Our Mission
APEX Advocacy cultivates B.I.P.O.C. leadership and narrative infrastructure for animal justice—so animal liberation is practiced as collective liberation.
→ We equip B.I.P.O.C. advocates with political education, organizing skills and community-rooted support.
→ We produce B.I.P.O.C.-centered media that reshapes public understanding of animal exploitation and its ties to the systems our communities navigate.
→ We strengthen cross-movement strategy, so animal justice moves from the margins to the center of liberation work.
Our Board of Directors
Christopher “Soul” Eubanks (he/him)
Founder-
Christopher “Soul” Eubanks is a social justice advocate, international public speaker and nonprofit director raised in Atlanta, Ga that has dedicated himself to doing advocacy work that advocates for collective liberation. After learning the horrors of animal exploitation, Christopher became vegan, began doing community organizing and helped to co-organize Atlanta’s first ever animal rights march. He has spoken across the globe from South Africa to Harvard University. Christopher has been featured in Vox Media’s Future Perfect 50, this series highlights 50 individuals around the world composed of thinkers, activists, and scholars working on solutions to today’s and tomorrow’s biggest problems. Christopher is the founder of APEX Advocacy, a nonprofit animal rights organization that teaches grassroots activism and creates various campaigns to empower Black, Indigenous and People of color to advocate for animal rights.
Kendrick Romonzo (he/him)
Social Illz • Founder
Meghana Rajanahally (she/her/they/them)
THrive Philanthropy • Finance and Operations ManagerOur Team
Yvette Baker (she/her)
Executive Director-
Yvette Baker is a Los Angeles-based writer, social critic, and total liberation activist. Her work and activism have been devoted to exposing and critically analyzing the intersections of human and beyond-human oppression through an Afro-Indigenous lens, aiming to empower the vegan movement as a movement for total liberation.
She has been a lifelong social justice advocate, with her efforts crossing into the animal rights movement at a young age. She has worked with various animal rights organizations as an educator and grassroots organizer, highlighting the need to understand systemic oppression and the principle of collective liberation as one of the most effective tools to build bridges between movements and work together toward common goals.
Yasmin Badshamiah (she/they)
Director of communications-
Yasmin Badshamiah (she/they) is a Northern California–based cross-movement organizer, artist, and communications strategist putting their heart and craft in service of total liberation. With 17 years of vegan practice, they protect dignity for all beings, pair truth-telling with precision, and center Black, Indigenous, and People of Color legacies with rigorous attention to origin and credit.
Following June Jordan, language is political. It shapes how people meet and what they’re willing to name, revealing what power does to story: who gets amplified, who gets depoliticized, and who gets erased. For Yasmin, this examination is method.
Yasmin’s work is forged in lived experience navigating power and survival, mutual aid organizing, driving local policy campaigns, communications leadership inside animal advocacy, youth work, and cultural event production. They co-created and co-facilitated a justice-centered poetry and spoken word program for queer youth, and served as a core facilitator for APEX’s 2025 P.A.A.W. (Pre Animal Activist Week) BIPOC convening.
Sunny Satva (she/they)
Development Support Specialist-
Sunny Satva (she/they) is a Brooklyn-based creative problem solver and resource organizer working at the intersection of climate justice, equitable futures, and collective liberation. A committed vegan since 2015, Sunny mobilizes resources and cultivates strategic partnerships to advance systems change. They have led campaigns for food justice, universal income, and environmental protection, including advocacy that helped pass New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act.
Sunny’s work bridges continents and communities, from co-launching Vegan Basket, Kenya’s first vegan restaurant, to founding the Vegan Africa Fund, which has supported plant-based founders in more than a dozen countries. Through these projects, they build networks of care and collective power rooted in sustainability and equity.
A self-trained vegan chef and author of The Vegan Swahili Cookbook, Sunny believes liberation begins with nourishment: of ourselves, our communities, and the planet we share.
Christopher Sebastian (he/him)
Movement Educator & Director of Digital Strategy-
Christopher Sebastian is a journalist, technical writer, and adjunct lecturer. He teaches in the School of Journalism, Media, and Visual Arts at Anglo-American University in Prague. He writes about food, politics, media, pop culture, and (of course) animals.
