People

Faculty Director

Douglas Kysar

Doug Kysar is Faculty Director of the Law, Environment & Animals Program and Joseph M. Field ’55 Professor of Law at Yale Law School. He was born and raised in Indiana. Under his mother’s guidance, he developed a love of reading and a love of the more-than-human world. Kysar later studied at Indiana University, where his two loves developed further with guidance from the great nature writer and teacher Scott Russell Sanders. After law school, Kysar began teaching at Cornell Law School and moved to Yale in 2008. Kysar’s work studies the way society utilizes laws and regulations to prevent, manage, and respond to threats of harm to life. He has had a particular focus on climate change law and policy for several years now because climate change will bring harm to life on an almost unimaginable scale.

Full Biography

Directors

Daina Bray

Legal Director

Daina Bray is the Legal Director of the Law, Environment & Animals Program at Yale Law School and is a Clinical Lecturer and Senior Research Scholar in Law. Daina has extensive animal law and litigation practice experience, and a sustained and pragmatic commitment to making a positive difference in the ways that we interact with nonhuman animals.

Full Biography

Viveca Morris

Executive Director

Viveca Morris is the Executive Director of the Law, Environment & Animals Program at Yale Law School, a Research Scholar at Yale Law School, and a Clinical Lecturer in Law. She founded LEAP in partnership with Faculty Co-Directors Doug Kysar and Jonathan Lovvorn in 2019.

Full Biography

Faculty, Fellows & Staff

Laura Fox

Climate Change & Animal Agriculture Litigation Initiative Fellow

Laura Fox is a Litigation Fellow focusing on climate and animal agriculture and a Research Scholar at Yale Law School. Laura has a robust background in litigating and teaching, with a focus on advancing farmed animal interests and challenging the environmental, social, and public health impacts of industrial animal agriculture. Prior to her current roles, she most recently was a Visiting Professor and the inaugural Director of the Farmed Animal Advocacy Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School. She previously worked as a Senior Staff Attorney at the Humane Society of the United States and as a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Animal Law and Policy Program.

Naomi Jennings

Litigation and Program Fellow

Naomi Jennings is the Litigation and Program Fellow with the Law, Environment & Animals Program at Yale Law School. She is originally from Calgary, Canada. Prior to joining LEAP, Naomi was a Harvard Law Review fellow at Centro de los Derechos del Migrante. There, she brought litigation on behalf of workers and provided direct legal services to workers, with a particular focus on workers’ rights in the animal agriculture industry. Naomi is interested in intersections between animal rights, climate change, and workers’ rights.

Ann Linder

Animal Agriculture Accountability Project Research Scholar

Ann Linder is the Animal Agriculture Accountability Project Research Scholar with LEAP. Prior to joining LEAP, Ann served as the Associate Director of Policy & Research at the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School, and prior to that, as a research fellow. During this time, she led the program’s research initiative examining the intersection between zoonotic disease and animal industries— a project that spanned more than 4 years and 15 countries. Her work on zoonotic disease has been published by Science and featured in The New York Times and other outlets. Ann’s other research has touched on a diverse set of animal issues ranging from wildlife policy to anti-confinement laws to breed restrictive legislation.

Jonathan Lovvorn

Jonathan Lovvorn co-founded LEAP and served as its faculty co-director from 2019-2024. He is Chief Counsel for Animal Protection Litigation for Humane World for Animals and serves as a board member and/or legal advisor to numerous animal and environmental protection organizations. As a frequent lecturer at Yale, Lovvorn has taught courses such as Animal Law, Climate Change and Animals, and an innovative experiential course he devised called the Climate, Animal, Food, and Environmental Law & Policy Lab, which provides a creative space for students, faculty, outside experts, and non-governmental organizations to devise and propagate novel legal and policy strategies to compel industrial animal agriculture to pay the uncounted and externalized costs these operations saddle upon animals, workers, communities, and the environment.

Jennifer Skene

Co-Host, When We Talk About Animals

Jennifer Skene is a Clinical Lecturer in Law with the Environmental Protection Clinic at Yale and the Natural Climate Solutions Policy Manager with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) Canada Project. Her work focuses on policy advocacy around primary forest protection in the Canadian boreal and other Northern forests, forest carbon accounting and regulation, and Indigenous rights. Jennifer co-hosts the Yale University podcast “When We Talk About Animals,” through which she explores with guests the astonishing non-human world and the reflections, lessons, and insights it provides on our own humanity.

