Penelope Smith

An American teacher, Penelope Smith has worked professionally as an animal communicator since the 1970s, and it was she who named the field 'interspecies telepathic communication'. She holds degrees in the social sciences at both bachelor's and master's level, and trained in human counselling and holistic bodywork before making a profession of the ability to understand animals that she had had all her life. Many of today's professional animal communicators started with her courses, and her students know her as the grandmother of interspecies communication.

Her view is that every person is born able to communicate mind to mind with other species, and that presence, receptivity and practice can bring this ability back. Three of her books have become classics of the field: Animals in Spirit, on how animals experience death and the afterlife, along with Animal Talk and When Animals Speak. She founded and edited the magazine Species Link, drew up a code of ethics for animal communicators in 1990, and set up the Animal Communicators Coalition for Animal Welfare. Private consultations are no longer part of her work; she teaches instead through online courses, some of them on The Shift Network, as well as audio courses and recorded seminars.