WISDOM Good Works

Sharing Scientific Expertise to Restore Ecological Balance Around the World

Image courtesy of the Galapagos National Park Service

WISDOM Good Works Team

Boards and Core Team Members

WISDOM Good Works is a collaboration of scientists, educators, environmentalists and philanthropists who believe in the potential of humane animal population control. Learn more about some of the WISDOM Good Works team members below.

Board of Directors

Dr. Loretta Mayer

Often our greatest scientific discoveries happen when we are looking for something else. Penicillin, the microwave oven, even corn flakes came about as accidental breakthroughs. For Loretta Mayer, it was a quest to understand more about heart disease in women that led to a method of achieving humane animal population control.

Dr. Mayer’s path to becoming a scientist was already unique. After two decades of successful work in the business world, the death of a friend from heart disease led her to change course dramatically and become a scientific researcher, going back to school at the age of 41 and earning her masters and Ph.D. in biological sciences from Northern Arizona University.

It was during her post-doctorate fellowship at the University of Arizona, while working with mice to understand postmenopausal changes in the heart, that she developed a chemical method of inducing peri- and post-menopause in rodents with mentor Dr. Patricia Hoyer.

This led to her becoming a co-inventor of a patent for the MouseopauseTM model. Soon, she was fielding calls from communities looking to control wildlife animal populations. This gave rise to the development of the first oral contraceptive in rats and the founding of SenesTech with Dr. Cheryl Dyer. Their work has been used around the world. Dr. Mayer served several roles at SenesTech from 2004 to 2019, including CEO, Chief Scientific Officer and Chair of the Board. In 2020, she co-founded WISDOM LLC (Women in Science Doing Outreach and Mentoring), a consulting organization of successful women scientists with a depth of experience reaching out to communicate vital hands-on experience to other women either already in their career or considering other options. WISDOM provides educational seminars, publications, and research data.

Dr. Cheryl Dyer

Dr. Cheryl Dyer’s career has spanned from being an investigator for the American Heart Association to a pioneering university researcher to overseeing a start-up working to change animal population control around the world.

She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of California at San Diego, followed by a Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology from UCSD’s School of Medicine.

Dr. Dyer served as a NIH-funded Principal Investigator at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA, where she was part of a nationally recognized plasma lipoprotein research group. She maintained an independently funded research program and laboratory at Northern Arizona University, and was the first Research Professor in the Department of Biology at NAU. She also was the first Established Investigator for the American Heart Association in the state of Arizona.

In 2004, she co-founded SenesTech with Dr. Loretta Mayer, where they invented and registered the ContraPest orally active bait that prevents rat reproduction. She served as Chief Research Officer, President and Board Member at SenesTech and was with the company until 2019. Most recently, she has become a General Partner at WISDOM LLC (Women in Science Doing Outreach and Mentoring) a consulting firm that promotes women scientists to share their insights, hard-earned wisdom and support to other women working in the sciences and other male-dominated industries.

Sam Buchenau — Susan “Sam” Collier Buchenau

From her early childhood experience as a Brownie, to her recent involvement with WISDOM Good Works, Susan “Sam” Collier Buchenau has spent a lifetime volunteering in organizations committed to making our world a better place in which to live.She served on the local, regional and international boards of Soroptimist, including President of Soroptimist International of the Americas. She currently serves as the coordinator of the Soroptimist International of the Americas Donor Relations Task Force, and is also a frequent speaker and workshop coordinator.

A resident of El Cajon, California, Sam serves as a community member of the CARE Advisory Board at Grossmont Community College, and the EOPS/CARE Advisory Board at Cuyamaca Community College. She has held a variety of governance positions within her faith community, including Moderator (Board Chair), and recently successfully concluded a consulting project at a wider denominational setting providing support, guidance, training and capacity building to essential volunteers.

After a career in a variety of positions of progressive responsibility in legal and investment adviser firms, culminating in being the Vice President of Asset Management for a real estate investment advisory firm, Sam now consults independently with former employers and clients. She also performs a variety of paralegal duties, working alongside her attorney husband Tom.

Tom Buchenau

Tom Buchenau is a third generation San Diegan who earned his B.A. in Economics frrm Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and returned to San Diego to receive his Juris Doctor from the University of San Diego School of Law in 1977. During his more than 40 years as an attorney in solo practice, Tom has dedicated himself to improving the community in which he lives and works.

