Effective Altruism - The Impact is Fear, Corruption and it is also not 'Good' for Animals
Image by Bansky.
I have been speaking out about the problems of effective altruism (EA) in the animal advocacy movement (Movement) for many years, and have also written extensively about it in my doctoral dissertation 1. Most troubling during my research was the fact that nearly all of the 33 women I worked with shared with me their deep concerns about the almost cult-like obsession with EA that permeates our Movement, and many also shared their outright fear of making their concerns known. Instead, their concerns, when voiced at all, were done in hushed tones amid trusted friends. Some have even left the Movement altogether due to EA’s obsession with consequentialism over virtue, and lack of willingness by many to be able to even engage in dialogue about the pitfalls of EA.
I have also received countless private messages, some directly and some anonymously, asking me questions about EA, and also thanking me for speaking up about this issue since so many, like the women in my research, are fearful of doing the same.
The fear of speaking out, thankfully, has begun to lift just a bit when, on November 11, 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO of crypto-currency exchange FTX, former board member of Animal Charity Evaluators, and passionate EA follower, filed for bankruptcy. This bankruptcy included suspicions of fraud going back many years, and on December 12, 2022, Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas. While I am never happy about people losing their jobs, due to his egregious and seemingly criminal behaviour, I am happy that the discussion is finally opening up.
As such, and in an effort to continue the dialogue, I am devoting this blog to writing about the challenges of EA.
For those who have been reading my blog for a while, you’ve come to know that they are usually fairly long, and this one is no exception. So grab a cup of tea, a coffee, a glass of wine, or whatever is your beverage of choice.
This blog is structured in two parts.
The first part provides an overview of EA and an explanation of its major flaws including a personal story of how my grandmother, Grietje Hiddema, risked her own life and the life of her family to save one Jewish boy. The second part provides a list of resources regarding EA so that you can further your own knowledge and better understand its impact on our work for animals, and be in the best position possible to make decisions about your own advocacy.
Part I – Overview of Effective Altruism
EA is both a philosophy and a social movement, an intellectual pursuit, and a practical pursuit. The philosophy relies upon the intellect to guide what is deemed to be moral decision making. By extension, the social movement, as the practical application of the philosophy, seeks to apply that philosophical guide to increase effectiveness both in terms of assessing the efficacy of various forms of social justice work, and in terms of decision making regarding philanthropic giving (Caviola et al., 2021).2
EA holds a series of guiding principles which include seeking to do as much good as possible through optimizing the use of time and money; seeking to make the biggest difference possible in the world; and using evidence and reason in decision making (MacAskill, 2019) 3. For those seeking to live in accordance with these values, it also means adopting the philosophy of utilitarianism, the roots of EA, in all aspects of everyday life (MacAskill, 2019). While living in accordance with utilitarian values (which subsumes EA) includes the conviction to live frugally and to make significant personal sacrifices such as donating half of one’s income, living in accordance with EA values includes no requirement to live frugally as long as one is actively helping others (MacAskill, 2018) 4. Utilitarianism, then, is considered by some not to be an essential element of EA (McMahan, 2016) 5.
In the context of EA as a social movement, it demands the use of evidence and reason in determining how to perform social justice work and the philanthropic priorities for that work (Fisher, 2017) 6. This practical application of EA began to be popularized in the 1970s by philosopher and bioethicist, Peter Singer. He later published a book titled The Most Good You Can Do (2015) 7, which has become a manual of sorts for followers of EA.
Among Singer’s (2015) viewpoints are the belief that those who are wealthy have an obligation to give to the poor; that the greatest moral inequities in suffering are a lack of food, shelter, and basic medical care; and that moral giving requires the giver to give until the act of giving equals the sacrifice the one in need is experiencing. In other words, to use a colloquial expression, moral giving requires giving until it hurts.
Peter Singer. Photo: Mal Vickers/Flickr
Singer’s work, in large part, birthed the Effective Altruist Movement and the corresponding organization, Centre for Effective Altruism, which offers online handbooks, free courses, reference materials, chat forums, and a newsletter. It is also responsible for organizing and hosting annual conferences worldwide. EA in the context of the animal advocacy movement favours the consequentialist (discussed below) perspective in prioritizing work to combat intensive animal agriculture (Fisher, 2017).
