Chilliwack Animal Safe Haven Society – Board Appointment Announcement
January 28, 2026
In a major step to ensure the health and well-being of animals, the Chilliwack Animal Safe Haven Society is pleased to announce, as of January 21, 2026, the appointment of three new members to its Board of Directors, and an experienced organizational consultant.
These new directors were formally appointed by the Board and join a committed group of existing board members who are working together to strengthen the organization’s long-term impact, governance, and sustainability. Collectively, the Board brings decades of combined experience across the full range of competencies essential to a strong, modern nonprofit organization, particularly one dedicated to animal welfare.
Board expertise now includes nonprofit governance and leadership, strategic planning, financial oversight and budgeting, fundraising and donor relations, grant writing and stewardship, marketing and communications, community engagement, volunteer management, legal and regulatory compliance, human resources, risk management, organizational development, and long-term sustainability planning. The Board is also informed by deep understanding of animal welfare operations, rescue and sheltering best practices, veterinary partnerships, humane education, advocacy, and compassionate, ethical care.
Together, these skills position the Chilliwack Animal Safe Haven Society to continue evolving as a professionalized, accountable, and resilient organization, one capable of meeting growing community needs while staying firmly rooted in its mission to protect and care for vulnerable animals.
“Welcoming these three new board members is an exciting and important step forward for our organization,” said Katherine Lemond, President of the Chilliwack Animal Safe Haven Society. “They bring not only expertise, but energy, thoughtfulness, and a deep commitment to our mission. Alongside our existing directors, they are helping to build a strong, sustainable organization that can serve animals and our community for years to come.”
The Board of Directors plays a critical role in guiding the Society’s strategic direction, ensuring strong governance, and supporting the staff, volunteers, and supporters who make the work possible. With the addition of these new members, the Chilliwack Animal Safe Haven Society is well positioned to continue growing its impact while upholding the highest standards of care, transparency, and accountability.
The Society looks forward to the leadership, collaboration, and fresh perspectives these new board members bring, and to the continued work of the full Board in advancing a humane, compassionate future for animals in the Chilliwack community.
The new Directors are:
Rebeka Breder has been recognized as one of Canada’s 25 most influential lawyers. She is possibly the country’s foremost expert in animal law. Rebeka has extensive experience in animal law litigation and in the animal protection movement. She founded Breder Law, Western Canada’s first law firm to focus exclusively on animal law.
Rebeka has experience at all levels of court and various tribunals. Rebeka’s passion for animal protection and welfare started at an early age, while she was growing up in Montreal. Rebeka is known as a trailblazer in developing Animal Law in Canada. She founded the first Animal Law section of the Canadian Bar Association in Canada and is the founder and current Chair of the Animal Law section, B.C. Branch. In her “spare” time, she dedicates a lot of her time to animal protection causes, including having sat on the Boards of the Vancouver Humane Society and the Regional Animal Protection Society.
Rebeka’s animal law practice includes acting for individuals such as defending dogs, pet custody disputes, veterinary malpractice suits, strata and condominium disputes, and breeder disputes. Rebeka also acts for organizations as a consultant, and to challenge government for failing to protect animals, such as suing the government over the live transportation of horses and the BC wolf cull. Rebeka acts exclusively in matters that can develop the rights and welfare of animals.
Rebeka is a founder of the UBC Animal Law course, and she has been an Adjunct Professor. Rebeka is also a frequent lecturer at various speaking engagements and schools. The media also often interviews her on various topical issues locally, nationally and internationally.
Christopher (Chris) Kamachi is a seasoned systems analyst, software architect, and technology executive with more than 35 years of experience spanning network infrastructure, security, relational database engineering, and enterprise software development. As the Founder, CEO, and Exclusive Developer of Total Shop Manager, Chris has spent over 30 years leading the design, deployment, and lifecycle management of large-scale commercial systems used by thousands of businesses.
Chris’s career reflects a rare balance of technical depth, executive leadership, and creative thinking. He has served as a Chief Technology Officer, systems instructor, keynote speaker, and consultant for major corporations and public-sector organizations including IBM Canada, Sulzer Bingham Pumps, BC Tel, MacMillan Bloedel, and the Vancouver Stock Exchange. Earlier in his career, he was a founder and executive of CityWideNet, one of Canada’s earliest Internet Service Providers, helping to build ISP infrastructure from the ground up.