Dane Underwood

Climate Change & Animal Agriculture Litigation Initiative Fellow

Dane Underwood is a Yale University alum with a dual bachelor’s degree in literature and history. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Underwood clerked for Judge Anne R. Traum of the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada and completed a legal fellowship in human rights litigation with the Center for Justice and Accountability. He also worked as a staff attorney with the Harvard Law School Consumer Protection Clinic, representing indigent clients in debt collection and foreclosure matters. As a law student, Underwood served as president of Harvard Law School’s Advocates for Human Rights and worked with both the Harvard Human Rights Journal and the Harvard Environmental Law Review. He completed summer clerkships with Conservation Law Foundation and the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

2025-2026 LEAP Student Fellows

Rebecca Araten

J.D. 2026

Rebecca Araten is a second-year law student interested in using environmental litigation as a tool to prevent climate change and pollution. She spent her summer working on affirmative environmental enforcement cases with the Environmental Protection Unit at the Southern District of New York US Attorney’s Office and has done enforcement research for the Chesapeake Legal Alliance. She is currently exploring policy approaches to climate accountability as a member of the YLS Environmental Protection Clinic.

Terra Baer

J.D. 2026

Terra is a J.D. candidate at Yale Law School. She received B.A. degrees in Environmental and Urban Studies and Law, Letters, and Society from the University of Chicago, where she produced scholarship analyzing the feasibility of criminalizing ecocide as the fifth core crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Prior to law school, Terra worked in legal academia researching extractive energy market regulation and design. As a LEAP Fellow, she hopes to further explore her interests in ecocentric legal frameworks, animal rights, and environmental ethics in the context of global governance.

Liz Beling

J.D. 2026

Liz Beling is a 2L at Yale Law School from Charlottesville, Virginia. She is a graduate of Emory University, where she worked on the Oxford College Organic Farm and studied sociology. Before law school, she worked at the Rappahannock-Rapidan Regional Commission where she served school divisions in a five-county region on expanding farm to school programming and local food procurement. At YLS, she is involved in the Yale Environmental Law Association and the Climate Change and Animal Agriculture Litigation Initiative.

James Boyle

J.D. 2028

I came to YLS after a 20-year career as an active-duty Navy officer. Multiple experiences over the past several years, including volunteering at an animal shelter, caring for a dying dog, and reading Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation" have made me deeply aware of the emotional lives of animals - and of the profound suffering humans inflict on them. I hope to use my time here at YLS to explore avenues for legal advocacy on behalf of animals to reduce suffering, improve the living conditions of animals in factory farms, combat unnecessary laboratory experimentation, and prevent animal cruelty. I look forward to working with LEAP faculty and peers to pursue these goals.

Ilaria Cimadori

Ph.D. 2027

Ilaria is a fourth-year Ph.D. student at the Yale School of the Environment. Her interest in animal protection motivated her master's thesis research project. In particular, she carried out a policy effectiveness assessment of four prominent conventions protecting biodiversity with African Elephants as a case study, analyzing data on African Elephants in four countries to see how effective these conventions were at protecting the population over the years. During her Ph.D., she would like to focus her research on new bio-technologies regulations and how they may impact animals and the environment. During her free time, she volunteers at the animal shelter of her hometown. She also has a background in languages and international relations.

Arun Dayanandan

Ph.D. 2027

Arun Dayanandan is a Ph.D. candidate at Yale School of the Environment and a Lewis B. Cullman Fellow at the New York Botanical Garden. Through comparative fieldwork across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, he investigates how commercial-scale tree plantations can act as catalysts for biodiversity recovery. His work through the LEAP fellowship seeks to link ecological science with policy by exploring how forest management and policy mechanisms can better protect both forests and the animals within them. With an M.Sc. in animal cognition, Arun brings a longstanding interest in the roles of nonhuman animals in managed ecosystems.

Ivana Dizdar

Postdoctoral Fellow 2025-27

Ivana Dizdar is an art historian whose work explores art’s intersections with the history of science, the environmental humanities, and animal studies. She is writing a book about how the Arctic was represented across visual media in nineteenth-century Paris. She is interested in what visual culture can reveal about the representation, extraction, and material use of Arctic animals during a period of profound transformations in science, exploration, industrialization, colonization, and cross-species encounters. Animals—especially polar bears—form a major thread in the project, appearing across the fine and decorative arts but also as taxidermic specimens and living subjects on display in the French metropole. Ivana has developed this research through fellowships at Princeton University, the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the History of Art at Yale.