While on the surface, EA may seem common-sense and even valuable when faced with difficult decisions, it runs counter to the ecofeminist principles of intersectionality, care, opposing value dualisms, and domination – each of which is fundamental to the values of non-speciesism and veganism. An examination of EA reveals several pitfalls, gaps, and critiques including the prioritization of consequentialism, and of animal welfare work which fails to address needed systemic change, ill-founded, and in my own experience, fallacious calculations to promote their welfare messaging, and a charge of EA being morally corrupt. Each of the points that is bolded is addressed below.
Consequentialism
Consequentialism, in essence, means that the determination of whether an action is good or bad depends solely on the final outcome of the action, and that in so doing the consequences of those actions are considered before the actions are undertaken and serve as a guide for decision making. Consequentialism is focused on doing the most good for the greatest number of people/beings, regardless of what might occur during the process of getting there, because the predicted good consequence will benefit the greatest number.
The classic scenario given to help clarify this form of decision making is known as the Trolly Dilemma. In short, this scenario asks the trolly driver, when they are at a fork on the trolly track, to decide between two actions. Action one is do nothing, in which case the consequence will be that the trolly will run over and kill several people. The other option, action two, is to do something, to pull a lever, in which case the trolly will run over and kill one person. For an effective altruist, where consequentialism is an embedded philosophy, the decision between the two actions is reached by exclusively applying reason and math. As such, the EA adherent will pull the lever since one person dying is fewer than five people dying – the consequence is fewer people dying.
The Trolley Dilemma
The shortcoming in logic is that it does NOT consider anything except the numbers.
The upside is that being a consequentialist/effective altruist does not require deep thought, decisions can be made quickly, and decisions need not be concerned with nuance or context. The downside is that it is unrealistic and morally vapid. It does not consider whether the one person might be your child, your mother, or your spouse. It does not consider real life. It is not about love, compassion, or justice, it is simply about numbers and about the expected consequences. Frankly, it is not how most people go about their daily lives.
I would encourage each of you to spend some time contemplating how you would respond if you were the trolly driver.
The Hiddema Family
Well, my grandmother, Grietje Hiddema, didn’t just contemplate, she was a trolly driver.
Grietje Hiddema (far right).
It was 1944, and my grandmother was the formidable matriarch of the Hiddema family, a family which included my grandfather Jan, my father Sjoerd, and his siblings, Anna, Roelie, Hille, Eelke (passed as an infant), Herman, Tjeerd, and Eelke. The Hiddema family lived on a dairy farm in a small town in The Netherlands called Sumar, near the German border. The war was in full force, the Nazis had built a rifle range in a field next to the Hiddema farm, and Nazis were teaming around the Hiddema farm day and night. But that did not stop my grandmother from trying to save one little boy, 12-year old Moshe Ben Zvi, a Dutch-Jewish boy whose parents had been claimed by the Holocaust. Against all odds, and knowingly risking the lives of her entire family, she knew that sheltering Moshe was the right thing to do. She simply could not have done anything else. The risk that my grandmother took is hard to comprehend today, but let me try by sharing something that was shared with me by Moshe and my Uncle Eelke. It was 6:00 am on a cold winter’s day at the Hiddema farm, and all of a sudden Nazi officers were pounding on the door. Moshe was hurriedly put in a cupboard that also served as his bed. The soldiers entered demanding hot milk and a warm place to sit, and ironically ended up sitting right in the front of the cupboard where Moshe was hiding. My grandmother stayed cool and collected and gave them what they wanted, all the while knowing that one cough or sneeze by Moshe would have meant the immediate and gruesome death of them all. This went on for years until the war ended, and Moshe moved to Israel, married, and created a wonderful family.
Moshe (far right) - the once little boy my grandmother hid from the Nazis.
While Moshe passed away last year, I had the honour of meeting him and his wonderful family in 2008 when I visited them in The Golan Heights in Israel, and was also able to see where the names of my grandparents had been carved into the stone at The Garden of the Righteous in Yad Vashem. The names of the Righteous, like my grandmother, list numerous people who also risked everything to save one Jewish person – who also, thankfully, were not consequentialists.
While I only met my grandmother once when I was 3 years old, something that I am sad to say I do not remember, I know that she lives in me, and that all of her actions all those years ago inspire my own actions every day. We can never know how far reaching the tentacles of our actions will be, even long after we are gone.
