Danielle Diamond, Co-Founder

Danielle Diamond is an attorney who has worked extensively as a community organizer and environmental policy advocate. She is the primary author of the pending USEPA Citizens’ Petition for Withdrawal of the Clean Water Act NPDES Program Delegation from the State of Illinois, which is based on the state’s failure to appropriately regulate large-scale industrial livestock facilities. Her work on water pollution issues began in Illinois and then led to consulting and managing community advocacy campaigns nationwide. She worked for over a decade with the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project, assisting front-line rural communities in addressing the critical problems caused by factory farms. She has managed hundreds of local community campaigns across the country and has helped launch numerous state-wide and multi-state coalition efforts to establish positive policy changes. In private practice, Danielle has specialized in land use, zoning and municipal law with the firm of Diamond Law, PC (formerly Diamond & LeSueur, PC). She has a Bachelor’s degree from Weber State University in English, Anthropology and Archaeology. She also has a Master’s degree in Applied Environmental Anthropology with high honors from NIU, and a Juris Doctor from the NIU College of Law. Currently, Danielle is a Visiting Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Program.

Karen Hudson, Co-Founder

Karen Hudson resides on a fifth generation Illinois farm and is graduate of Illinois State University. She has spent much of the past two decades informing citizens, the media, educators and decision makers about the devastating impacts of CAFOs. She served on the Board of Directors of the Illinois Stewardship Alliance. As an “educational activist,” she teaches others about research and case histories regarding public health and the social, environmental, and economic externalities of industrial animal production. Karen is co-founder of the Illinois Coalition for Clean Air and Water (ICCAW), which assists and empowers citizens on CAFO issues in over 30 counties in her state. She is also a founder of Families Against Rural Messes (F.A.R.M), a grassroots coalition in West Central Illinois organized in 1996 to oppose CAFO expansion. Karen was appointed to Illinois House/Senate Joint Livestock Advisory Committee in 1997 to study and make recommendations regarding Illinois livestock regulations. Karen was a presenter at TEDX Manhattan “Changing the Way We Eat” in February 2011 her presentation, “The Price Tag of Corporate Ag” was aired in more than forty viewing parties around the world. Karen is one of three national activists highlighted in the book "Animal Factory" by bestselling author David Kirby. Karen was named local “Conservationist of the Year” by the Illinois Sierra Club. Karen toured Poland as a guest of the Polish Veterinary Chamber and Polish Farmer’s Union. While there she educated Polish media and farmers about the devastating impacts of CAFOs in the United States and was named an honorary member of the Polish Ecological Society, Polski Klub Ekologiczny, for her work. In 2017, Karen was honored as two decades profiling her sustainable agriculture work was installed in the permanent oral archives at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield Illinois. 

Dr. Kendall Thu, Co-Founder

Kendall Thu is a Professor Emeritus from the Department of Anthropology at Northern Illinois University. He received his BA from the University of California, Irvine and his Master’s and PhD (1992) in anthropology from the University of Iowa. From 1993 to 1999 he was the Associate Director of Iowa’s Center for Agricultural Safety and Health and a Research Scientist for the Institute for Rural and Environmental Health, at the University of Iowa. In the fall of 1999 he joined the faculty at Northern Illinois University in the Department of Anthropology. Dr. Thu was appointed by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman to the National Agricultural Air Quality Task Force from 1999-2000. He has chaired the Committee on Public Policy for the American Anthropological Association, is a Fellow in the Society for Applied Anthropology, and is past-President of the Culture and Agriculture section of the American Anthropological Association. He is a founding member of the Illinois Farmer Consumer Coalition as well as the Illinois Coalition for Clean Air & Water. His research has focused on industrial food systems, including: 1) environmental health, public health, and rural socioeconomic change; 2) policy and agricultural politics, and 3) risk factors for farm-related health and injuries. Dr. Thu has published a range of chapters and articles on the rapid industrialization of the livestock sector.