Rebecca Klee
Head of Operations

Rebecca makes our premium pet food, and hopefully yours too. She grew up on a farm in Dannevirke, and like every other family in NZ in the 90’s had a dog called Spot.

Becks qualified in Food Technology at Massey University and has worked in food manufacturing for the last 21 years. She jumped at “the opportunity to be involved in something so exciting from the start, and it makes a change from human food!”. She now lives on a farm with her family, so if we run short of beef we know where to look.

Meet Becks, that’s Bob on the left, then Troy. Storm’s on the right and didn’t quite make the crop. Sorry Storm! Becks is our Head of Operations, she sources all our ingredients from local, ethical farms and orchards. She also looks after the making of the food in our Hawke’s Bay kitchen. Becks has spent the last 21 years in food manufacturing. Before she joined us she spent 15 years working with onions. Needless to say there were a few tears shed. Becks calls a beef farm in The Bay home where she lives with her hubby, daughter, the farm dogs and oh, a fair few cows too. Moo

Jeremy Moon
Co-founder and Chairman

Jeremy founded his first company, Icebreaker Clothing, in 1995 when he was 25, with the purpose of offering natural performance clothing as a sustainable alternative to plastic synthetic apparel.

Icebreaker are now a global success, across 40 countries, and in the process shook up the outdoor clothing industry, and triggered a revitalisation within the merino wool industry.

Jeremy co-founded Animals Like Us for the same reason he started Icebreaker – he gets to help build something he believes in, explore what he loves, and challenge a traditional industry. Icebreaker was all about exploring the relationship between people and nature, this is an opportunity to explore the powerful relationship between animals and their people.

Jeremy has lots of animals, mainly kids, and two dogs. His trusted companion Mollie, a Border Collie, is head taster in our quality control team. She’s training Luna, our new kid on the block, on the finer points of our recipes.

Rob Achten
Co-founder and CEO

Rob lives with his family of four humans, two dogs, and one cat on an orchard in rural Hawkes Bay. His first dog was named Trixie, a male corgi with particularly short legs, who was calm up top and busy down below.

This appreciative rescue dog inspired Rob’s love of animals, and instilled a belief that pets make us better people, and families are stronger and more nurturing when pets are part of them.

Rob, a former multi-sport athlete, joined Jeremy early on at global outdoor brand Icebreaker. Their partnership spanned over 10 years, and Rob ended up as the Global Creative Director and VP of Product for Icebreaker.

Inspired by his love of animals, and his lifestyle focus on growing food in Hawkes Bay, he’s now our Co-Founder and CEO of Animals Like Us. Trixie would approve.

Angus Harris
Head of Sales AU/NZ

Meet Angus, his partner and their pal, Zazu. Yes, that’s Zazu, as in Zazu the sassy Red-Billed Hornbill from The Lion King. Angus is our new head of sales, ANZ. The ‘A’ could stand for ‘awesome’ or it could be ‘Australia’ either way, it’s pretty cool don’t you think? Anyway, Angus is here to help us make sure you can get your hands on all your fave ALU products, so he’s got a pretty important job. Zazu makes sure to keep Angus on his toes by joining all the very important Zoom meetings. So far he’s made some valuable contributions. Thanks Zazu.

Nikki Mann
Creative Manager

Meet Nikki, a new addition to the ALU team. Nikki is our spectacular Creative Manager, she’s responsible for the ALU look across, well, everything. Sesh big job I reckon! That’s her with Gizmo (Giz, Gizzy), named rightfully after Gizmo from the Gremlins film. Friendly (with almost anyone), loves food and often spends the evening hunting…birds, mice, wool socks, slippers and more. He once snuck a packet of bacon from the neighbour’s bench and a bag of chicken wings from the night market…Gizzy has some skill! He’ll bring them back and howl for an audience…the vet calls him a Labrador. Panda (Panpan, Fluffy, FluffyButt) is slightly younger and pictured eyeing the treats. She’s a rescue and the opposite of Gizmo…loves the indoors, sun, and sleep. Did someone say sun seeker☀️. She’s very very cuddly with her family but only on her terms. Quite the fusspot when it comes to food, noise and people! Dislikes her cat brother Gizmo. Could have guessed that 😹

Amy Woolett
Marketing Manager

Amy joined the ALU team “for a few reasons, but mostly because I felt connected to their purpose of nurturing the relationship between animals and people, and it’s important to me to work with good people and create something you care about.”

