Seattle Humane Board Member Jamie Cobb has a strong background in investments and long-term capital planning, and he’s ready to help Seattle Humane continue to grow, evolve and serve our community for another century!
Jamie is the chief financial officer at Columbia Pacific Advisors, and he’d previously served as their president of real estate asset management. Earlier in his career, Jamie was an investment professional at the Bill and Melinda Gates Investment Company, also known as Cascade Investment, which is where he met Kaj Pedersen. They’ve been friends ever since. If that last name sounds familiar, it’s because Kaj’s wife is Clare Pedersen, who serves as president of the Seattle Humane Board of Directors.
Jamie and his wife, Annie, learned a lot about the board when they were having dinner with Kaj and Clare in 2024, and were invited to join the Pedersens at Tuxes & Tails, Seattle Humane’s annual fundraising gala. They even bid and won our Veterinarian For a Day package, gifting the experience to their daughter, Rylee, who got to shadow our amazing vet team inside the Schuler Family Medical Center that summer.
“I’ve had a long passion for animals and animal welfare,” Jamie says, “and this fall I had an opportunity to meet with other board members and was asked to join the board.”
Jamie’s family adopted their first cat when he was in the third grade and, after several years of begging, they adopted a dog for his 16th birthday. When he left home to attend the University of Washington, he eventually adopted another cat and named them Husky, “because I am a diehard UW Husky fan.” Wanting them to have a friend, Abby joined the kitty party. When they passed on three years ago, Jamie and his family adopted brother-and-sister pair of kitties, Stormy and Pearl. They added a red mini golden doodle to the family for Rylee’s eighth birthday.
Jamie is excited to work with Seattle Humane Board Treasurer Phil Sorgen on the Finance Committee, he says, as Seattle Humane looks at how to diversify revenue streams and increase programmatic revenue while still being accessible to the pets and people who need them most.
“The other aspect is, once that money is in the door, how is that money best deployed?” Jamie says, noting there will soon come a time to reinvest in Seattle Humane’s facility. He recently took a tour with several other board members ahead of their March retreat and was blown away by what he saw and particularly impressed by the work happening in our world-class veterinary clinic, which provides a number of services to pets in the community, the most well-known being low-cost spay and neuter surgeries.
“If you don’t have the facility, you can’t compete on that,” Jamie says, “and that allows us to do things that some other organizations can’t.”
Jamie says part of his job as CFO at Columbia Pacific is managing a team and looking out for new technologies that can be deployed to increase efficiency, especially around more mundane tasks. He is very interested in new technologies, which is why he also signed on to be a part of the Technology Committee.
At the end of the day, Jamie says the biggest asset for Seattle Humane is the people who work there. As the organization strives to be budget neutral by fiscal year 2027 – as inflation continues to outpace donations – Jamie says he knows there are great ideas for diversifying revenue through Seattle Humane’s amazing programs.
“I don’t think we’re going to be the ones coming up with the ideas, but it’s really supporting the ones with the ideas who are there day to day,” he says. “I’ve been nothing but impressed with everyone I’ve been able to interact with who works at the organization.”
