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Chris Heyde - Founder/CEO

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Chris is the founder of Blue Marble Strategy, LLC, a national boutique government relations firm dedicated to amplifying the voices of underrepresented organizations, individuals, and cause-driven missions before Congress and the Executive Branch.

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A U.S. Army veteran and small-town Ohio native, Chris brings decades of legislative strategy to federal and state advocacy. His career spans nearly twenty years leading government and legal affairs for the nation’s oldest animal protection legislative program, following key roles as a U.S. Senate staffer and member of a bipartisan mainstream consulting firm before founding Blue Marble Strategy.

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Chris regularly navigates the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, securing vital funding and support for animal issues, service animals, veterans, and local agricultural producers. His legislative portfolio includes impactful work across the Agriculture, Judiciary, Commerce, and Transportation Committees, alongside targeted multi-state legislative initiatives.

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Dedicated to supporting those who served, Chris has successfully advocated for landmark legislation to improve the welfare of military working dogs and expand veteran access to service animals.

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Chris holds a B.A. in Political Science from Bethany College (WV) and an M.A. in Political Science and International Relations from Ohio University.

In his free time, Chris serves as vice-chair of Willie's Kids, a nonprofit humane education organization founded by the family of singer-songwriter Willie Nelson. He is a member of the Jane Goodall Institute Global Ethics Committee and serves as an advisory board member for Predator Defense, a national nonprofit to protect native predators.​  He also enjoys hanging out with his rescue pitbull Scota (can you find her on the site?).  Visit Humane Rescue Alliance in Washington, D.C. or Shadow's Fund in California for your next best friend!​​

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Liz Clancy Ross - Strategy Advisor

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Liz, a California native, has decades of experience in the animal protection world, having started work at Cruelty Free International (then The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection) in the 1980s while completing her degree in London, England. There, her focus was to pressure the British and European Parliaments to end the use of animals in cosmetics testing and fighting the international trade in non-human primates for breeding and research.

 

She later moved to Washington, DC where she worked for many years at both the Doris Day Animal League and the Animal Welfare Institute. In tandem with Chris Heyde, she played a pivotal role in spearheading efforts on Capitol Hill to end the slaughter of American horses for human consumption abroad. She also directed the original Spay Day USA campaign in the 1990s, developed a program demonstrating to law enforcement and legal professionals the tie between animal cruelty and violence towards humans, and lobbied Congress on other protective measures for both wild and domestic animals. Her proudest accomplishment to date was working with Dr. Jane Goodall, Dr. Carole Noone,
and other committed individuals to obtain hundreds of chimpanzees from the United States Air Force and retire them permanently to a newly created, state-of-the-art sanctuary in Florida (Save The Chimps). 

 

Today she lives in Northern Virginia with her daughter and son, as well as her dogs Apollo and Azi, and a very cool cat called Viper. In her free time, she enjoys gardening and tending to her menagerie, including a friend’s horses and chickens on a farm just down the road.

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