Pranjal Drall

J.D. / Ph.D. 2027

Pranjal is a J.D. candidate at Yale Law School. His primary research interests are in the fields of environmental law, corporate governance, and bankruptcy. Before starting law school, he was a pre-doctoral fellow at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), where he analyzed the relationships between misallocation of resources, firm learning, and lease terms on productivity in the U.S. fracking industry. Prior to joining EPIC, he was a Tobin pre-doctoral fellow at YLS and focused on retirement menu design, gun policy, and racial discrimination in a variety of contexts. He graduated from Grinnell College in 2020 with a B.A. in Economics and Mathematics.

Agustina Emilia Churba

LL.M. 2026

Agustina Emilia Churba is an Argentine lawyer who earned her law degree from the University of Buenos Aires and a postgraduate degree in Criminal Law from Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. She is currently pursuing her LL.M. at Yale Law School, where her research focuses on animal law, structural litigation, and legal education. She explores how these fields can expand representation and justice for nonhuman animals while examining the limits of criminal law in addressing animal protection. Before Yale, she worked at a Public Prosecutor’s Office in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She also served as a Teaching Assistant in Animal Law at the University of Buenos Aires. Her academic work seeks to contribute to a more inclusive understanding of legal personhood and to promote innovative legal frameworks that recognize the moral and legal significance of nonhuman animals.

Bryn Evans

M.P.P.-M.E.M. 2027

Bryn is a writer from the unceded Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh territories commonly known as Vancouver, BC. With a background in human rights and environmental law, they have worked across the Pacific on issues of community land rights and environmental justice. At the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs and School of the Environment, Bryn’s research analyzes how environmental policy regimes can braid Traditional Knowledge and more-than-human ways of knowing into mainstream governance, and how doing so expands the legal and moral imagination around human responsibilities to our ecological relations.

Sofía Fernández González

Ph.D. 2029

Sofía R. Fernández González is a doctoral student in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale University, where she researches utopian movements, ecocriticism, performance theory and Galician studies, while also completing a certificate in Environmental Humanities. Sofía earned her MA in Philosophy from the Universidade Santiago de Compostela in 2021, where she studied with the antispecist thinker Oscar Horta, and later moved to New York on a Fulbright Fellowship. Sofía is also a writer; she has published Alalá (Arteidolia Press, 2024), Os Corpos Fráxiles (Aira Editorial, 2024) and Canícula (Edicións Laiovento, 2025). As a LEAP Fellow, she is interested in thinking about animal rights, the significance of porco celta (Galician pork) in Galician culture and slaughterhouse abolition movements.

Julie Frey

M.E.M. 2027

Julie Frey is a third-year joint degree student earning her M.E.M. from the Yale School of the Environment and her J.D. from Haub Law School at Pace University. She is interested in blending her advocacy skills and scientific knowledge to create meaningful progress in a changing climate. As a LEAP fellow, Julie is excited to explore the intersection of animal welfare within the broader realm of environmental progress, particularly in the context of decarbonization. She is a graduate of the University at Buffalo, where she studied political science and environmental studies.

Adi Gal

J.S.D. 2026

Adi is a J.S.D. candidate at Yale Law School, where she also earned her LL.M. degree. Her research lies at the intersection of climate change, international law, and private law, with a particular focus on remedies and theories of responsibility. Before coming to Yale, she served as a legal advisor in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General in Israel, worked as a researcher at a leading think tank, and interned with the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. She has also taught 1L Torts as a teaching assistant and engaged in several years of pro bono legal advocacy, including efforts to enforce animal protection regulations on zoos in Israel.

At LEAP, Adi is interested in developing projects on the responsibility to protect health, environmental, and animal rights in times of armed conflict, and on the connections between these domains.

Evelyn Gao

M.P.H. 2026

Evelyn Gao is a second-year Master of Public Health student at Yale School of Public Health. She brings extensive experience in data analysis, healthcare administration, and project management across clinical and population health settings. Motivated by her interest in responsible innovation, Evelyn joined the LEAP Fellowship to explore change management in biopharmaceutical clinical trials following the FDA’s recent initiative to phase out mandatory animal testing. She seeks opportunities to evaluate AI-simulated models as ethical and sustainable alternatives, including examination of their regulatory readiness and environmental impacts. Evelyn graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a B.A. in Sociology.