Tom has taught Paralegal Studies as an Adjunct Instructor at both Cuyamaca Community College and San Diego State University College of Extended Studies. He has served as a leader of many professional associations, including the Foothills Bar Association, where he was Association President, and the San Diego County Bar Association, where he served on its Board of Directors.

Tom’s many community-based volunteer experiences include L.E.A.D. San Diego – an intense program of leadership skill building and community volunteerism which has been described as getting a “Master’s Degree” on San Diego. For nearly 20 years he served as a member of the Sharp Healthcare System Institutional Review Board, as a non-medically trained community member on a multi-hospital, system-wide board which approved hospital use of experimental devices, drugs, and treatments. He has been a member of Kiwanis International throughout his professional career, serving as club president for Kiwanis clubs in both Spring Valley and Rancho San Diego, as well as Lieutenant Governor for his Division.

Scientific Advisor

Steve Shuster — Dr. Stephen M. Shuster
Chair

Dr. Shuster is the Professor of Invertebrate Zoology, Department of Biological Sciences at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. His research has focused on topics including biodiversity, population genetics, and conservation biology. To see his most recent scientific publications, visit his page on ResearchGate.net.

Core Team

Alaina Gonzalez-White
Director of Operations

Partners

Sheila J. Mosher, Lyons Design Co.

Lyons Design provides software development, analysis and administration for the proprietary WISDOM Good Works Data Portal.

Ms. Martha Ellis, KindFix

Manufacturing/Fulfillment. Martha Ellis has a BA in Animal Science from Colorado State University, and a long history in project management.

Founding and Supporting Sponsors

WISDOM Good Works is thankful for the support of the following organizations and individuals:

Virginia Joy Vorous

She always lived up to her middle name.

Virginia Joy Vorous was so named because she was a joy to her family, the first girl to be born after two sons.

And for 83 years, she lived with the joy of a person who was passionate about science and animals and the promise of discovery. She was one of our inspirations when we founded WISDOM – the epitome of a woman in science doing outreach to mentor others.

Virginia was a clinical chemistry technologist at the University of California, San Diego, University Hospital. For decades, she trained countless people on how to report critical chemistry results for best possible patient care.

I met her 50 years ago when I was an undergraduate at UCSD and trying to figure out how to use autoanalyzer equipment for a project. Virginia not only taught me how the machine worked, but she also showed me how to troubleshoot it when it broke down. Years later, when I was earning my PhD and it became clear that the grant stipend to support my research wasn’t enough to live on, Virginia provided me with free room, board, and beer. But for her generosity, I wouldn’t have graduated and begun my career as a research scientist.

Virginia loved animals, all animals. She was an avid birdwatcher and a docent at the San Diego Zoo. When we all went out on a family vacation one year in Hawaii, she snorkeled every day and was so entranced by the sea life that she wouldn’t notice the tide was drifting her into a reef or out to sea. We began having our daughters go out and snorkel by her side to keep her safe!

When Loretta and I began work on a scientific model for a product that would render female mice infertile without any harmful side effects, Virginia was very excited about the potential of this new technology. Ever the teacher, she had me “show her the science,” drawing out our plans on scraps of paper or cocktail napkins. (It was very touching that when Loretta and I helped her move into assisted living, we found she had saved all those napkins.)

When the opportunity arose in 2004 to put our product into practice with unowned dogs on the Navajo Nation, Virginia immediately wrote a check for $25,000 to get us started. She was one of our very first investors in our movement to improve how we handle animal overpopulation, and we are so happy that our last road trip with her was to visit one of our research field sites in Utah and show her what her support had launched.

Now in a final act of kindness, Virginia has remembered WISDOM Good Works in her will with a large bequest. It is a phenomenally generous act that will further our work to make fertility-control technology – and not poison – the standard of practice to deal with animal overpopulation.

We miss Virginia Joy so much – her friendship, her passion for science, her legendary “tailgate” parties at her home before games (she was a big NFL football fan and a diehard Padres fan), and her love for all creatures, human and animal.

We hope that our work to restore ecological balance throughout the world, which she supported in so many ways over the years, is part of her lasting legacy. Thank you, Virginia.

Sincerely,

Cheryl Dyer

Co-Founder

WISDOM Good Works

Sharing Scientific Expertise to Restore Ecological Balance Around the World