So, let us return to thinking about the rights and needs of every living being. Let us judge the rightness of an act by just that, asking if it is right. We cannot use equations to determine the value of life.
My grandmother valued love, compassion, and justice. And, I too, like so many of you, value love, compassion, and justice.
What she did in 1944 shaped and continues to shape me today. And like her, I too had the opportunity to be a trolly driver. It was during my time as the president of Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary. We were faced with a decision when Esther became sick, and we didn’t look to Esther as just one pig. Instead, we did everything we could to save her life because we loved her, and because we loved her, we bought a piece of machinery called The Esther Scanner, and sadly, we were publicly chastised by Peter Singer as a result. I spoke about this experience and the flaws of effective altruism at the Animal Rights National Conference in 2019 8, and I have also written about it in our upcoming book The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does.
Animal Welfare Work
In terms of prioritizing work for animals, and the funds required to carry out that work, EA tends toward making decisions based on numbers, hence, a focus on welfare-based work (MacAskill, 2019). In the animal advocacy movement this includes work that is purported to help as many animals as possible, such as work to provide cage-free housing for hens who are confined to battery cages for the purpose of egg production; work to increase the light levels in confined animal feeding operations for chickens; work to reduce the amount of time an animal is legally permitted to be transported; and work to slow the speed of slaughter lines.
An example of the flaw in EA is animal welfare work undertaken to provide hens cage-free habitats. This is work Animal Charity Evaluators has rated as being highly effective for upwards of a decade, despite the fact that their own website “What is the Effect of Cage-Free Corporate Outreach on Egg-Laying Hens’ Welfare” notes the following contradictions: “there is evidence that cage-free systems may lead to higher injury rates compared to caged systems”; “there is a 60% probability that companies will follow through with cage-free commitments”; and “cost-effectiveness estimates vary widely, and it is unclear which are the most accurate” (Animal Charity Evaluators, 2022).
Farmed animal advocacy organizations undertaking these cage-free initiatives include the Humane Society of the United States, Mercy For Animals, Animal Equality, and The Humane League. This work was and continues to be funded primarily by the Open Philanthropy Project (OPP), which publicly commits to EA principles in their funding decisions (Open Philanthropy “About”). On their website, OPP offers their grants database for easy download (Open Philanthropy “Grants Database”). When edited to calculate funding they have provided exclusively for welfare-based farmed animal work, my math indicates that between February 2016 and December 2021, OPP gave $176,449,870 USD to farmed animal advocacy organizations, the majority of which was given for cage-free initiatives, and the balance for other animal welfare work such as poultry welfare and fish welfare. During this same time, egg consumption, on a per-capita basis, has continued to rise.
I can barely conceive of how of this much money has been completely wasted due to unkept corporate commitments, the Movement’s utter inability to hold organizations accountable to these commitment, and the countless consumers who now feel better about eating eggs from cage-free hens.
Failure to Address Systemic Change
While EA has been adopted by thousands of people and numerous organizations such as OPP (MacAskill, 2018), it fails to consider factors that are immeasurable such as social and economic considerations, political change, justice, equality, urgency, systemic change, and individual rights (Gabriel, 2017) 9, and can result in outcomes that “might exacerbate the same social and economic inequalities that philanthropists purport to remedy” (Eikenberry & Mirabella, 2018, p. 44) 10. The focus of time and money on short-term, minor welfare improvements can come at the cost of focusing on systemic transformational change for animals.
Chicks on a conveyor being sexed.
An example of this jumped out at me this morning (December 13, 2022) as I sat down to read the news. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) published this title: Gene-edited hens may end of the cull of billions of chicks. The average consumer as well as EA activists will read this and perhaps consider this a victory. What I see is a potentially dramatic decrease in the cost to produce eggs. Sexing operations will no longer be needed – that means a reduction in staff, sexing facilities will no longer be needed, sexing machines can be eliminated, and thus all of the other corresponding costs around mechanics and inventory of parts. Not only that, if a commercial hatchery with gene editing were to be able to produce 1 million eggs per year, previously ½ of these would be culled because they would hatch as males. Now, with gene editing, it would seem that all 1 million would be born female, and as such, they are more prosperous – they have doubled their production capacity with less staff, less equipment, smaller facilities (eliminating the conveyors that take the males to the macerators), and less waste management.
