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Brighter Green is a non-profit public policy action tank that aims to raise awareness and encourage dialogue on and attention to issues that span the environment, animals, and sustainable development both globally and locally. Brighter Green's work has a particular focus on equity and rights.

On its own and in partnership with other organizations and individuals, Brighter Green generates and incubates research and project initiatives that are both visionary and practical. It produces publications, websites, documentary films, and programs to illuminate public debate among policy-makers, activists, communities, influential leaders, and the media, with the goal of social transformation at local and international levels. Brighter Green works in the United States and internationally, with a focus on the countries of the global South.

Executive Director

Based in New York, Brighter Green is directed by Mia MacDonald, a public policy analyst and writer who has worked as a consultant to a range of international non-governmental organizations—including the Ford Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund, the Green Belt Movement, the Sierra Club, and Save the Children as well as several United Nations agencies, among others—on issues of environment, gender, sustainable development, women's rights and gender equality, reproductive health and population, and conservation and animal protection. She has published many articles in popular and environmental media, authored a number of policy papers and reports, and has contributed to three books, including Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai's best-selling autobiography, Unbowed. She is a Senior Fellow of the Worldwatch Institute and has taught in the human rights program at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. She received a Master's Degree in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a B.A. with honors from Columbia University.

Blogs by Mia MacDonald

Research Associate

Justine Simon is a Research Associate at Brighter Green. A Canadian, she grew up overseas in different parts of Africa and Asia, and came to the U.S to complete her undergraduate studies at Dartmouth College. As a writer and editor, she has worked in Yes! Magazine's online editorial department, as well as with The Real News, a Toronto-based online-video news network. Her writing revolves around international issues relating to equity, resources access and climate change. She is becoming increasingly interested in global agricultural food systems, and has contributed to Brighter Green's initiative on the globalization of intensive animal agriculture. She is currently helping to complete a series of policy papers on the environmental and social impacts of livestock intensification in Brazil, India and Ethiopia.

Blogs by Justine Simon

Associates

Sangamithra Iyer is a writer and a licensed professional civil engineer who holds a Bachelor's degree from the Cooper Union and a Master's degree from UC Berkeley. She served as the Assistant Editor of Satya magazine and a co-producer of the Women’s Collective monthly radio program on the Pacifica Station WBAI. She has volunteered at primate rescue and rehabilitation sanctuaries in the U.S. and in Africa. Her writing explores issues related to animals, agriculture and social and environmental justice. Selections of her work can be seen at Satya magazine, The L Magazine, The Philadelphia Weekly and SolveClimate.com. She is the co-author of Brighter Green’s policy paper, "Skillful Means: The Challenges of China’s Encounter with Factory Farming," (PDF) and a contributor to a set of forthcoming policy papers from Brighter Green on the globalization of industrialized animal agriculture. She currently works on water supply infrastructure planning for New York City and is pursuing an MFA in Creative Non-fiction writing at Hunter College. Sangu is interested in tracking the global rise of meat, egg and dairy consumption and its environmental and social implications and will be documenting what this shift in diet looks like on the ground in India this summer.

Blogs by Sangamithra Iyer

Stella Zhou is a recent graduate of Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) and one of China’s youngest animal rights activists. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard School of Public Health. While at Harvard, she plans to work with scholars and professionals to reinvigorate population-level bioethics by incorporating non-human animals and to help Chinese universities update their bioethics programs. Stella first became interested in public health during her studies in international relations at BFSU. Concerned about the relationship between public health and diet, she became a vegetarian (later vegan), set up a campus vegetarian society, and volunteered for various organizations including the Chinese Vegetarian Union, the Boston Vegan Association, and the Beijing-based vegan advocacy and outreach group, "Don't Eat Friends." Stella is interested in tracking the environmental consequences of global meat and dairy consumption, exploring competing interests within the food system, and examining how the public makes choices about food from the perspective of the philosophy of science. Her recent writings discuss China's first animal protection law and the promotion of "green awareness" as a fashion.



Blogs by Stella Zhou