Rachel McCrystal—executive director of Woodstock Farm Sanctuary, which rescues farmed animals and provides refuge for them, now housing around 400 animals—recalls a childhood marked by a houseful of animals, featuring a preponderance of rattlesnakes and other...
Jane O’Hara—the animal advocate and artist whose paintings explore animal issues, depict their plight, and explore our relationships with them--recalls growing up in a family where animals didn’t have much of a presence, but she liked them. O’Hara notes that art...
Kathy Stevens—founder and director of Catskill Animal Sanctuary, which sprawls over 148 acres in New York’s Hudson Valley, providing refuge to about 300 farmed animals rescued from cruelty, neglect, and abandonment—recalls a childhood growing up on a horse farm in...
Ronnie Lee—the veteran British animal rights activist, who in 1976, founded the Animal Liberation Front (ALF)—muses about how to reconcile a lad whose childhood, in its basic contours, resembled many people’s childhood, yet he went on to become a firebrand...
Priscilla Feral—the president of Friends of Animals, an international animal advocacy organization founded in 1957—discusses FoA’s late founder, Alice Herrington, outlining the characteristics that helped account for her pioneering inroads. Feral also addresses her...
Anthony Bellotti — founder of the White Coat Waste Project—describes his formative years, and the role animals played in them, highlighting his pivotal experience as a high school student, when he worked as an intern in an animal experimentation lab, and was...
Ellie Laks —the founder of The Gentle Barn, a Southern California sanctuary that houses more than 170 animals that have been rescued from abuse, neglect or slaughter—discusses the ideas and impulses that propelled her to create the facility, some of which can be...
Colleen Patrick-Goudreau —a nationally-recognized speaker, author (of seven books) and podcaster whose milieu is espousing the virtues of vegan living—describes her earliest efforts as an advocate, the better part of three decades ago, when even then a driving...
Stephen Wells—the executive director of the Animal Legal Defense Fund ALDF)—traces his intriguing, sometimes colorful, career path before joining ALDF, particularly his years in Alaska, where, among other developments, he formalized his commitment to becoming a...
Keegan Kuhn—half of the filmmaking duo behind the award-winning documentary, “Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret,” and whose new film is “What the Health”—discusses the impact and acclaim generated by “Cowspiracy,” and how, rather than feeling intimidated by the...
