Our Team

Max Tokarsky has spent nearly 25 years as an entrepreneur and advocate working at the intersection of institutional failure, community need, and systemic reform.

He co-founded RAJE (Russian American Jewish Experience) and has served in leadership roles across health, civic, and defense sectors — including InvestAcure, a public benefit corporation focused on Alzheimer's research funding, and USABDM, a biosecurity organization founded during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is a former member of the Forbes Business Council and a graduate of the Wharton entrepreneurship program.

Max founded NAVEC after years of direct exposure to the veterinary workforce crisis — watching communities lose access to care not because of any shortage of qualified candidates, but because of a licensing monopoly that limits the profession's growth by design. His focus is on replacing gatekeeping with merit, transparency, and accountability.

Dr. Edward Timmons, NAVEC's Head of Research, is one of the nation's leading scholars of occupational licensing and its effects on workers, consumers, and access to professional services.

He is Vice President of Policy at the Archbridge Institute, where he leads the institute's economic policy strategy — setting research priorities and bringing its work to policymakers and key stakeholders. His research focuses on labor economics and regulatory policy, and he is regularly asked to provide expert testimony to U.S. states on occupational licensing reform and the practice authority of nurse practitioners.

His work has been cited in top-tier scholarly journals, including The Journal of Law & Economics, The Journal of Regulatory Economics, The Journal of Labor Research, the British Journal of Industrial Relations, Health Policy, and Health Economics. In addition, he has authored more than 100 articles for media publications, appearing in U.S. News & World Report, National Review, The Hill, Harvard Business Review, The Washington Examiner, and dozens of regional outlets. His research is frequently cited by the popular press and has been featured by the Federal Trade Commission, the Obama White House, and in a U.S. Senate hearing entitled “License to Compete: Occupational Licensing and the State Action Doctrine.” He publishes a weekly newsletter on Substack with the latest research and policy insights surrounding occupational licensing.

Dr. Timmons received his Ph.D. in economics from Lehigh University and his B.A. in economics and actuarial science from Lebanon Valley College. He was the founding director of the Knee Regulatory Research Center and is currently an affiliate at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Research and Innovations at Columbia University's School of Nursing and a regulatory policy analyst at the Bluegrass Institute.

At NAVEC, Dr. Timmons turns two decades of peer-reviewed licensing scholarship — work relied on by legislatures and federal regulators — toward the licensing structures behind the veterinary shortage.

Rick DuCharme is one of the most recognized leaders in the American animal-welfare movement. In 2002 he founded First Coast No More Homeless Pets, which he built into a nearly $10-million organization with 165 staff, more than 20 veterinarians, and two safety-net hospitals — and which helped make Jacksonville one of the first large U.S. metros to reach and hold no-kill status. Its targeted spay/neuter programs delivered over 22,000 surgeries a year and cut shelter intake by more than half.

He went on to co-found the Target Zero Institute, which has helped dozens of communities raise their lifesaving rates, and to create the shelter-based “Feral Freedom” model now replicated nationwide. Today he leads RLD Consulting Services, advising communities on access to veterinary care and sustainable spay/neuter programs. Rick has worked with the University of Tennessee’s Program for Pet Health Equity and the new Lincoln Memorial University College of Veterinary Medicine in Orange Park, FL.

Rick is managing partner in Community Cat Clinic, with two feline-only access-to-care veterinary clinics in Atlanta’s northside.

At NAVEC, Rick brings more than two decades of frontline experience to the effort to end the veterinary shortage — connecting the organization with the shelters, clinics, and community groups living with it every day.