PETA Appoints New President for First Time in 45-Year History, Ushering in a New Era for Animal Liberation
After 45 years as PETA’s president, founder Ingrid Newkirk has passed the baton. With some 30 years under her belt at PETA—including 18 years of leading our campaigns and corporate divisions as executive vice president—Tracy Reiman is PETA’s new president!
PETA will continue full steam ahead with our ever-groundbreaking work under Reiman’s leadership, now focusing on what she deems the most pressing issues in the modern-day animal liberation movement, including creating generations of more aware, kind consumers and combating the abuse of sheep for wool, which Reiman aims to make as unacceptable as fur.
When Tracy came to PETA, everyone wore or dreamed of owning fur, but now fur is truly dead. Says Tracy, “The face of fashion is fear,” and she has seen it in the eyes of terrified sheep being punched, kicked, and cut to shreds for their wool in shearing sheds around the world.
As a mother who brought her son to his first animal rights protest at a KFC when he was four weeks old, Reiman looks to the future by championing humane science education. “I have raised a son whose sense of justice has always included animals; a lifelong vegan, he never dissected an animal in class, and now, through the promotion of the Kind Frog and other modern alternatives to cutting up animals, I am determined to stop the generational insensitivity that led to vivisection,” she says. “My motto is Modernize!”
“I am honored to take on this leadership role at PETA, a powerhouse for animal liberation,” says Reiman. “I will continue to push, persuade, and, if need be, provoke people to choose compassion over cruelty, and I will work relentlessly for the day when every rat, pig, dog, and other living being is free from exploitation.”
Reiman has led successful PETA campaigns to pressure some of the biggest names in business to adopt animal-friendly policies. Under her guidance, more than 450 top fashion brands—from Calvin Klein to H&M—have stopped selling fur, angora wool, down, feathers, or wild-animal skins; Ringling Bros. circus stopped forcing animals to perform under the big top and SeaWorld ended its orca-breeding program; and all of the top 10 advertising agencies in the U.S. pledged never to use great apes in their ads, among numerous other landmark victories for animals.
Every day, Tracy sees parrots flying freely in her neighborhood, always with their lifelong partners, while others sit broken in a small, lonely cage, stripped of every natural instinct, reduced to being mere decorations.
After being called to the scene of 180,000 starving chickens at a “free-range” farm, all still confined to giant warehouses, she saw through the screen a lone bird who had been crippled, lying there looking right at her, but whom she could not save. This is when she knew that she had to work to stop “humane-washing,” which tricks kind people into buying factory-farmed chicken and eggs by dishonestly labeling them with pretty pictures of grassy farms.
And yet she is optimistic. PETA is more than 10 million strong, and countless others are vegan, buying jackets made of innovative materials rather than from cows; there are families choosing to visit museums or marvel at nature instead of staring at dolphins forced to perform tricks and swim in endless circles, and researchers who are using human organs on chips and other cutting-edge techniques to find cures that have been set back generations because of those who refuse to modernize away from using animals.
As for Ingrid, she has no plans to slow down and will continue helping animals as vigorously as ever in her new role as PETA’s Principal and while remaining president of the PETA Foundation. This will allow the two of them to work side by side, splitting duties as PETA strives to achieve ever more for animals in the years to come.
“Tracy Reiman gives everything she’s got to get animals out of laboratory cages, circus rings, slaughterhouses, and shoppers’ closets. Her creativity, drive, and fearlessness in the face of animal abuse make her the perfect leader for PETA’s next chapter, and I trust that we will be celebrating major victories for monkeys, mice, sheep, birds, and who knows what other animals in the near future.”
— Ingrid Newkirk
Humans may not be ready to shed all their cruel habits, but the animals are ready, and every day, countless people are joining the army of the kind in big and small ways, and we are here to help.
