🐺 Denise Bitz
🩺 Nurse practitioner · 🐾 Founder of Brother Wolf Animal Rescue · 🐷 Sanctuary builder · 🌱 Vegan voice for animals and the planet
🌿 Kitchen Monk™ proudly honors Denise Bitz, a friend of our Farm Days family. 📸 Denise is pictured with us in the Ethos Farm Days 2022 group photo.
🩺 A nurse who listened to the animals
🚑 Denise spent more than a decade as a traveling nurse, working in towns across the United States and volunteering at animal shelters in her spare time. 🌀 She was moved by the suffering of animals after Hurricane Katrina. 🏔️ Then, on a nursing assignment in Asheville, North Carolina, she saw healthy animals being put down because shelters had no room. 💡 She decided to do something about it.
🐺 Founder of Brother Wolf Animal Rescue
- 🌱 2007: Denise founded Brother Wolf Animal Rescue in Asheville to save dogs and cats at risk of euthanasia. 🐕 Its first year: 60 dog adoptions.
- 🏆 She grew it into the largest no-kill organization in North Carolina, helping more than 6,000 animals a year.
- 🤝 Close to 14,000 pets saved, with the help of about 3,000 volunteers.
- 🏠 Adoption, behavior training, foster, pet retention and disaster relief programs.
🐷 A vegan sanctuary and a vegan movement
- 🥦 Denise became vegan herself, then led Brother Wolf to become a vegan organization, starting with vegan-only food at every event.
- 🌾 She led the creation of an animal sanctuary on about 80 donated acres outside Asheville, home to rescued pigs, cows and dogs, with plans for cats, chickens, goats and sheep.
- 📣 2018: Brother Wolf launched Asheville Vegan Outreach.
- 🌍 2019: Denise stepped down as founder and president to devote herself to animal rights, environmental activism and vegan advocacy.
⭐ Denise today: a nurse practitioner caring for people at home
🎓 Denise went on to become a nurse practitioner. She completed her NP clinical training with Kitchen Monk founder Nathanael Elijah Smith, graduated, and now brings advanced practice nursing into people’s homes. 🏡 Her compassion keeps reaching further: from rescued animals to patients in their own living rooms.
“From completing your nurse practitioner clinicals with me to graduating and bringing advanced practice nursing into people’s homes: I am proud of your journey and grateful to have been part of it.”
Nathanael Elijah Smith, FNP-C, DipACLM
🙏 Thank you, Kelly Freeman
🌟 Denise’s path to Kitchen Monk began with a referral. Kelly Freeman, MSN, AGPCNP-BC, DipACLM, FACLM, referred Denise to Nathanael, and that connection grew into Denise’s nurse practitioner journey and a friendship we celebrate today.
🤝 Thank you, Kelly, for seeing the good in people and connecting them. One thoughtful referral helped a nurse, a rescuer and a vegan advocate keep flourishing. 🌱
💚 Why we honor her
🩺 Denise shows what flourishing nursing looks like: compassion that reaches every living being. 🥗 Her vegan advocacy connects kindness to animals, care for the planet, and the whole-food plant-based way of eating Kitchen Monk teaches.
📚 Read Denise’s story
ℹ️ Facts drawn from public reporting by Friends of Animals (2018), Asheville.com (2019) and Elizabethtown College, linked above, and from Nathanael’s own experience as Denise’s NP clinical preceptor. Denise led Brother Wolf from 2007 to 2019; the organization is now run by others. This tribute is our own and does not imply endorsement by Denise. ✉️ Corrections: rfjeep@gmail.com
