Summary
After a career in academia and government in The Netherlands, Frans Hoffman emigrated to the US in 1995. He worked as an executive web producer for Netscape Netcenter, Apple and other companies in Silicon Valley.
In 2005, Frans and his wife Linda responded to Hurricane Katrina and joined Best Friends Command Center. Later, Frans helped Best Friends reorganize its operations in Tylertown, Mississippi. In December 2005 and January 2006 Frans and Linda deployed to Tylertown, Mississippi.
After Katrina, Frans was a regional coordinator for Best Friends Rapid Response Team. He later joined Noah's Wish as an assistant coordinator, a position from which he resigned in October 2011.
Frans and Linda are co-founders of several animal disaster response groups in Contra Costa. Their latest project is the Contra Costa County Animal Response Team (CoCo CART, 2011).
Frans writes and speaks about animal disaster response and is the editor of usDART, the national portal for animal disaster responders.
The Netherlands
Frans Hoffman studied Political Science and also Economics at the University of Amsterdam, Roman Law at the University of Utrecht and Business Informatics at the European University.
Upon completion of his studies in Political Science, Frans was appointed Secretary General of the International Institute of Social History, a research institute and archive of the history of the international labour movement. In the early 1980s Frans returned to his Alma Mater, the University of Amsterdam, to teach what is now called educational technology to post-graduate and doctoral students. In this period Frans appeared as a guest lecturer at the Free University of Brussels, the University of Hamburg, University of Cambridge (UK) and Princeton University (US).
In the late 1980s Frans joined the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sciences where he played a role in information technology management for the Directorate-General for Science Policy, which oversaw, among other things, the application and use of information technology in academia in The Netherlands. Later, Frans was appointed Policy Adviser for Information Technology in Education. In this capacity he initiated and participated in several projects promoting best practices in the application of technology across the curriculum. He also represented The Netherlands in several high level task forces dealing with education and training in the European Union.
The United States
In 1995 Frans emigrated to the US and quickly launched a new career in web development. He worked at Apple Computer for the Apple Media Program (AMP) and later joined Apple's Advanced Technology Group (a.k.a. The Internet Division, a group of rebels who envisioned Apple embracing the Internet). Only a few months before Steve Jobs took control over Apple the entire division was canned. If revenge is really a dish best eaten cold, Frans has totally enjoyed this cold dinner...
After Apple (AA), Frans worked his way through Silicon Valley as an executive web producer, leading technical and business teams to producing advanced Internet-based applications and web sites. He worked at Netscape Netcenter and several other innovative companies.
At the end of August 2005 Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf region. Early September, Frans and his wife joined Best Friends Command Center and helped with logistics - linking offers of volunteers and resources to the needs on the ground. Best friends directed thousands of volunteers to work in the Gulf area, in particular in Best Friends' emergency animal shelter in Tylertown, Mississippi.
In October Frans returned to Best friends to help with the reorganization of operations in Tylertown. It had become obvious that the response was going to take a long time with tens of shorthands of pets unaccounted for. In the Christmas/New Year period Frans and Linda worked in Tylertown.
Upon return to the San Francisco Bay Area, Frans and Linda started to work on finding people who wanted to prepare for a major animal related disaster in the Bay Area. Frans joined Lamorinda CERT (Community Emergency response Team) for which he became the coordinator a couple of years later. Through CERT Frans learned about an initiative of Contra Costa County Animal Services. Animal Services wanted to launch a Pet Emergency Preparedness Team (PEP Team) to educate pet owners about emergency preparedness and to respond to disasters. Frans was hied to develop the PEP Team training.
Unfortunately, the PEP Team did not get off the ground. Frans and Linda found a group of Lamorinda CERT members who were prepared to start training to be a disaster animal response team. In 2009 Lamorinda DART (Disaster Animal Response Team) held its first training.
The training was successful and attracted people from neighboring cities. Soon, Lamorinda DART transformed itself into the Disaster Animal Response Team of Contra Costa (Contra Costa DART). In 2011 the number of trained volunteers reached 100 and it became time to make DART a county-wide response team. With the help of Animal Services DART transformed itself into Contra Costa County Animal Response Team.
Frans currently works for Saint Mary's College of California as its Director of Client Services. Linda is founder and CEO of Internet@Work, a web development company.
