Carol Adams is the author of The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory, Neither Man Nor Beast: Feminism and the Defense of Animals, a series on The Inner Art of Vegetarianism, and most recently, Living Among Meat Eaters. She is a frequent speaker on college campuses, where she shows the sexual politics of meat slideshow. She has been activist on issues related to feminism, abortion rights, homelessness, white racism, domestic violence, and animal activism. As an undergraduate, she organized against the Vietnam War and advocated for women's studies classes. She has also edited several books, including two on the relationship between feminism and animal advocacy.
Joel Bartlett was a coordinator for Wesleyan University ’s student animal rights organization before graduating in 2003. During his senior year Joel helped organize a ground-breaking campaign that successfully banned eggs from chickens raised in cages from the campus grocery store. After graduation Joel decided to put his experience with student activism to good use by working for PETA where he oversees a network of over 40,000 youth activists on the PETA2.com Street Team.
Gene Bauston holds a masters degree in agricultural economics from Cornell University . He is co-founder and president of Farm Sanctuary, a farm animal protection organization that wages campaigns to stop cruelty and operates sanctuaries in upstate New York and northern California . Gene has conducted thousands of visits to farms, stockyards, and slaughterhouses to document and expose animal abuse. He works with media organizations, legislators, educators, students, businesses, law enforcement authorities, and others to prevent the suffering of animals who are exploited by agribusiness.
Josephine Bellaccomo is the author of Move the Message and founder of ActionDynamics, a training organization providing skills building workshops for animal rights activists. A former university professor with ten years professional communications training experience, Josephine specializes in developing and delivering presentations, and crafting powerful messages for the media. She has been an animal rights activist in New York City for more than five years, working with national and grassroots groups to promote veganism and to educate consumers about the dark truths of the fur trade and circuses.
Carla Brauer
In Defense of Animals
Maria Brenner merged her passion for animal rights and filmmaking after three years of separately pursuing them. Inspired by John Robbins’ book, The Food Revolution, she wrote and directed Remembering Bob. The film was awarded the first-ever Student Genesis Award by HSUS, and broadcast nationally on Animal Planet. Maria holds an MFA in Film Production from the University of Southern California , and continues to make films that deal with animal issues. She recently wrote Tribality, a romantic comedy about a corporate asshole who tries to thwart his parent’s ultimatum by marrying a vegan new-age hippie tribalist.
Alka Chandna , PhD, Campaign Manager for PETA, has been active in the animal rights and vegan advocacy movements for over 20 years. She founded and directed an animal rights group at the University of Western Ontario and hosted animal rights shows on three campus radio stations and on Free Radio Berkeley. Alka founded and directed the San Francisco-based Food and Social Justice Project; worked as a publicist for Erik Marcus, author of Vegan: the New Ethics of Eating; and served as President of the SF Veg Society. She also served for 5 years as a tenured professor of mathematics at Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Karen Dawn created and runs DawnWatch.com. DawnWatch updates subscribers on media stories relevant to animal rights issues and encourages audience and reader response. Dawn saw the impact of audience feedback while working as a researcher and writer on the Australian nightly news show “The 7:30 report” and writing for various Australian publications. Now based in Los Angeles , she has been a spokesperson for the animal rights movement on TV and radio, and is the host of the animal rights radio show “Watchdog” on KPFK in Los Angeles .
Dani Dennenberg is founder and director of Seeds for Change and is a graduate of UCSD with a background in Sociology, Environmental Studies, and Law and Society. She is pursuing a dual M.Ed with an emphasis in Humane Education through an affiliation program between Cambridge College and the International Institute for Humane Education, the nation's only program of its kind. Dani believes that humane education, as a pioneering field, is vital for social change throughout the world. She is compelled to reach out to young people and to encourage them to think critically about who and what they care about, and how to live by their values.
Camilla Fox is the Director of Wildlife Programs for the Animal Protection Institute. She has been involved in animal and environmental advocacy for more than fifteen years and co-founded various animal/wildlife protection groups including Boston University’s Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in 1988 and the Marin Coalition for California Wildlife in 1996. Camilla is a frequent speaker on issues ranging from wildlife conflicts to predator control, trapping and the international fur trade and has authored more than 50 publications on these subjects. She is co-author of the publication, “Coyotes in Our Midst: Coexisting with an Adaptable and Resilient Carnivore” and producer of the award-winning documentary “Cull of the Wild: The Truth Behind Trapping.” Camilla serves on the International Advisory Board of the Natural World Museum and on a number of national and international wildlife and animal protection related coalitions.