So, this reduces the cost to produce eggs resulting in higher profits for the producers and/or lower cost to the consumer. What I see is even higher egg consumption, and people feeling even better about eating eggs.
Plainly put, a significant criticism then is that the work of EA devotees is confined to undertaking work within existing frameworks of politics, economics, and institutions, as opposed to undertaking work to change those existing frameworks. The result is that the lack of action required to bring about anti-capitalist systemic change has been charged with making any social change less likely at all (Dietz, 2019) 11.
This institutional critique is an extension of the welfare critique in that it accuses the EA movement of focusing on incremental reduction of short-term suffering while ignoring the foundations of that suffering rooted in politics, social institutions, and global economic matters that seek to and benefit from their continuance (Crary, 2021) 12. Ethicist Iason Gabriel (2017) referred to the approach of focusing on the reduction of short-term suffering at the expense of institutional change as being not only unreliable but also improving the economic conditions of some while others continue to be maimed, injured, and killed – in essence, nothing more than a trade-off of one form of oppression for another.
EA provides followers with a safe, numeric, and easy to understand framework within which decision making can be free of nuance, free of needing to make difficult decisions, and free from subjectivity. Numerical metrics may give the appearance of transparency and objectivity, but it is born from a lack of faith in society and a lack of faith in the ability of individuals to make good judgements based on a particular set of circumstances, none of which metrics require (Muller, 2019). Historian Jerry Muller (2019) 13, in seeking to illustrate his position regarding the tyranny of metrics, interestingly used the push for quantifiable measures in an organizational context. Muller, in asking his readers to envision themselves as the new head of a large organization seeking to familiarize themselves with the goings-on in the organization, suggested most leaders will request and rely on numeric reports. Muller went on to note that in so doing, the leader would fall short of their goal to understand the organization, and he not only called this expenditure of time a waste, but also noted it would result in the diminishment of the autonomy, dignity, and worth of those lower in the organizational hierarchy.
Ill-Founded Calculations
Drawing on my own experience as a reformed former welfare-based activist who spent six years in Canada seeking to secure cage-free egg commitments from restaurants, food distribution organizations, and other food production corporations, I offer an additional criticism.
Mathematical estimates attempting to quantify animal welfare initiatives by certain animal advocacy groups have traditionally relied on forced commitments by animal protein producers and other procurers of animal products with extremely limited knowledge of the number of animals utilized. Estimates were based on proxies such as the number of restaurant locations and were often inaccurate (differing between groups); and several groups would also assume credit for the same commitments. The cited commitments were always future dated, sometimes as far as 10 years in the future, with little oversight or any ability to track actual outcomes. The value of welfare initiatives for the animals was always subjective and unreliable, and corporate welfare commitments that were provided to animal advocacy groups by these organizations were usually done under the duress of a pending campaign.
And, I was told on more than one occasion to guess at the numbers, and to use this guess as a foundation for donor discussions.
EA as Morally Corrupt
In her criticism levied upon EA, ecofeminist Alice Crary referred to the EA movement as being morally corrupt (Crary, 2021). While Crary is in agreement with other noted critiques of EA, her reference to the moral corruption of EA is both powerful and poignant. Crary supports her assertion, in part, by recognizing that EA’s preponderance to supporting short-term welfare-based work demonstrates no understanding of the capitalist framework within which that short-term work is sought. In other words, efforts to provide slightly more room for animals to move around only serves to continue to support the capitalist entities oppressing those animals. Crary cites examples of these failed efforts by noting the horrific practices on factory farms unimpeded by one short-term campaign to increase cage size. Crary lists the plethora of other atrocities levied upon animals farmed for food such as bio-engineering and slaughter, by articulating the continued impact to:
. . . sources of air and water pollution that disproportionately harms members of the already socially vulnerable human populations . . . global greenhouse gas emissions . . . the need they generate for grazing land is a major factor in deforestation world-wide . . . significant soil erosion and related polluting run-off . . . threats to public health . . . a breeding ground for zoonoses . . . and because it relies on the mass prophylactic use of antibiotics to mitigate its own disease-causing conditions, it adds to the prevalence of deadly infections of antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as salmonella (Crary, 2021, p. 41).
