“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

– Margaret Mead

Our Team

Founding Director

Dr Leila Dehghan-Zaklaki (she/they)

Leila is a doctor turned nutritionist and personal trainer. Her debilitating migraines compelled her to quit her medical career.

Although Leila’s journey to veganism started as an animal rescuer, she later discovered the power of a whole food plant-based diet and healed her migraines through diet. This experience shifted her professional interests. She pursued a Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate at eCornell, part of Cornell University, and obtained a Master’s of Science degree in Clinical and Public Health Nutrition from the University College of London.

Leila is passionate about justice: human justice including food justice and health equity and animal justice.

Vision Council

Co-Founder of Animal Alliance Asia

Elly Nakajima (she/her)

Born and raised in Japan, Elly is dedicated to building a more inclusive and effective animal justice movement across Asia. She is one of the first Japanese language educational content providers for vegan advocates in Japan. She studied BSc Psychology and MA Filmmaking in the UK, and worked in media for 10 years prior to founding Animal Alliance Asia in 2019.

 

 

Founder of Seeds to Inspire Foundation

Jacque Salomon (she/her)

In 2009, Jacque suffered a loss that catapulted her on a path to save her heart and find a way to live for her children. Her road to personal healing opened generational wounds while revealing Truths that became unbearable to hold. Unable to withstand the injustices that led to her son’s passing, Jacque started her non-profit to pour her gratitude for restored health and all she had learned into empowering and supporting the communities she loves.

Seeds To Inspire Foundation is a Trauma-Informed, Grassroots, Social Justice, educational organization operating on the ancestral land of the Akimel O’odham and Piipaash people. Their mission is to dismantle health inequity through the Pillars of Lifestyle Medicine and a trauma lens.  Through their Community Lifestyle Wellness Initiative, they collaborate with local grassroots organizations and anchor institutions to bring nutrition literacy, culinary medicine, indigenous ancestral farming and trauma healing education and support to our historically marginalized communities mostly composed of the peoples of the diaspora and those victimized by European colonialism past and present.

White Allies

Co-founder of Plant the Land

Laura Schleifer

Laura Schleifer is the Institute for Critical Animal Studies Director of Regions and Total Liberation, a Promoting Enduring Peace Program Director, and co-founder of Plant the Land, a Gaza-based vegan food justice/community projects team. A lifelong “artivist” and NYU Tisch School of the Arts graduate, she’s performed throughout the Middle East with a circus troupe, taught in China, Nicaragua, and at Wesleyan University’s Green Street Arts Center, performed off-Broadway, and arts-mentored homeless youth. Her screenplay, The Feral Child, was a Sundance Screenwriters’ Lab finalist. Her essays appear in New Politics Magazine, The Leftist Review, Project Intersect, Forca Vegan, The New Engagement, Kropotkin Now! Life, Freedom and Ethics (Black Rose Books, 2021), Neoliberal Schooling of Selfishness and Exploitation: Rubricization and Corporatization of Higher Education, (Peter Lang, 2022) and Fever Spores; William S. Burroughs and Queer Letters, (Rebel Satori Press, 2022). Currently, she’s writing a book, Liberating Veganism, for Vegan Publishers.

“I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” – Malcolm X

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller.

Skip to content