Jane E. McBride is founder and president of Illinois Humane. Illinois Humane’s primary mission is cruelty and neglect investigations, the recovery and rehabilitation of animals that are the subject of such cases, and advocacy. Ms. McBride herself has served as an approved humane investigator in the State of Illinois since 1999. She has been directly involved in the prosecution of a variety of neglect and cruelty matters. Ms. McBride has been active in numerous state animal welfare legislative efforts and has also worked with local governmental units crafting local ordinances and spearheading private/public animal welfare initiatives.
Ms. McBride was the chair of the American Bar Association’s TIPS Animal Law Committee in 2018-2019. She has served as CLE chair of the Illinois State Bar Association’s (ISBA) Animal Law Section Council since 2010.
Ms. McBride’s career practice area was environmental law before retiring from the Illinois Attorney General’s Office in October 2020 as the Assistant Chief of the Environmental Bureau South (Springfield). She first joined the AG’s Office in January 1997. The majority of her case load concerned (1) environmental enforcement against agricultural operations, both water pollution and odor air pollution, and (2) recovery for natural resource damages, both federal and state claims. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Fisheries and Wildlife Biology and a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Journalism, both from Iowa State University. She earned her J.D. with a Certificate in Environmental and Energy Law from Chicago-Kent College of Law. Ms. McBride is a member of the ISBA’s Environmental Law Section Council, currently serving as CLE chair. She served as chair of the section council in 2011-2012. She is a member of the Chicago Bar Association’s (CBA) Environmental Law Committee and the CBA Animal Law Committee, and has served in leadership with the ABA SEER Endangered Species Committee. She is licensed in Illinois and Wisconsin.