In Summary
We cannot violate the rights of one because the math doesn’t equate. And, as in the case of The Esther Scanner, and my grandmother, the results of advocacy efforts based on care and empathy have the potential for such far-reaching effects that we would never be able to quantify the outcome as it would be too extensive in both geography and time. This does not negate their impact. In fact, the exact opposite is true. The sheer magnitude of their impact is precisely why we should always act in ways that value each and every life in all its many forms.
While EA charities may well do some good, the question remains, at what cost? “If effective altruists are mistaken about what it means to do good, or about how impact can be measured, then the movement risks doing more harm than good by diverting resources away from other important goals and objectives” (Gabriel, 2017, p. 458).
It is possible then, that EA is doing more harm than good in their approaches to seek to advance social justice for animals.
It is time for our Movement to return to a commitment to emotions in decision making. Emotions changes us. Emotions changes us every day. Let us embrace emotion in our fight for animals!
Part II – Resources Regarding the Challenges of EA
For those who wish to learn more, I have complied a list of resources which discuss the problems of Effective Altruism. These range from writings about the problems with EA in the human rights space (see: The Worm Wars), to the goals of longtermism including their intention to populate the planet with genetically superior children (What does this remind you of?), to EA as racially exclusionary (see: Christopher Sebastian’s blog), to examples of the problems of EA from our Movement (see: my dissertation & the book The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does).
Additions to this list are strongly encouraged. Please forward these to KristaValerieHiddema@gmail.com, and I will update this list periodically.
In addition, for further readings, refer to my footnotes for peer-reviewed journal articles.
Please note that the information is presented by date, with the most recent first. In some cases I provide a few brief notes about the resource.
i) Oxford University Press book titled The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does
January 2023
Series of essays from academics and activists regarding the problems of effective altruism in the animal advocacy movement
ii) Oxford University Press blog titled The predictably grievous harms of Effective Altruism
iii) New Yorker article titled Is Effective Altruism Now Defective?
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/sbf-effective-altruism.html
November 19, 2022
iv) Business Insider article titled Billionaires like Elon Musk want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids. Inside the movement to take 'control of human evolution.'
November 17, 2022
v) TNR article titled Sam Bankman-Fried and the Moral Emptiness of Effective Altruism
vi) Guardian article titled Is the effective altruism movement in trouble?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/16/is-the-effective-altruism-movement-in-trouble
November 16, 2022
vii) Christopher Sebastian’s Blog titled Vegans, Race & the Cult of Effective Altruism
viii) The Economist article titled The good delusion: has effective altruism broken bad?
https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/11/15/the-good-delusion-has-effective-altruism-broken-bad
November 15, 2022
ix) Fair Start website article titled: Take Action: Effective Altruism Without A Fair Start In Life? Not Possible.
November 12, 2022
x) Tech Bros on Acid podcast titled Effective Altruism and delusions of longtermism
November 2, 2022
Show Notes:
The Team Human Podcast and book
The Clock of the Long Now
“Understanding Long-Termism: Why This Suddenly Influential Philosophy is So Toxic” by Émile P. Torres
Crazy Town Episode 37 – Discounting the Future and Climate Chaos, or… the Story of the Dueling Economists
Jessica Gordon Nembhard’s book, Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice
xi) Dr. Krista Hiddema’s doctoral dissertation titled Always for the Animals: Findings And Recommendations for Organizational Governance and Regenerative Practices in the Animal Advocacy Movement as Informed by the Stories of Women Vocational Animal Activists
https://drkristahiddema.com/blog/2022/9/14/state-of-the-movement
October 2022
Discusses the problems with EA in the animal advocacy movement
xii) Salon article titled Understanding "longtermism": Why this suddenly influential philosophy is so toxic:
August 20, 2022
xiii) Vox article titled The return of the “worm wars”. A controversy over the value of deworming interventions shows the need for effective altruists to reason under uncertainty
July 19, 2022
xiv) Maintenance Phase podcast titled The Worm Wars
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-worm-wars/id1535408667?i=1000567966538
June 28, 2022
In 1998, a researcher rolled out what was purported to be an innovative approach to education based on effective altruist principles. It was anything but.
