Jasmin Singer & Mariann Sullivan
Co-Founders, Our Hen House
“I went vegan 20 years ago when I looked at my dog and couldn′t see the difference between him and the animals on my plate,“ says Mariann Sullivan. These days, she—along with wife Jasmin Singer—are trying to convince others to adopt that same diet, become more knowledgeable about animal cruelty in general, and work on behalf of animal rights via Our Hen House, a nonprofit multimedia hub featuring podcasts. “We started Our Hen House as a reaction to how the mainstream media largely ignores the very dire truth about the suffering of animals, particularly in the food industry,“ Singer says. In addition to being board president and program director of Our Hen House, Sullivan is a lawyer, writer and adjunct professor of animal law at Columbia Law School, while Singer, OHH′s executive director, is a contributing writer for VegNews Magazine and a memoirist. (Always Too Much and Never Enough drops in February.) What motivates these two—besides the animals themselves, of course—are natural allies also working to change the world, like environmental activists. Singer says: “More and more environmentalists are recognizing that animal agriculture is the main culprit in climate change, and—thanks to documentaries like Cowspiracy and advocates like Al Gore, who are finally making the connection between what′s on their plate and what′s devastating the planet—the tide, quite literally, is shifting.“