“I’ve always worked with content and social media, it’s what I love most. Animals in general mean a lot to me. A few years ago I was lucky enough to volunteer at an Elephant Sanctuary.” That was all said without taking a breath.

Craig Hickson
Co-founder

Craig Hickson is an expert in growing food, and is the founder of Progressive Meats, one of New Zealand’s leading meat producers – and one of our key suppliers. Craig’s inventive attitude has earned him a NZ Entrepreneur of the Year Award and an Agribusiness Person of the Year Award.

Craig has founded or invested in many food agritech businesses, the latest being Animals Like Us, a true passion project with the mission of delivering healthy natural food based on what pets actually need.

He’s an animal guy, and over the years a pet duck, deer, cat, sheep and dog have all joined the family. Now it’s the grandkids’ dog doing laps around his ankles, keeping him on his toes in more ways than one.

Sandra Chambers
R&D Manager

Sandra’s in charge of Research and Development, which translates to coming up with exciting, delicious and nutritious products for our pals to enjoy! How cool is that?!

Sandra is joined by her three senior cats, Shadow who’s 12 yrs old and Spotty and Blacky, 16yr old sisters (Blacky can thank Sandra’s then 5 yr old son for her name…he was a cut to the chase kinda kid). From the photo I think it’s safe to assume Blacky, Spotty and Shadow weren’t interested in posing for the camera, in fact, Spotty had one foot out the door from the start. Maybe if we offered her a job as Chief Cat Food Tester she’d consider sticking around.

Laura Dinsdale
Quality Manager

Meet Laura, the most recent addition to ALU. That’s her pal Walter who holds the very special title of first rabbit to join the team! Walter is a rather well-travelled 🐰 who’s previously called Dunedin and Wellington home. He’s now set up shop in his mum’s (and of course ALU’s) hometown of Hawke’s Bay. Walter is a bit of a task master and makes sure to keep Laura focused when she’s working from home. Unfortunately, Walter can’t enjoy our grub but this little guy has a delicate tummy, so Laura understands the care that needs to be taken with animal diets. Laura is our Quality Manager, she makes sure the food we make meets our high food safety expectations and we know we can rely on Laura when Walter’s by her side. He’s got pretty high standards himself.

Lauren Honeycombe
Head of Marketing

Lauren also hails from icebreaker and joined our team to lead our brand and product marketing. Part of her job is finding dogs, cats and humans of all shapes and sizes to feature in photoshoots for our new product launches.

There’s obviously a lot more to the job than that but that’s the icing on the cake! Pictured with Lauren is Twiggy, Takapuna Beach’s unofficial sprinting champ and proud lover of tennis balls. In other Lauren related news, when she joined ALU she also told us she was raised by a family of golden retrievers… you might be able to tell from the pic they share the same golden locks; it’s easy to see the family likeness, don’t you think?

Rebecca R
Operations Coordinator

Meet Rebecca, she’s our newest recruit and the second Rebecca on the team! We have Becks and Double R. You’re looking at Double R. That’s her with her pal, Bella. Don’t they look sweet? Double R told me it’s hard to get her in a pic…it’s mostly of the dog, of the kiddies, of anything but her. Hand’s up if you can relate 🖐 Rebecca is our Operations Coordinator, she works closely with our Head of Ops Becks. Maybe it was all planned by Becks to hire another Rebecca… I feel some operations efficiency happening here. Anyhow you can thank Double R for making sure everything runs smoohtly and you fine humans with your even finer animals get your nommy foods on time. Woof, meow. Thanks Double R, you’re the real MVP.

Dennis Van Etten
Sales Director – East, USA

Meet Dennis, Bella, and Dexter (not pictured). Dennis is our USA Sales Director – East. Bella and Dexter are his two four-legged pals—he also has two two-legged pals—okay, technically his kids—Megan and Brian. But don’t worry, they’re not part of the team… duh. They’re kids.

Dennis and his family live in New Jersey, where Bella and Dexter rule the household. Dennis is very proud to say he spoils them rotten, and that’s led to such entitlements. As Sales Director – East, Dennis is going to make sure Animals Like Us can be found in as many pet stores as possible. Don’t look at us… Bella and Dexter have given him firm orders, and being spoiled, they expect to get what they want.

Dennis is a bit of a pet industry veteran with over 20 years experience bringing quality pet foods to the market. When he’s not calling on America’s greatest pet retail stores, he’s busy with dad duties, hanging at the Jersey Shore, watching his favourite Philly sports teams, and oh… catering to Bella and Dexter’s every woof.