Marisol Garcia

Yale Prison Education Initiative 2026

Marisol Garcia is a justice-impacted scholar who graduated in 2022 and 2023 from Trinity College with a Master's in Public Policy and attends Vermont Law School. She is a Yale Prison Education College to Career Fellow for 2022-2024 and is in the Yale Law School Access Program for 2021-2023. Marisol works on policy and research on the intersection of the carceral system, humans, and animals' dispensability in society. She hopes that her continued research on carceral policy and health outcomes will benefit those deemed unfit for society.

Jacqueline Hermanto

M.P.H. (Health Care Management) 2027

Jacqueline is a first-year Master of Public Health (MPH) student with academic and professional interests at the intersection of public health, law, ethics, and environmental justice. She is particularly focused on addressing the dual challenges of infectious disease and systemic inequities, with a current emphasis on tuberculosis in Indonesia, where the country faces both high prevalence and underreporting.

Jacqueline’s work is shaped by broader concerns about the ethical dimensions of climate change and emergency preparedness, especially how vulnerable communities, animals, and ecosystems bear the brunt of environmental crises. She is interested in exploring how legal frameworks and ethical approaches can be leveraged to strengthen global health systems, advance preparedness strategies, and ensure more equitable and humane responses to public health threats.

Henry Jacob

Ph.D. (History) 2029

Henry is a History Ph.D. student. Before graduate school, he was a Fulbright researcher in Panama. He received a World History M.Phil. at Cambridge as a Henry Fellow and a History B.A. from Yale. He studies efforts to control two interoceanic passageways through the Americas, the Northwest Passage and the Panama Canal. After countless attempts to use these maritime shortcuts, both routes were first crossed in the early 1900s. Henry examines how these sites of global mobility also attracted increased local settlement. He considers how figures from extractive, scientific, military, and tourist bodies engaged with Indigenous peoples and these environments. Changing ideas about polar and tropical spaces reflect and register these complex and uneven dynamics. Even though Henry is figuring out the details, he knows that animals will figure prominently in his project. Through this program, he hopes to gain a grounding in legal and moral debates on this subject.

Lauren Killingsworth

M.D. / Ph.D. (History of Science and Medicine) 2029

Lauren Killingsworth is an M.D.-Ph.D. student in the Department of History of Science and Medicine, where she studies the history of zoonotic disease. She is interested in historical understandings of the environment and disease, with a particular interest in the place of non-human animals in infectious disease control. She is currently working on a project on the history of biological control, supported by a student grant from LEAP. She has a long-standing interest in animals and the environment. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, she helped rehabilitated injured seals at the Marine Mammal Center and trained seeing eye dogs for Guide Dogs for the Blind. She looks forward to connecting with other students interested in animals, the environment, and health.

Janhavi Kulkarni

M.P.H. (Environmental Health Sciences) 2026

BJanhavi is a first-year MPH student in the Environmental Health Sciences department at the Yale School of Public Health. She is interested in climate change and environmental & industrial exposures and their effects on human and wildlife health. Janhavi previously worked as a research coordinator in veteran research, studying the health effects of various chemical and toxin exposures. She is very passionate about animal welfare and the impact of industrial environmental regulations on animals, and hopes to further explore the intersection of public health and animal law as a LEAP Fellow. Janhavi graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a B.S. in Biology and Global Health.

Torre Lavelle

Ph.D. 2027

Torre is a Ph.D. student in the Yale School of Public Health, where she studies the intersection of climate change, emerging infectious diseases, and biodiversity loss, with additional projects exploring issues in global health surveillance and governance. Prior to graduate study at Yale, she served as interim Chief of Staff at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and was on the founding team of the Columbia Climate School. As a LEAP Fellow, Torre hopes to further explore the policy implications surrounding such issues as the recent H5N1 outbreaks on commercial farms.

