Bruce Friedrich is senior director for strategic initiatives at Farm Sanctuary, where he leads the group’s legislation and litigation efforts, oversees the Compassionate Communities Campaign, and works to introduce the world to who farmed animals are through “The Someone Project.” Before joining Farm Sanctuary, Bruce was vice president for campaigns at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), where he worked for 15 years, spearheading some of PETA’s most successful efforts—from writing and producing the video “Meet Your Meat,” to spearheading the development of PETA’s “Vegetarian Starter Kit,” to forcing fast-food behemoths McDonald’s and Burger King to adopt ground-breaking animal welfare guidelines. Bruce is a frequent Blogger at HuffingtonPost.com, wrote the foreword to the popular animal rights book Striking at the Roots (O Books), and has contributed to multiple books on animal protection, including In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave, which is edited by Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer. He co-authored the Animal Activist's Handbook, a book about which Singer raves: “Rarely have so few pages contained so much intelligence and good advice. Get it, read it, and act on it. Now.” Bruce has debated meat, fur, and animal-experimentation industry representatives on countless television and radio programs including NBC’s Today show, all three network evening news programs, and various programs on CNN, the Fox News Network, and MSNBC. In addition to his work for Farm Sanctuary, Bruce taught high school English for two years in inner city Baltimore, where he was his school’s “teacher of the year,” and spent more than six years running a shelter for homeless families in Washington, D.C. Bruce has degrees from Grinnell College, Johns Hopkins University, and the London School of Economics. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Alka Chandna, Ph.D.

“Bruce Friedrich is one of the best speakers I’ve ever heard in my life. He shares a profound vision of a nonviolent world, where humanity lives at peace with one another, all creatures and creation itself. His passion, eloquence, intellect, and humanity will move and inspire everyone to consider a vegetarian diet, animal rights and peacemaking.”
—John Dear, S.J., Nobel Peace Prize nominee, peace activist, and author

James McWilliams

Is a historian and writer based in Austin, Texas.  His books include Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly (Little, Brown) and A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America (Columbia University Press). His writing on food, agriculture, and animals has appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s, The Washington Post, Slate, Forbes, Travel and Leisure, The Los Angeles Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Texas Observer (Texas’s only liberal magazine!), where James has been a contributing writer since 2002. He also is a contributor to Freakonomics.com. His current projects include two books. One, tentatively titled A Glorious Distance: The Origins of Factory Farming in the United States (Cornell University Press), explores the transformation of the human-farm animal relationship that provided the cultural and psychological foundation for large-scale animal agriculture in the nineteenth century.  The second, tentatively titled The Modern Savage: Our Unthinking Decision to Eat Animals (St. Martin’s), investigates the hidden ethical, environmental, and economic problems with small scale animal agriculture today, insisting that a plant-based diet is the most effective answer to the problems of industrial animal agriculture. In the Fall of 2013 University of Texas Press will be publishing a short book he recently finished on the history of the pecan tree. It’s called America’s Native Nut: A Brief History of the Pecan Tree.

James can usually be found at Texas State University (jm71@txstate.edu), where he is a professor. Oh, and he prefers reading novels to anything else (see Fumarole).

CV-McWilliams (2012)

http://www.txstate.edu/history/people/faculty/mcwilliams.html

John Pierre

For the last 15 years, John Pierre, nutrition and fitness consultant, has been lecturing throughout the United States about the powers of a plant-based diet. He has been a presenter at the following conferences: NAVS (North American Vegetarian Society), Natural Hygiene, FARM, AVS (American Vegan Society) and the Raw Foods Sports Camp. He is a regular presenter at Wild Oats, a large natural foods chain, and lectures at various vegetarian and raw food groups, organizations, senior centers and retirement homes. He also conducts group fitness boot camps and works with individual clients. For the past two decades, John has also served as a dedicated advocate for women, animals and the environment. He incorporates the importance of living a loving and compassionate lifestyle into all the work that he does. Visit his website at www.practicecompassion.com.

