Employee Spawtlight: Meet Ashley Martinez

This September, in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we spoke with Bilingual Pet Resource Center (PRC) Specialist Ashley Martinez about why helping community pet owners from all backgrounds is so crucial to our mission. You can read highlights from our chat here but be sure to watch her full interview to learn all about how she supports our efforts to serve our community’s pets and people.

For people who may not know what goes on in the PRC, can you describe what you and your teammates do? Why is the PRC so important to AHS’ mission?

The way I like to see us is as a frontline, vital team, kind of like in sports. I’m a big sports person, so I see us as the front starting lineup. We help anybody who needs assistance with anything pet-related. Let’s say they find a sick or injured pet on the street and are looking for resources because they don’t have any. Maybe they’re unfortunately facing eviction due to the pet breed that they have, and the apartment complex isn’t able to keep them. Here at the Pet Resource Center, we help out with any of those scenarios for anyone who is looking for any resources at all. We are here to help out our community in any way we can.

What is your favorite part about being a PRC team member?

Helping the community in any way that I can. With PRC being a high-volume call center, we receive so many calls every single day from so many backgrounds and scenarios that someone may be going through. Just being able to be there for them and help them out in any way I can with resources that they’re seeking or even just hear them out. We are here for them, and that’s one of my favorite things, just being able to help out the community in any way.

Can you explain why it’s so important to have bilingual team members in the PRC?

My parents didn’t grow up knowing English very well, so being a little kid, even growing as a teen, I was always there to help translate for them, and I felt the frustration of them not being able to communicate in a way that they wanted. I think it’s really important to have bilingual team members overall with Arizona Humane Society so we can help out those individuals in our community who need that assistance.

43% of Arizona is made up of Latinos, and with the PRC being a high-volume call center and providing resources to the community, it’s incredibly important to be able to help them out. There are many times throughout calls when someone may not want to speak English, and they’ll ask if there’s anyone who speaks Spanish around. And as soon as they hear, “Yes, I’m a Spanish speaker, I can help you.” I hear that relief, and I hear them say, “Thank you. Thank you so much. I’m so glad to speak with you.”