Exploring Life & Business with Petra Janney of Mashi

Today we’d like to introduce you to Petra Janney.

Hi Petra, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I’ve always been drawn to hard problems. These days, my north star is building the systems that enable compassion to scale. After starting my career in innovation and sustainability, I founded Amelia Air in 2019, a nonprofit that flies at-risk shelter pets to rescue partners who can find them loving homes. We’ve flown thousands of pets to safety, built an incredible network of 80+ partners, and brought dozens of veterinary clinics to underserved communities.

Through Amelia Air, I saw firsthand the tragedy at the core of the rescue system: more people want to adopt than there are pets in shelters, yet every minute an adoptable pet is euthanized. The passion and demand are there, but the infrastructure is fragmented, manual, and outdated.

In a moment of total serendipity, I met Patty Isaias at a conference where we were both presenting our nonprofit work. After developing a common application for pet adoption in Ecuador, Patty increased adoption rates by 300% and built a community of over 100,000 people by showing adoptable pets in a new light. We realized we were tackling the same problem from different sides, so we teamed up to accelerate our impact.

Together, we launched Mashi, a new platform that uses AI to seamlessly match people, pets, and providers throughout the entire pet parenting journey.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Not at all, but if this were easy, someone would have solved it already!

The hardest part about rescue is not being able to save them all. Every obstacle reinforces how badly this system is failing both pets and people. To fix it, we can’t just improve adoption; we have to reimagine the entire ecosystem around it. That means bringing in technology partners, investors, talent, and pet care brands who have never had a way to participate in rescue before.

What keeps us going is our vision for the future. Younger generations are the most likely to adopt, and they expect seamless digital experiences. Yet adopters, who already represent 40% of all pet parents in the US, are completely invisible to pet care brands at the exact moment they bring home a new pet and need the most guidance. The broken adoption system doesn’t just cost lives, it represents roughly $18 billion annually in lost spending on pets that never get adopted.

With Mashi, we’re transforming adoption from a broken bottleneck into the most valuable customer acquisition channel in the $152B pet industry. That’s what makes the tough days worth it.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Mashi?
Mashi is the new home for pet adoption. We use AI to create seamless experiences: adopters find their perfect match faster, rescuers save time while increasing placements, and pet brands can finally acquire adopters as lifelong customers.

Adopters generate one profile that enables intelligent matching with pets across our network based on preferences, lifestyle, and needs. We’re currently piloting with our rescue partners in Southern California, where we’re focused on perfecting the core adoption experience for everyone involved. Once we do, we unlock the ability to connect new pet parents to products, services, and community throughout their pet’s life.

As we grow, the platform compounds in value through network effects. Richer data means better matching at scale, and deeper partnerships give adopters what they need across the pet parenting journey.

Adoption isn’t a transaction, it’s a lifelong relationship, and we’re proving that conviction with Mashi. My cofounder Patty is from Ecuador, and in Andean culture, ‘mashi’ is someone who walks through life with you. That’s the kind of experience we want to build for everyone on our platform. The beauty of our model is that each adoption creates a 10-15+ year bond, and we succeed by supporting pet parents from day one. It’s still early, but every life saved matters, and there’s nothing better than building a company that grows by advancing the mission we care about most.

Can you share something surprising about yourself?
I’m a pilot! It surprises people at first, but aviation taught me systems thinking: how small inefficiencies build up, how the right approach makes the impossible easy, and how solving complex problems requires both technology and trust. The adoption system looks chaotic from ground level, but from altitude you can see it’s fundamentally a supply and demand problem that no one has applied modern technology to solve.

I dream of a future where technology empowers us to live in line with our values: where adopting a pet is easier than buying one, where we can fly without harming the planet, and where the systems we build make compassion the default option, not the hard one.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.matchwithmashi.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/matchwithmashi/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petrajanney/

Image Credits
Image 1: Mashi cofounders Patricia Isaias & Petra Janney Image 2: Photo by Frédéric Neema Image 3: Photo by Robert Sturman Image 4: Adoptable dog Nacho