Adam Lerner

J.D. 2028

Adam Lerner is a first-year JD student at Yale Law School. He holds a BA in philosophy and psychology from the College of William & Mary and a PhD in philosophy from Princeton University. Before arriving at Yale, he held positions in the Center for Population-Level Bioethics at Rutgers University, the Philosophy Department at Princeton University, and the Center for Bioethics at New York University. He wants to use the law to preserve the efficiency of intensive agriculture while reducing its negative effects on animals and humans. He is especially interested in pandemic risks, antimicrobial resistance, chronic disease, and short-term climate change.

Alejandro Mantilla

J.D. 2028

Alejandro is a first-year J.D. student at Yale Law School. His interests in animal law include the impacts of environmental and climate change on animal law, anthropomorphism studies, and animal legal personhood. Before starting at Yale, Alejandro completed a B.A. in History and in Political Science from the University of Chicago, and an M.Sc. in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance from the University of Oxford. There, his research included studies of genetic engineering of animals as a conservation tool, and the use of individual animal studies as a means of understanding (and interacting with) our fellow earthlings.

Maria Michalos

J.D. 2027

Maria is a 2L at Yale Law School. Prior to law school, Maria worked at the intersection of politics and environmental advocacy. Most recently, Maria served in the Biden White House, where she led communications strategy for the President’s climate and environmental agenda. She also served as the top public affairs official for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Previously, Maria worked at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and earlier in her career, for the New York State Governor. Here at Yale, Maria is a Student Director for the Environmental Justice Law and Advocacy Clinic, Co-President of the Yale Environmental Law Association, and Co-Chair of the 2026 New Directions in Environmental Law Conference. As a LEAP Fellow, Maria is particularly interested in exploring opportunities to tackle the climate harms of animal agriculture and enriching her understanding of legal rights available to nonhuman animals.

Li Murphy

Yale School of the Environment, M.E.Sc. 2026 ; Yale Divinity School, M.A.R. 2028

Li Murphy is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at Yale, where she is pursuing a Master of Environmental Science at the School of the Environment and a Master of Arts in Religion and Ecology at the Divinity School. Working in Dr. Justin Farrell’s lab, she studies Mormon cricket migrations in the Intermountain West, focusing on how ecological dynamics, land management, and cultural narratives chart across federal, tribal, and private lands. Her research examines how insects labeled as “pests” become entangled in questions of land use, sovereignty, and conservation, particularly on Western Shoshone (Newe) and neighboring tribal as well as public and private lands. Her current work combines UAV photogrammetry, insect-mounted cameras, and oral histories to better understand the complex relations between humans, insects, and rangeland life. Before graduate school, Li spent a decade as an educator and continues to serve on the board of Nonhuman Teachers (https://nonhumanteachers.org/) and support the Mobile Laboratory Coalition (https://www.mobilelabcoalition.com/) and the Lower Eastside Girls Club (https://www.girlsclub.org/).

Tom Murray

M.E.M. 2026

Tom Murray is a student in the final year of the joint BA-MEM program. He graduated in 2023 from Yale College with a BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics, and undertook two postgraduate fellowships researching environmental law before returning to New Haven. As a YSE student, he specializes in environmental policy analysis and is particularly interested in non-market valuations of environmental goods. As a LEAP fellow, he looks forward to better understanding US regulations concerning non-native and introduced species.

Miki Nakano

M.E.M. 2026

Miki is a second year Master of Environmental Management candidate at Yale School of the Environment. Originally from New York City, Miki developed a passion for sustainable agriculture while working as a farm assistant at a K-12 school in Hawai'i and apprentice with cheese mongers and cheesemakers in Vermont. Prior to matriculating at YSE, Miki lived in Washington D.C., where she worked with a food systems organization teaching gardening and nutrition at a public elementary school. Miki sees food as a powerful lens for exploring social, cultural, and environmental values. As a LEAP Fellow, Miki is eager to continue learning about effective interventions for implementing regenerative agriculture practices and principles into regional food systems. Miki holds a B.A. in Sociology and Education from Middlebury College.

Thomas Peterson

J.D. 2026

Thomas Peterson is a J.D. candidate at Yale Law School. He is interested in the impact of animal agriculture on climate change and deforestation and in legal strategies for holding corporations accountable for their environmental impacts. Prior to law school, he worked in climate-related shareholder advocacy at the non-profit As You Sow and at Green Century Capital Management, where he led shareholder proposals targeting some of the world’s largest agribusinesses, retailers, oil and gas companies, and banks on issues related to greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and conservation. His achievements include majority-supported shareholder proposals focused on climate and deforestation at companies like Costco and Home Depot. Before that, he worked as a field organizer on campaigns to support legislation on environmental issues. Thomas holds an A.B. from Harvard in History & Literature and in Theater, Dance & Media and was a postgraduate Harvard Williams-Lodge Scholar at the Sorbonne Nouvelle.