Widely respected for his ability to solve complex problems under pressure, Chris brings an “out-of-the-box” mindset to both technology and leadership. He has led and supported teams of more than 60 staff, overseen mission-critical systems, and guided organizations through rapid technological change with clarity and calm. His work is grounded in a deep commitment to customer relationship management, ensuring that systems are not only powerful, but intuitive, reliable, and aligned with real-world user needs.
In addition to his technical accomplishments, Chris is a gifted communicator. He has delivered keynote presentations internationally, taught advanced networking and security for IBM, and published technical articles in both the Vancouver Sun and The Province. His speaking style bridges executive, technical, and public audiences with ease.
Ayelet Weil has more than 15 years of substantial nonprofit management experience and an impressive track record of fundraising and relationship-management, strategic planning, community engagement, relations and development.
Ayelet has worked closely with high-caliber Boards of Directors, donors, stakeholders, and clients in the animal welfare, seniors care, community development, and other sectors.
She has served as executive director of the Louis Brier Foundation, Associate Director of Community Engagement at the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, and Manager of Women’s Philanthropy and Manager of Major Gifts for Jewish Federation’s Annual Campaign. Her previous experience includes working in academia at the Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya, in Israel, and as Managing Director of Hillel BC. Ayelet holds a Master’s Degree in Public Policy, Conflict Resolution and Mediation with International Mediation Certification, with distinction, from Tel Aviv University, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Victoria.
Ayelet has served on several nonprofit boards, including the Regional Animal Protection Society.
Additionally, the Board of Directors of the Chilliwack Animal Safe Haven Society is happy to announce the appointment of Eyal Lichtmann as an organizational consultant.
The chief executive officer of the Regional Animal Protection Society, Eyal brings to his role a lifetime of innovation and visionary leadership.
Eyal’s career has seen him create and strengthen a succession of businesses, social enterprises and nonprofit organizations. His recipe for success is combining the business sense of the corporate world (“the head”) with the mission-driven compassion of the not-for-profit sector (“the heart”) for holistic, people-centred achievement.
Eyal cofounded a communications, marketing and public relations firm that specialized in sponsorship marketing targeting Fortune 500 companies. He raised millions of dollars in corporate sponsorships and oversaw programs on a national scale, notably Chinese New Year Festivals in Vancouver and Toronto, which were recognized nationally and won top industry awards.
He then resurrected a moribund, 50-year-old youth-serving nonprofit organization and propelled it to unprecedented expansion and exponential growth, repeatedly multiplying the budget, expanding engagement, growing the organization’s presence with new facilities and raising $10 million for a major capital project at the University of British Columbia. In the process, Eyal received the highest honour from the 500-chapter international governing body of the organization.
Eyal then assembled a team of experts who, together with staff and powerhouse advisers and directors, revolutionized crowdfunding and e-tail to transform a Millennial-focused crowdfunding platform into a software as a service (SaaS) model so that millions of users worldwide can customize their own gamified crowdfunding sites.
Returning to a lifelong commitment to animal welfare, Eyal became CEO of RAPS in 2015 and immediately began streamlining and professionalizing the 20-year-old, volunteer-based organization. Within just a few years, and with a team of outstanding advisors, staff and supporters, RAPS has become one of Canada’s largest and most innovative animal-serving organizations. Eyal massively increased corporate and community partnerships to leverage the organization’s impacts, turned it from a local agency to a province-wide leader in animal rescue and opened the state-of-the-art, community-owned RAPS Animal Hospital. The hospital, which is home to Canada’s only veterinary hyperbaric oxygen therapy facility among other innovations, is foundational to the “RAPS Model” of sustainable, no-kill animal welfare, a model that will be codified and shared to empower animals and the people who care for them everywhere, reflecting RAPS’ certainty that where an animal lives should not determine whether an animal lives.
Eyal will work with the Safe Haven Board of Directors, staff, and volunteers to maximize the agency’s impact, ensuring that Safe Haven saves and improves the lives of as many animals as possible.
