MENTORS
We are deeply grateful to the following external mentors who have generously offered their time and professional guidance in an effort to support the next generation of Reducetarian Movement leaders.
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Toni is a research fellow at Longview Philanthropy, where she works with the Head of Research to execute Longview's research agenda. Previously, she was the Director of Research at Animal Charity Evaluators, where she led an international research team that influenced up to $8.9 million per year in charitable giving. Her work has been published in Philosophical Psychology and Philosophers’ Imprint, and she served as Managing Editor for the academic journal Social Theory and Practice. Toni has a masters’ degree in philosophy with a concentration in philosophy of mind and cognitive science.
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Amruza Birdie is the founder and former executive director of Encompass, a nonprofit with a mission to make the farmed animal protection movement more racially diverse, equitable, and inclusive. Prior to Encompass, Amruza spent seven years at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine promoting alternatives to animal tests as a federal lobbyist.
In addition to her more than two decades of experience in animal protection, Amruza has worked in other social justice movements, including those striving for racial justice, queer rights, and reproductive freedom. Amruza received a degree from Hampshire College in critical social thought/race and feminist theory and her Master’s in Public Management from Johns Hopkins University. She is a Zoroastrian Parsi, a rare ethnic group of less than 120,000 people worldwide.
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Carolina is the founder and Executive Director of Sinergia Animal, an Animal Charity Evaluators’ StandOut charity working in eight countries of the Global South. She has twenty years of experience in advocacy, fundraising, strategic planning, management, and campaigning. She has also worked in more than thirty countries as an investigative journalist for various animal welfare, environmental and social justice organizations. Her work has been covered by some of the world’s most prominent media, such as the BBC, The New York Times, The Guardian, Channel 4, and Le Monde.
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Jo-Anne is an award-winning photojournalist, sought-after speaker, photo editor, and the founder of We Animals Media. She has visited over sixty countries to document our complex relationship with animals. She is the author of three books: We Animals (2014), Captive (2017), and HIDDEN: Animals in the Anthropocene (2020), and is the subject of Canadian filmmaker Liz Marshall's acclaimed Canadian documentary, The Ghosts in Our Machine. Jo-Anne's photographs have received accolades from Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Nature Photographer of the Year, Big Picture, AEFONA, Picture of the Year International, the Global Peace Award, and others. In 2020, Jo-Anne was thrilled to be a member of the jury for World Press Photo. She hails from Toronto, Canada.
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Christopher Schlottmann is Clinical Professor, Associate Chair, Director of Undergraduate Studies, and Global Curriculum Coordinator in the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University. His research is grounded in philosophical analysis of a variety of environmental topics. His current projects concern the ethical dimensions at the intersection of food, animals and the environment. He recently published Food, Animals and Environment: An Ethical Approach, co-authored with philosopher Jeff Sebo, with Routledge/Earthscan. It is the first textbook at the intersection of food, ethics and the environment, with an ethical emphasis but incorporating extensive social and natural sciences. His current project is a scholarly monograph on the ethics of food, focusing on the environmental and animal dimensions. It includes quantitative and qualitative assessment of the environmental impacts of foods; a philosophical survey of the place of animals in both nature and food systems; an analysis of rubrics for understanding the ethics and impacts of food, including naturalness, purity, and dispositions towards modernity, technology and industry; a philosophical argument detailing an environmental ethic of domesticated, non-wild space; a critical analysis of the framing of social change around food and environment as personal, privatized responsibility (rather than as citizenship); and solutions to environmental problems related to food. He has previously published Environment and Society: A Reader (NYU Press, 2017) with Dale Jamieson, Colin Jerolmack, Anne Rademacher, and Maria Damon, Reflecting on Nature: Readings in Environmental Ethics and Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2012), with Dale Jamieson and Lori Gruen, and The Conceptual Foundations of Environmental Education (Peter Lang, 2012).
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Zoe Novic is a graduate of the Yale School of Public Health where she focused her studies on the connection between human health, animal welfare, environmental health. Prior to studying public health, Zoe served two years in the Peace Corps in West Java, Indonesia, and worked as the San Francisco Grassroots Director for The Humane League. Zoe is currently the Public Health Education Coordinator for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine where she focuses on partnering with public health schools and institutions to expand the One Health curriculum for the benefit of humans, animals, and the planet.
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Andrew Stout is a 5th year PhD student in David Kaplan's cell ag and tissue engineering lab at Tufts University. At Tufts, Andrew studies are focused in two areas: 1) genetic engineering of bovine muscle cells to improve cultured meat products (e.g., nutritional enhancement) or cultured meat production processes (e.g., cell immortalization), and 2) low cost serum-free media development. Before grad school, Andrew received his BS in Materials Science from Rice University, worked in Mark Post's cultured meat lab at Maastricht University, and worked at Geltor, Inc., in San Francisco.
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T.K. Pillan is the Founder & Chairman of Veggie Grill, the leading 100% plant-based restaurant company in the U.S. Since founding Veggie Grill in 2006, T.K. has been on a mission to help people advance their conscious food journey in an approachable and attainable manner. T.K. is also the Co-Founder and Partner at Powerplant Partners, a private equity firm that supports visionary entrepreneurs with companies that deliver better nutrition in more sustainable and ethical ways. Powerplant investments include Beyond Meat, Ripple Foods, REBBL, Miyoko’s Creamery and Zero Egg.
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Daniela Romero Waldhorn is a social psychologist, holds a Master's degree in Development Cooperation, a Master's degree in Ethics and Politics, and is a Ph.D. candidate in Social and Organisational Psychology at the University of Barcelona. She is Director of Animal Welfare Research at the think tank Rethink Priorities, and is a member of the scientific board of the Centre for Animal Ethics at Pompeu Fabra University.
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Erin Wing is the Deputy Director of Investigations for Animal Outlook and a former undercover investigator. Over the course of 2 years, she went on to complete 4 investigations in the dairy, chicken and aquaculture industries, including the first-ever undercover expose of salmon aquaculture in the U.S. Erin's investigations and her advocacy work shed light on the interconnection of human and animal exploitation that occurs on farms in the animal agriculture system. She sincerely shares personal accounts from her compelling background to illustrate the dangers speciesism poses to all sentient beings on the planet. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian and The New York Times.
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David J. Wolfson is a partner and Executive Director at Milbank LLP. He has published extensively in the animal protection field and taught animal law at a number of law schools, including Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School and NYU Law School. He is currently an adjunct professor at NYU where he teaches Animals and Public Policy. He has represented a number of animal protection groups including the Humane Society of the United States, Mercy for Animals, Compassion over Killing (now Animal Outlook) and Compassion in World Farming, and was a key participant in numerous successful animal protection initiatives, including a number of ballot initiatives that resulted in first of its kind legal protections for farmed animals. He is currently on the board of CDP, a climate change organization, and chair of the board of CDP North America.