John Schlimm


John, named one of the “Vegan Men We Love” by VegNews magazine, is an activist, educator, artist, and international award-winning author of such cookbooks as Grilling Vegan Style, The Tipsy Vegan, and The Cheesy Vegan, coming this fall from DaCapo Lifelong. The son of a former butcher and meat-processing business owner, John came out on The Ellen DeGeneres Show as a pro-meatless, pro-vegetable loving kind of foodie, expressing the sentiment that “no living being, human or animal, should  ever go through this life unloved” to Ellen's millions of viewers. A member of one of the oldest brewing families in the U.S., John put a new twist on his boozy roots by writing The Tipsy Vegan to much critical acclaim. To further his mission of blasting through vegan stereotypes and creating what he calls Parties-in-a-Book, John followed up with Grilling Vegan Style, which launches vegans as the new pioneers of flame on the grilling circuit. Publishers Weekly named it one of the “Top 10 Cookbooks for Spring 2012” and VegNews named it one of 2012’s “Top 10 Must-Buy Vegan Cookbooks.” John will once again show just how accessible and delicious a plant-based lifestyle can be for everyone when The Cheesy Vegan is released in October. John’s cookbooks and appearances have been critically acclaimed and heralded by the vegan and mainstream media and readers alike, including The New York Times, his appearance on Ellen, and two cross country book tours with Caesars Entertainment, as well as his groundbreaking Commencement Address to the Class of 2012. John has a Master's in Education from Harvard University, and has authored 12 books; the most recent two, written since his transition to vegan, carry this dedication:
To All the Animals ~ So you know that you have not passed this way unloved.

Follow John at:                                                                 

www.JohnSchlimm.com
Facebook: www.Facebook.com/JohnSchlimm
Twitter:@JohnSchlimm
Pinterest: www.Pinterest.com/JohnSchlimm

lauren Ornelas is the founder/director of the all-volunteer Food Empowerment Project, a vegan food justice nonprofit seeking to create a more just world by helping consumers recognize the power of their food choices. F.E.P. works in solidarity with farm workers, advocates for slave-free chocolate and focuses on access to healthy foods in communities of color and low-income communities. When lauren was head of Viva!USA, she was instrumental in investigating factory farms and running consumer campaigns. In cooperation with activists across the country, lauren persuaded Trader Joe’s to stop selling all duck meat and was the spark that got the founder of Whole Foods Market to become a vegan. She also helped halt the construction of an industrial dairy operation in California. She currently serves as Campaign Director with the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

Nathan Runkle
Executive Director
NathanR@MercyForAnimals.org

is the founder and executive director of Mercy For Animals. Raised on a farm in rural Ohio, Nathan has long had a deep connection with farmed animals. After a local farmed animal abuse case involving a piglet slammed headfirst into a concrete floor during an agriculture project at a nearby high school, Nathan founded Mercy For Animals to give "food" animals a much-needed advocate in his local community. Since founding Mercy For Animals over a decade ago, Nathan has overseen the organization's growth into a leading national force in the prevention of cruelty to farmed animals and promotion of compassionate food choices and policies. A nationally recognized speaker on animal advocacy, factory farming, and veganism, Nathan has presented at colleges, conferences, and many other forums from coast to coast. Through his work with MFA, Nathan has been an outspoken advocate for animal rights, featured in hundreds of newspaper, television, and radio interviews, including on ABC’s World News with Diane Sawyer, Nightline, 20/20, CNN, and National Public Radio, and in USA Today, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune.Nathan works closely with MFA's diverse group of members, supporters, and employees to oversee, develop, and fulfill objectives within the organization's four areas of focus: education, legal advocacy, corporate outreach, and undercover investigations. Nathan has worked alongside elected officials, corporate executives, heads of international organizations, professors, farmers, celebrities, and film producers to pass landmark farmed animal protection legislation, raise public awareness about vegetarianism, and implement animal welfare policy changes. VegNews magazine has recognized both Mercy For Animals and Nathan for making substantial contributions to the vegetarian movement, naming Nathan one of the "25 Most Fascinating Vegetarians" and one of the country's "Top 20 Activists Under 30 Years Old," and twice naming MFA "Non-Profit of the Year." In 2009, at the age of 25, Nathan became the youngest person ever inducted into the U.S. Animal Rights Hall of Fame.

Ryan Andrews
Ryan is a registered dietitian, strength and conditioning specialist, and registered yoga teacher who completed his education in exercise and nutrition at the University of Northern Colorado, Kent State University, and Johns Hopkins Medicine. He’s written hundreds of articles on nutrition, exercise, and health, authored Drop The Fat Act & Live Lean, and coauthored The Essentials of Sport and Exercise Nutrition Certification Manual. Ryan is currently a coach with Precision Nutrition, offering life-changing, research-driven nutrition coaching for everyone.