Animal Legal Defense Fund Student Chapter to Host Animal Rights Speaker Series

The Animal Legal Defense Fund Student Chapter will host Daina Bray as the featured guest in this year's Animal Rights Speaker Series.

Bray, a clinical lecturer in law, senior research scholar in law and legal director of the Law, Environment & Animals Program (LEAP) at Yale Law School, will speak on "Animals, Agriculture and Climate Change" at 11:15 a.m. Friday, March 12, in the Al Witte Classroom (339) at the School of Law. All are welcome to attend.

An award-winning advocate, Bray brings extensive experience in animal law, international policy, nonprofit leadership and litigation, along with a sustained, pragmatic commitment to improving human-animal interactions. Since joining LEAP in 2021, she has led the program's climate change and animal agriculture litigation initiatives.

From 2014 to 2018, Bray served as general counsel for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, followed by her role as general counsel for Mercy For Animals from 2019 to 2021, the world's largest nonprofit organization dedicated to farm animal protection. In both positions, she oversaw governance, litigation and legal risk management. Her earlier legal career includes practice with White & Case LLP, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer US LLP and Phelps Dunbar LLP.

Bray completed a Fulbright Scholarship in 1998-99 in affiliation with the University of the West Indies-Mona's Institute for Sustainable Development and the Jamaica Environment Trust. She is a graduate of Stanford Law School and the University of North Carolina.

The Animal Rights Speaker Series was established in 2022 through the generosity of Dolores Proubasta and Christopher Liner, who created the Proubasta-Liner Endowed Distinguished Speaker Award. Each year, the series brings a distinguished speaker — or joint speakers — with academic expertise and/or national recognition in animal rights law or animal sentience to the law school.