Bruce Friedrich founded an animal rights group at Grinnell College in 1987 and was active in the student animal group at the London School of Economics from 1989-1990. After college, he spent 6 years running a soup kitchen and homeless shelter in Washington , DC , before coming to work for PETA in 1996. Bruce directs PETA's farmed animal and vegan campaigns, including PETA's campaigns against McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's. For his efforts, Details Magazine, in its October 2003 "Power Issue," ranked Bruce as the fifth most powerful man under the age of 38, placing him just behind Eminem, ahead of Justin Timberlake and Tiger Woods.
John P. Goodwin is the Grassroots Outreach Coordinator for the Humane Society of the U.S. Based in Washington , DC , he assists and mobilizes grassroots activists that want to have an impact for animals in the political arena. Goodwin began his activist career at the age of 16, organizing students in various states for anti fur campaigns. He formed the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade (CAFT) and served as Executive Director from 1994 to 2000. During his time at CAFT Goodwin organized campaigns that led to the closure of the fur departments at all Macy’s West stores, and ended the production of leghold traps at the Woodstream Corp., once the world’s largest maker of those traps. Goodwin is recognized as an expert on the fur industry, the underground world of cockfighting, and political techniques for advancing the cause of animal protection.
Michael Greger, MD, is a nationally recognized speaker on a number of important public health and social justice issues. As Farm Sanctuary's Chief Medical Investigator on mad cow disease, he debated the National Cattlemen's Beef Association Director before the FDA and was invited as an expert witness to defend Oprah Winfrey in the infamous "meat defamation trial." Dr. Greger is a general practitioner specializing in vegan nutrition. He is a graduate of the Cornell University School of Agriculture, where he coordinated the Cornell Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and the Tufts University School of Medicine, where he coordinated the Tufts Vegetarian Alliance. Please email him if you want him to come speak at your school Spring 2005 at mhg1@cornell.edu
Julia Butterfly Hill is a poet, writer, and activist who brought international attention to the world's last remaining ancient forests when she climbed 180 feet up into the branches of a 1,000 year-old redwood tree and refused to come down for two long years. She is the author of the national best seller, The Legacy of Luna, and the co-author of, One Makes the Difference, both published by Harper San Francisco. In 1999, Julia founded the non-profit organization, Circle of Life, to promote the sustainability, restoration, and preservation of life. Her latest project, We The Planet, is a tour and festival which produces environmentally sustainable, creative and dynamic community events in the Bay Area, California and all over the United States .
For more information on Julia or Circle of Life, visit www.circleoflife.org
Barbara Hodges , DVM is a holistic small animal veterinarian practicing in the Sacramento Valley area who made a concerted effort not to intentionally or unnecessarily kill any animals during her four years in veterinary school. She was among the ten percent of her class who selected the Alternative Track in their Junior-year surgery lab, thereby refusing to participate in any terminal procedures. She is a graduate of New York University (BA in Philosophy), the Stern Graduate School of Business at NYU (MBA), and the University of California at Davis School of Veterinary Medicine (DVM). Dr. Hodges is a member of the American Veterinary Medical Association, American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association, California Veterinary Medical Association, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights.
Patrick Kwan is the founder and executive director of the Student Animal Rights Alliance. Since tagging along with his college activist sister at the age of 12 to campaign against sweatshops, Patrick has organized scores of rallies, trainings, and conferences, and served as a speaker and trainer at dozens of animal rights, environmental, and human rights conferences and events. Before founding SARA in 2001, Patrick was the president of the Brooklyn Technical High School animal rights club and worked for Amnesty International as a field organizer for its human rights and the environment campaign and student coordinator in the northeast region.
Amanda Moeckel is a founder of the Liberation Now! conference and an alumna of American University where she was the President of the AU Animal Rights Effort (AUARE) for three years, and majored in Political Science and Art. She has done extensive animal rights work in D.C. with Compassion Over Killing, as well as social justice work with the Ruckus Society and the Mobilization for Global Justice. She has helped to organize a handful of conferences and actions and led numerous nonviolence/direct action trainings for activists. Now she’s putting her degree to work as a freelance artist and activist, spreading the animal rights message with her paintbrush at www.MyAnimalArt.com and serves the Events & Actions Coordinator for the Student Animal Rights Alliance.
