to joining the animal welfare industry, Saul was an agricultural extension agent at Rutgers University, an urban forester with the State of New Jersey, a park ranger in Alaska, and a field scientist on Fort Jackson, in South Carolina.

Betsy received her bachelor of science from Missouri Southern State University and a master’s degree from Clemson University.   She shares her home and farm with her husband and co-founder of Petfinder.com, Jared, and three rescued dogs, along with a diverse assortment of rescued farm animals.

Petfinder is an on-line, searchable database of animals that need homes. It is also a directory of over 12,500 animal shelters and adoption organizations across the USA, Canada and Mexico. Organizations maintain their own home pages and update their available pets in real time.

Our mission:
To use Internet technology and the resources it can generate to:

Increase public awareness of the availability of high-quality adoptable pets
Increase the overall effectiveness of pet adoption programs across North America to the extent that the euthanasia of adoptable pets is eliminated
From the comfort of their personal computers, pet lovers can search for a pet that best matches their needs. They can then reference a shelter's Web page and discover what services it offer. Petfinder also includes classified ads, discussion forums and a library of animal welfare articles.

Petfinder.com