Eva is the Founder and Executive Director of Second Chance Heroes Rat Adoptions, a nonprofit organization that rescues domestic rats from a variety of backgrounds including laboratory settings, hoarding situations, and outdoor abandonment, and places them into loving companion homes. Second Chance Heroes’ work rehoming retired research rats was recently featured in National Geographic.
Second Chance Heroes weaves advocacy and education into its rescue work. In 2024, Eva created The Spectrum of Rat Fear, Anxiety, and Stress scale in collaboration with Fear Free as an educational resource to help caretakers identify the emotional state of rats, improving rat welfare on a broad scale. She is currently developing a coalition to support shelters and rescues on the frontlines of large-scale rat hoarding cases, an increasingly common crisis that can be traced back to the sale of rats at pet stores. These cases often escalate into nationwide efforts to transfer hundreds of rats to out-of-state organizations. This growing pattern inspired Eva to pursue an MSL at Lewis & Clark, with the goal of advancing legislation banning the retail sale of breeder-sourced animals.
Eva graduated from New College of Florida in 2016, where she studied Animal Communication and Behavior. She subsequently earned a Master of Science in Anthrozoology from Canisius College, where she studied and wrote about the complex laws and policies that protect — or fail to protect — rats based on their varied roles in society. She presented this research at the International Society for Anthrozoology conference in 2019.
Eva shares her home with her two beloved rescue pit bulls, Emaline and Godric; rescue rabbits, Big Brown and Cornelia; and a revolving door of foster rats waiting for homes of their own.