Shaun Monson is the writer, director, and a producer of Earthlings – a groundbreaking documentary focusing on humankind’s absolute dependence on, yet total disrespect for, animals used as pets, food, clothing, entertainment and for medical or scientific research. His previous credits include the documentary Holy War, Unholy Victory, about the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the rise of the Taliban, narrated by veteran actor and Academy Award winner George Kennedy, as well as the forthcoming documentary feature Medicate Me, focusing on America’s addiction to prescription drugs, narrated by comedian and talk show host Bill Maher. Monson also wrote and directed the Dogme 95 film Bad Actors, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001.
Laura Ireland Moore is the founder and executive director of the National Center for Animal Law, an organization housed at Lewis & Clark Law School to promote legal education for animal advocacy. The Center works with law schools and students around the country to support and develop animal law curriculum and events.
She is also an associate attorney with The Animal Law Practice, an Oregon law firm specializing in animal related legal issues. She is an adjunct professor of the Animal Law Clinical Internship Seminar at Lewis & Clark Law School, an advisor to the Animal Law Review, and a board member of Humane USA-Oregon. She was a leader of her schools' animal rights organizations in junior high, high school, college, and law school.
Ingrid Newkirk is cofounder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Her campaigns to save animal lives have been featured in the Washington Post and other national newspapers. She has appeared on countless shows, including Today Show, Crossfire, Oprah Winfrey Show, Nightline, and 20/20.
Newkirk is the author of books on activism, vegan cooking, and Free the Animals! - the story of the Animal Liberation Front in the U.S.
She was a Maryland state law enforcement officer with the highest success rate in convicting animal abusers; she coordinated the first arrest in U.S. history of a vivisector on animal cruelty charges, helped achieve the first anti-cruelty law in Taiwan, and spearheaded the closure of Department of Defense underground "wound laboratory," and General Motors' crash tests on animals.
Jack Norris co-founded Vegan Outreach in 1993, and is currently the President. Vegan Outreach subsequently produced the brochure Why Vegan, now one of the most popular pieces of vegetarian literature. For the 95-96 and
96-97 school years, Jack traveled to 280 colleges in 46 states, distributing 66,000 copies of Why Vegan. He now runs Vegan Outreach's Adopt A College program at veganhealth.org/colleges. In his time on the road, he encountered many questions regarding vegan nutrition. He then returned to school and earned a Bachelor's degree in Nutrition and Dietetics at Life University, performed a dietetic internship at Georgia State University, and became a Registered Dietitian. Jack is the author of Vitamin B12: Are You Getting It?
and Staying a Healthy Vegan. Jack has a nutrition column in Veg News. His websites are VeganOutreach.org, VeganHealth.org, and JackNorrisRD.com.
lauren Ornelas is the executive director of Viva! USA , a national nonprofit vegan advocacy organization based in Davis , California . lauren has been active in the animal rights movement for over 16 years, having started the first high school animal rights group in Austin , Texas . lauren also started college groups, a local Austin group, Action for Animals, and has assisted individuals nationwide in starting groups in their local schools and communities. After spending four years as National Campaign Coordinator for In Defense of Animals, lauren was asked by Viva!UK to start and run Viva! USA in 1999. As the leader of Viva! USA , lauren is instrumental in investigating factory farms and running consumer campaigns, working with activists nationwide.
Robert Ovetz earned a BA, MA, and PhD from the University of Texas at Austin where he was a student activist and co-founder of two alternative newspapers. As the Save the Leatherback Campaign Coordinator with the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, Robert advocates for the international protection of sea turtles and other endangered marine species threatened by industrial longline fishing in the Pacific. He is presently coordinating an Action Camp for student activists interested in becoming ocean wildlife activists. Robert was on the graduate faculty and served as the faculty coordinator of the Masters in Arts and Teaching at the New College of California in San Francisco from 2003-2004. He is currently a faculty member of The Art Institute of California-San Francisco where he teaches Environmental Science.
Nicole Paquette is the Director of Legal and Government Affairs for the Animal Protection Institute. She oversees API’s litigation and all of API’s legislative efforts on the federal, state, and local levels; writes and introduces legislation; and lobbies Congress, State, and local governments on legislation affecting animals. In addition, she oversees APIs campaigns on captive wild animals. Nicole has assisted several states and cities with introducing and passing laws relating to private possession and prohibiting the display of exotic animals. Prior to joining the Animal Protection Institute, Nicole was an associate attorney in a small civil litigation firm in Washington , DC . Nicole is a graduate of the Vermont Law School and received her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from San Francisco State University . She is a member of California , District of Columbia , and Massachusetts Bars.