The podcast link includes multiple links to related articles including the original 2004 paper and much more. The links area available on the podcast page and include the following:
The original 2004 paper
The 2015 re-analysis
The 2015 meta-analysis
The Tanzania dissertation
Doing Good Better
Worm Wars: The Anthology
Deworming Debunked
WHO advises blanket anti-worming treatment for children despite lack of benefit
Deworming Delusions? Mass Drug Administration In East African Schools
Understanding Heterogeneity in the Impact of National Neglected Tropical Disease Control Programmes
What Has Been Learned from the Deworming Replications: A Nonpartisan View
Mass Deworming Programs in Middle Childhood and Adolescence
Is it worth treating everyone who might get worms?
New research debunks merits of global deworming programmes
Should the WHO withdraw support for mass deworming?
Why Don't People Take Their Medicine? Experimental Evidence from Kenya
Dear journalists and policymakers: What you need to know about the Worm Wars
xv) Religion and Ethics Journal titled Why effective altruism is not effective
xvi) Radical Philosophy Journal paper titled Against Effective Altruism
xvii) Giving Compass article titled The Problems of Effective Altruism
xviii) Animal Rights National Conference talk titled How the Love for One Pig Changed the World
https://drkristahiddema.com/blog/2019/9/17/how-the-love-for-one-pig-changed-the-world
September 17, 2019
xviv) Utilitas Journal forthcoming paper titled The Institutional Critique of Effective Altruism
1 Hiddema, K. (2022). Always for the animals : findings and recommendations for organizational governance and regenerative practices in the animal advocacy movement as informed by the stories of women vocational animal activists. https://viurrspace.ca/handle/10613/25995
2 Caviola, L., Schubert, S., & Greene, J. D. (2021). The psychology of (in)effective altruism. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21(7), 596–607. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.03.015
3 MacAskill, W. (2019). The definition of effective altruism. In H. Greaves & T. Pummer (Eds.), Effective Altruism: Philosophical Issues (pp. 10–28). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198841364.003.0001
4 MacAskill, W. (2018). Understanding effective altruism and its challenges. In D. Boonin (Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of philosophy and public policy (pp. 441–453). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93907-0_34
5 McMahan, J. (2016). Philosophical critiques of effective altruism. The Philosophers’ Magazine, 73, 92–99. https://doi.org/10.5840/tpm20167379
6 Fisher, A. (2017). Theory-neutral arguments for “effective animal advocacy.” Essays in Philosophy, 18(1), 30–43, 1578. https://doi.org/10.7710/1526-0569.1578
7 Singer, P. (2015). The most good you can do: How effective altruism is changing ideas about living ethically. Yale University Press. https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300182415
8 Hiddema, Krista - This is a 30 minute webinar further explaining the problems of effective altruism including stories about The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments, the Silver Spring Monkeys, SeaWorld, and the bans on fur farming and animal testing.
9 Gabriel, I. (2017). Effective altruism and its critics. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 34(4), 457–473. https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12176
10 Eikenberry, A. M., & Mirabella, R. M. (2018). Extreme philanthropy: Philanthrocapitalism, effective altruism, and the discourse of neoliberalism. PS: Political Science & Politics, 51(1), 43–47. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096517001378
11 Dietz, A. (2019). Effective altruism and collective obligations. Utilitas, 31(1), 106–115. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820818000158
12 Crary, A. (2021). Against ‘effective altruism.’ Radical Philosophy, 2.10, 33–43. https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/against-effective-altruism
13 Muller, J. Z. (2019). The Tyranny of metrics. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691191263
Krista is the Executive Director of For The Greater Good where she consults with animal protection organizations on matters of organizational development, strategic planning, and board governance. Krista serves on several boards including One Protest, The Rancher Advocacy Program, Egg-Truth, and Dairy-Truth. Krista previously served as the VP of Mercy For Animals in Canada, and the President of the Board for Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary.
Krista holds a doctorate in social sciences where her research focused on the employment experiences of animal rights activists in Canada and the United States. She also holds five additional degrees in human resources, including a master’s degree in organizational development and leadership. Krista is Associate Faculty for her alma matter, Royal Roads University, where she supervises master’s students and teaches. Krista is also a peer reviewer for the Journal of Critical Animal Studies.
Formerly, Krista founded a boutique employment and labour law firm in Toronto, and before that she spent fifteen years in HR including as the vice president of HR for one of the largest software companies in the world.