Dr. Julian Pittman

M.Div. 2028

Julian is a first-year MDiv student at Yale Divinity School. He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary, VA/MD College of Veterinary Medicine, and Mississippi State College of Veterinary Medicine with a specialty in veterinary toxicology. He has spent most of his professional career in academic medicine related to biopsychiatric animal model/drug development. As a LEAP Fellow, he is excited to further explore his interest in animal welfare, particularly in laboratory and agriculture contexts.

Grace Prom

M.E.M. 2026

Grace is a first-year Master of Environmental Management student at Yale School of the Environment. She is interested in the intersection between environmental policy, animal agriculture, climate change, and ethics. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies and Geography from Calvin University, where she completed a thesis on successes and failures of the Endangered Species Act. As a LEAP Fellow, she hopes to further explore her interest in animal welfare, particularly in agriculture contexts. At Yale she is a member of the Environmental Protection Clinic through Yale Law School.

Yilei Qin

M.P.H. (Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases) 2026

Yilei is a 2026 M.P.H. candidate in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at Yale School of Public Health. She holds a B.S. in Animal Science and Public Health Science from UC Davis. With extensive experience in clinical and laboratory settings, Yilei's work focuses on vector-borne and infectious zoonotic diseases. She is particularly interested in animal-human relationships, research animal models, animal welfare, and wildlife conservation. Through LEAP, Yilei seeks to advance animal protection frameworks and address ethical issues through a multidisciplinary approach that promotes One Health and fosters positive legal and political changes.

Sam Rader

M.P.H. / M.E.M. 2028

Sam is a first-year Joint Degree MPH/MEM student at Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of the Environment. She is originally from the Bay Area in California and graduated with honors with a B.A. in Environmental Studies from the University of Vermont. She is interested in bridging the gap between science, policy, and the public and using public health policy to increase environmental initiatives and plans to incorporate One Health into her work as a LEAP fellow.

Ben Rosenthal

M.B.A. 2026

Ben is a second-year MBA candidate at Yale SOM. Since June, he has been an intern at cultivated meat startup UPSIDE Foods supporting commercialization efforts. Prior to SOM, he worked as a consultant at Bain & Company where he supported organizational transformation in the CPG and retail industries. Growing up in a restaurant family, Ben recognizes the cultural attachments of populations to meat consumption and is passionate about advancing technologies that can ensure consumers can be led to make better choices for animal welfare without trying to upend their dietary habits. As a LEAP fellow, he hopes to support efforts to preserve consumer choice, transparency, and access to these novel products. Ben received his B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Southern California.

Jeffrey Schatz

J.D. 2026

Jeffrey is a third-year J.D. student at Yale Law School. Prior to coming to YLS, he completed a B.A. in Mathematics, Philosophy, and Economics at Valparaiso University, and a Ph.D. in Logic and Philosophy of Science at UC Irvine. Jeffrey is interested in the intersection of agricultural and environmental law, exploring possibilities for more sustainable, healthy, and ethical food systems. As a LEAP fellow, he hopes to think more about rights of nature approaches to environmentalism, and how these ideas might inform heterodox approaches to environmental law and policy.

Elizabeth Schell

M.E.M. 2027

Elizabeth is a Master of Environmental Management student at the Yale School of the Environment. She plans to specialize in People, Equity, and the Environment and is interested in the intersections of law, environmental justice, and resource management. As a LEAP Fellow, Elizabeth hopes to investigate legal tools for improving our agri-food systems and water management. Elizabeth earned her B.A. in Political Philosophy, Policy, and Law and Environmental Studies with a minor in Urban Planning from the University of Virginia.

Noah Senthil

M.A.R. (Ethics) 2027

Noah Senthil is an M.A.R. candidate concentrating in Ethics at Yale Divinity School. Previously, he earned a B.A. in Biblical and Theological Studies from Wheaton College and an M.A. in Classical Theology from Talbot School of Theology. He's taught several courses as an adjunct professor in the English and Writing Program at Biola University and served as a pastor in Cleveland, OH. Noah is an aspiring pastor-theologian, deeply invested in the whole range of Christian doctrine, especially moral theology. As a LEAP Fellow, he's interested in exploring the relationship between the classical Christian virtues and environmental ethics.

