Every so often, people come along whose experience and values feel uniquely aligned with where an organization is headed. That’s how I feel today. Alan Darer, Eitan Fischer, and Mitch Howell are joining our Board of Directors.
I care a lot about who sits at that table. Not because of titles or résumés, but because every decision a board makes eventually reaches an animal somewhere. A hen who’s never stretched her wings. A pig who’s never felt the sun. That’s what’s underneath all of this: every meeting, budget, and strategy call. So who we trust to help steer the work matters to me as much as almost anything we do.
Mercy For Animals is in an exciting new chapter. The challenges facing animals remain enormous, but so do the opportunities to create meaningful change. Building a board with deep expertise across advocacy, science, philanthropy, business, and organizational leadership isn’t about prestige. It’s about making sure we’re equipped to create the greatest possible impact for animals in the years ahead.
Some of you already know Alan. He worked here at Mercy For Animals years ago, then went on to do some of the sharpest movement-building work in our field. He’s now Vice President at Mobius, where he helps shape philanthropic investments, and he co-founded a group building real political muscle for alternative proteins. For more than a decade, Alan has asked a deceptively simple question: where can we create the greatest impact for animals? That’s a question Mercy For Animals asks ourselves every day. For me, that’s never been abstract. Moving the needle means fewer animals suffering, sooner. Getting Alan back and asking that question alongside us again feels like a homecoming.
Eitan builds things, full stop. He started Animal Charity Evaluators, which changed how a lot of us think about doing the most good with what we’ve got. He founded Mission Barns and helped put science behind a different kind of food future, one where we can feed people without relying on animal suffering. Now he runs Spring Innovation Fund, a venture philanthropy studio aimed entirely at animal welfare. What I admire most about Eitan is that he isn’t precious about his ideas. He has a rare willingness and talent to move from idea to execution, and then to keep refining until something actually works, at scale. We need more of that. The food system isn’t going to fix itself, and the animals can’t wait for us to feel ready.
Mitch has been a vegetarian, then vegan, for almost forty years. I want to stop on that for a second. Long before this was a movement with conferences and funds and strategy decks, before all of the conveniences and plant-based options across grocery stores, Mitch was just living it, because he couldn’t look away from what happens to animals. Today, he’s a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, advising clients on long-term resource management. That’s exactly the kind of long-term thinking you want in someone helping steward a growing organization. Build it to last, because the animals need us not just this year, but for as long as this work takes. Hopefully, one day it won’t be needed at all.
Here’s what I love, though. They don’t overlap. Alan understands how to move a movement. Eitan builds what doesn’t yet exist. Mitch thinks about how to build something that endures. Alongside our Chair, Michael Pellman Rowland, and directors Ren Akinci and Natalie Mindrum, they bring a remarkable breadth of experience to Mercy For Animals. But the part that stays with me is simpler than any of their credentials. Every one of them is here for the same reason the rest of us are.
The animals.
I also can’t write this without thanking Neysa Colizzi. She’s stepping down after six years on our board, including her years as Chair. Neysa led with unwavering integrity, humility, and remarkable steadiness through a period of real change for Mercy For Animals. She consistently put the organization ahead of herself, asked thoughtful questions, and never lost sight of why this work matters. I learned a tremendous amount from serving alongside her, and I’m deeply grateful for her partnership.
So that’s where we are. Six people who could be spending their time on just about anything, choosing to spend some of it on animals who’ll never know their names.
I don’t take that lightly.
There’s a mountain of work in front of us. But when I think about who’s helping carry it now, I feel steady. And then I think about the animals we’re carrying it for, and I just want to get back to it.
You can learn more about each of our board members on our website
