Ingrid E. Newkirk, 57, is founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the largest animal rights organization in the world with almost one million members and affiliate members worldwide.
Ms. Newkirk was born in Kingston-on-Thames, England and spent her childhood in India. She lived in Diplomatic Enclave in New Delhi and was schooled at Presentation Convent, Kodaikanal and at Tara Hall in Simla. She won an Eleven Plus scholarship to attend Ware Grammar School for Girls in Hertfordshire, England; and attended Valparaiso college in USA, studying business administration and English. Ms. Newkirk also studied large animal husbandry and equine care at the Massachusetts SPCA training college, chemical animal restraint in Georgia, and received her veterinary technician certification in 1972.
Ms. Newkirk was one of the country’s first women deputy sheriffs and has served as a Maryland state law enforcement officer for 32 years; she has been director of cruelty investigations for the second oldest humane society in the U.S.; and serves in an advisory capacity on numerous environmental, wellness and animal protection boards. As an inspector for a Maryland Department of Environmental Protection in the early 1970’s, she was lauded by the Office of the Public Defender and the State’s Attorney in Montgomery County for having the highest rate of convictions of animal abusers in the country. Her efforts led to the first conviction of an animal experimenter in the U.S. in 1981, and the first confiscation of animals from a laboratory by the police.
In the mid-1970’s, Ms. Newkirk became the Poundmaster for the animal shelter in the U.S. Capital, and was promoted to Chief of Zoonotic Disease Control for the D.C. Department of Health and Human Services in 1976, the first non-veterinarian ever to hold that post. She is responsible for passing the first animal control laws in the District of Columbia that imposed conditions on licensed facilities, and for the construction of the first animal sterilization clinic in Washington.
Ms. Newkirk founded People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in 1980. Her campaigns to help animals have made the front pages of The Washington Post and other international newspapers. Her editorials have appeared in the Times of India and feature articles about her have been published in, among other periodicals, The New Yorker, the Sunday Independent (UK), in Stern (Germany) and in People Magazine. She has appeared in a BBC documentary on the Indian cattle situation at the end of the 1990’s and, in 2003, the BBC commissioned a documentary film on her work called “The Naked Revolutionary,” which is airing on the BBC World Service, having reached 112 million viewers to date. She has appeared regularly on US national shows, including The Today Show, Phil Donahue, The Oprah Winfrey Show, West 57th, Nightline, and 20/20 among others and enjoys a lively debate and the opportunity to show people how easy it is to make animal-friendly choices. She was named one of Forbes Magazine’s “25 Most Fascinating Business Persons” in 1990, and, in 2003, as one of the “50 Most Powerful People in the World” featured in the Trion book, “A Perfect World.”
Ms. Newkirk is the author of eight books on animal subjects, some of which, like Warner Brothers “Save the Animals!” have been translated into Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Polish, and Spanish and other languages and have been distributed in Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. Her most recent, “Making Kind Choices,” was published in 2005 to coincide with PETA’s 25th anniversary. She is also the author of numerous opinion pieces and articles on the social implications of our treatment of animals in our homes, abattoirs, circuses, and laboratories, including an essay in the book “And A Deer’s Ear, Eagle’s Song and Bear’s Grace: Animals and Women.” She has written widely on issues effecting women’s rights and animal liberation and was one of the original members of The Women’s Animal Liberation Collective in New York City.
She has toured extensively to lecture on her books and work and has spoken at women’s studies classes throughout the U.S. She has been a panel guest at conferences addressing the struggle for women’s and animal rights, and women’s issues involving hormone therapy drugs derived from horse urine and the subjugation of female animals as reproductive machines on intensive factory farms.
In 1980, she was named Washingtonian of the Year, and has since received many other accolades and awards, including a 1995 Courage of Conscience Award, a 2001 Animal Protection Hall of Fame Award, 2002 Living Legacy Award and 2003 Activist of the Year Award.