Alayna Sofia Jasso

Executive M.P.H. 2027

Alayna Sofia Jasso is a 1st year student in the Executive Master of Public Health program. She received her MLIS specializing in law librarianship form the Catholic University of America. During her time at CUA she worked on research focusing on the impact of Indigenous knowledge in academic and non-academic law libraries and Tribal citations. Her interests focus one public health, environmental law, and maritime law. She hopes to explore how one health and legal frameworks can support healthy ecosystems, Indigenous land stewardship, and responsible management of wildlife populations. She hopes to work with local Indigenous tribes to strengthen her knowledge of Indigenous land management, coastal governance, and land sovereignty.

Reagan Strand

M.P.H. (Environmental Health Sciences) 2026

Reagan's deepest interests lie within food production systems, especially through the scope of industrial agriculture and its impacts on climate change. Our current system jeopardizes soil health, biodiversity, and perpetuates the inhumane treatment of animals within the meat and dairy industry. In addition to research, Reagan is interested in the laws and policies that prevent sustainable practices. Through LEAP, she is eager to make an impact within her local and broader communities while collaborating with a team of dedicated individuals who are also passionate about amending these issues.

Laura Street Cole

M.A.Rc. (Religion and Ecology) 2026

Laura is a second-year student at Yale Divinity School, concentrating in Religion and Ecology. Her passion for non-human animal rights centers on the principle of personhood and the necessary inclusion of all animals, especially those exploited through industrial agriculture, in our moral community. Her academic work engages animal and environmental ethics, including how these disciplines are expressed in the law. Prior to matriculating at Yale Divinity School, Laura worked for a consulting group that focused on preparing businesses to think critically about the long-term future. Laura holds a B.A. in English from Yale College.

Kristen Tam

M.E.M. 2026

Kristen is a MEM student at Yale School of the Environment. Before coming to graduate school, Kristen worked at the International Livestock Research Institute where she worked with researchers in the global south to create more sustainable livestock system to address the climate crisis. Kristen is generally interested in the how to use scientific research, the law, and supply chains to support more regenerative farming and food systems, especially looking at ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Kristen holds a B.S. in Environmental Science from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Samantha Tracy

Ph.D. (School of the Environment) 2027

Samantha is a third-year Ph.D. at the Yale School of Environment. Her dissertation work investigates amphibian physiology and response to environmental stressors in a globally changing climate. As a LEAP Fellow, she hopes to analyze alternative methods for animal based experimentation and investigate methods for gathering data on threatened and endangered species without the need for collection, euthanasia, or harm. Samantha received a B.S. in Biology and Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and M.S. in Environmental Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Cassandra Traver

M.A.Rc. (Ethics) 2026

Cassandra is a first-year student at Yale Divinity School pursuing a Master of Arts in Religion, with a concentration in Ethics. She is interested in connecting her studies on the contemplative wisdom of early Christian ascetics to modern understandings of animal ethics. Prior to Yale, Cassie attended Middlebury College where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Religion and Spanish in the spring of 2024. For her undergraduate thesis, she focused on asceticism as a vehicle for social change, beginning with individual contemplative practice, which she hopes to expand upon during her time at Yale and as a LEAP Fellow.

Stephanie von Ungern Sternberg Prufer

J.D. / M.E.M. 2026

Stephanie is a J.D. / M.E.M. student at Yale Law School and the Yale School of the Environment. Before coming to graduate school, Stephanie worked at the Center for Biological Diversity where she campaigned for policies that preserve marine biodiversity and address the climate crisis. Stephanie is generally interested in the intersections of international environmental law, ocean governance, biodiversity conservation, and human and non-human rights. Stephanie holds a B.S. in Marine Biology and Environmental Science & Policy from Duke University.

Wenny Zhang

M.B.A. 2026

Wenny Zhang is a second-year MBA student at Yale School of Management. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis and worked as an Investment Advisor in asset management before her MBA. She has always loved animals, and cares deeply about animal welfare. She has volunteered at animal shelters and adopted both of her dogs, Tito and Cody, from an animal shelter. During her international experience in Bhutan, she got voted “most likely to come home with a stray dog”.