Miyun Park is president of Compassion Over Killing, a nonprofit animal advocacy organization based in Washington , D.C. Since its founding in 1995, COK has become a leading force in the movement to end factory farming in the United States . COK's undercover investigations and open rescues in factory farms have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle , and CNN. Miyun received a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from Middlebury College .
Christi Payne , veterinary student
University of California - Davis
Nancy Perry is the Director of Government Affairs for The Humane Society of the United States , overseeing local, state, and federal legislative campaigns. She has spearheaded animal protection initiative campaigns in California , Oregon , and Missouri . She has worked for the Cambridge Committee for Responsible Research, The Animals' Voice Magazine, and earned an Environmental Law degree at Lewis & Clark Law School , where she founded the Student Animal Legal Defense Fund and Animal Law Journal. She currently serves as a national advisor for the National Center for Animal Law and Lewis & Clark Law School 's Animal Law Journal. She also is an adjunct professor teaching an animal law seminar for George Washington University Law School .
Kristie Phelps is a Program Coordinator for In Defense of Animals (IDA) where she performs a variety of crucial roles. She keeps IDA’s members informed with urgent alerts and e-news and oversees the fur, foie gras, and Korean animal campaigns. Kristie’s breadth of knowledge comes from her five years experience as a Campaign Coordinator with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals where she traveled the globe protesting for numerous animal rights causes and working with activists to facilitate their work locally. Her work for animals has been featured in numerous publications. She graduated from Virginia Wesleyan College in 1998 and is currently pursuing a Master degree in Library Science.
John Robbins is the author of The Food Revolution and Diet for A New America . The only son of the founder of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream empire, he was groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps, but chose to walk away from Baskin-Robbins and the immense wealth it represented to work for a healthier and more compassionate world. He serves on the Boards of many non-profit groups working toward a thriving and sustainable way of life, including Youth for Environmental Sanity (YES!), and is the founder and Board Chair emeritus of EarthSave International. He lives with his wife Deo, their son Ocean and his wife Michele, and their grandsons River and Bodhi in the hills outside Santa Cruz , California .
Ocean Robbins is founder and co-president of YES! “Helping Outstanding Young Leaders Build a Better World”, which he founded in 1990, at age 16. YES! has spoken in person to 625,000 students in school assemblies, held 82 week-long camps for young activists and leaders from 55 nations, and helped to inspire the formation of more than 400 non-profit clubs and organizations working for positive change. Ocean is author of Choices for Our Future, and has served as a board member for Friends of the Earth, Creating Our Future, the Tide Turning Coalition, EarthSave International, and Omni Center . In 2002, he was selected by Utne Reader as one of 30 "Young Visionaries" under age 30. He and his beloved wife Michele are the parents of River and Bodhi Robbins, identical twin boys born in 2001.
Nathan Runkle serves full-time as the director of Mercy For Animals, an organization he founded in 1999. Nathan has helped organize and execute MFA's investigations and open rescues at Ohio's largest egg factory farms.
Through his work with MFA, Nathan has appeared in stories by dozens of newspapers and radio programs, as well as on PBS, NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX affiliates. Nathan has organized hundreds of demonstrations and educational outreach events throughout the state of Ohio and is a frequent speaker on animal rights and open rescues at national conferences, as well as high schools and colleges. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Student Animal Rights Alliance.
Paul Shapiro founded Compassion Over Killing in 1995 and works full-time as COK's campaigns director. He holds Bachelor of Arts degree in peace studies from George Washington University and serves on the Board of Directors of the Student Animal Rights Alliance.
Crystal Spiegel is the Senior Policy Analyst for the American Anti-Vivisection Society (AAVS) in Jenkintown, PA. Animalearn is the education division of AAVS. She has a Master's of Science degree from the Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine's Center for Animals and Public Policy and received a B.A. in anthropology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Crystal has been involved in animal protection since high school, when she rescued homeless animals and wrote about animal rights issues for her school newspaper. Prior to joining AAVS, Crystal worked for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund Karisoke Research Center, the Humane Society of the United States, and the Humane Society of Boulder Valley in Colorado.
Michelle Thew , Chief Executive
Animal Protection Institute