Our P.A.A.W. Comittee
Dana McPhall (she/her)
Executive Director-
Dana McPhall is an educator and advocate dedicated to collaborating with educators, thought leaders, and community advocates in exploring and understanding the intertwined roots of racism/anti-Blackness and animal exploitation and in developing educational initiatives and fostering coalition-building to challenge and dismantle systems of racial hierarchy. In recent years, Dana has led nonprofit educational programs designed to support educators and advocates in promoting interrelated issues of social justice within the U.S. food system, and has taught and designed graduate level courses in humane education, including a self-designed course on race, intersectionality, and veganism. Most recently, Dana has launched a new educational project called Liberate In Mind whose mission is to shift cultural narratives and mindsets and to promote movement coalition-building in order to dismantle racialized systems of oppression that produce the subjugation of humans and beyond human animals. Earlier in her career, Dana advocated for justice on behalf of survivors of domestic violence, especially those within communities of color, and beyond human animals suffering from abuse and neglect. More generally, Dana has over 30 years of experience in the nonprofit, government, and legal sectors, and holds a Master’s Degree in Education through the Institute for Humane Education graduate programs, as well as a Juris Doctorate and a Master’s Degree in Public Policy.
Wanting every being to have their needs met, to be safe and seen as their whole, unique self is not a radical idea. Kim is right at home amongst like-minded comrades here at APEX, who tirelessly work towards this reality. Working with BIPOC leaders and activists here at APEX who are keeping the movement in motion and hold the answers to achieving a brighter, safer, more equitable future for all beings is her dream job.
ever quinatzín (they/he)
Movement voice-
ever is a queer, trans masc, disabled, and neurodivergent Latinx organizer and systems strategist committed to total liberation—for humans, nonhuman animals, and the Earth. With over two decades of experience in nonprofit leadership, they bring a care-centered, anti-oppressive lens to operations, HR, and finance. ever is the founder of Liberatory People Ops and has held senior leadership roles at The Humane League, Californians for Justice, and Strozzi Institute for Somatics.
Rooted on unceded Kizh (Tongva) Land, ever's work is grounded in the belief that liberation is not theoretical, it’s logistical, relational, and embodied. When not dismantling systems, they can be found cooking plant-based meals for their Beloveds, gardening with their kids, walking slowly with their rescue dog, Honey, or pulling tarot as a practice of queer care and connection.
Akbar Ali (he/him)
Movement Voice-
Akbar is a Denver-based activist committed to collective liberation across species and struggles. A vegan for nine years, he’s worked with groups like Mercy For Animals, Legal Impact for Chickens, and Logistically Nonprofit Services—leading efforts in operations, international expansion, recruitment, and legal support. After leaving medical school, Akbar chose a creative and philosophical path, earning a degree in English & American Literature from Northwestern. He’s also a writer, producer, and actor behind several award-winning TV and web series. Fluent in Spanish, Arabic, and Hindustani, Akbar brings a global fluency to his organizing.
Our Volunteers
Nikki Botha (she/her)
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Nikki, veteran activist with 20 years experience, is a South African who grew up in a white supremacy household during apartheid. This and a difficult childhood fuelled an unwavering sense of justice which led to her passion for intersectional liberationism.
Other than dedicating her life to make tangible change in society, she is also an international vegan catering chef; a qualified private investigator; completed courses in criminal intelligence, wildlife forensics and is currently pursuing her law degree with a focus on international human rights and animal law. She has traveled the world documenting and investigating animal cruelty and abuse and has spent time in a foreign jail for her efforts.
In her own words: “After a few years of volunteering for Apex Advocacy, I still feel so unbelievably blessed and privileged to be part of such an incredible, dynamic team and I cannot be prouder to stand shoulder to shoulder with each team member in the fight for total liberation! How lucky am I to know such wonderous people?”
Fernando C. (he/him/el)
Movement voice-
Fernando was born and raised 8600 ft up in the Andes, in Bogotá, Colombia. He first got involved in anti-bullfighting campaigns in his hometown during the late 1990s, after which he co-founded Verdadera Compasión, the first organization in the country to embrace ethical veganism as a core tenet of animal liberation. He immigrated to the United States in 2003 and has volunteered and organized for different animal rights and vegan food justice organizations since then. Due to his experience growing up in a war torn country, his activism focuses on the intersection between human conflict and animal rights. In his spare time, he can be found in the mountains either rock climbing, hiking or backpacking; taking pictures, discussing the latest findings in particle physics, or any writings related to 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza.
Marissa Valladolid (he/him)
Movement Voice-
With her mind made up and a stroke of luck, Marissa made animal advocacy her full-time gig within a few months of becoming vegan. For eight years she has focused primarily on ending the exploitation of farmed animals. Digital marketing and fundraising is her speciality—well suited for her introverted, problem-solving nature. She quietly thrives on self-competition too. Now, as a volunteer with APEX, she’s excited to evolve her activism into a truer, more intersectional form. “I’m profoundly grateful and honored to know this group of passionate, creative, and deeply caring rebels.”
Marissa lives in her hometown of Ventura, CA, with her best friends Romeo and Cruz. 🐶🐶
Adam Hicks (he/him)
Community Documentary Night-
Adam Hicks is an educator and organizer from Sandy Springs, GA. His organizing outside of the schools is focused on education through service, coordinating volunteers for hiking trail cleanups, to support an urban farm that provides fresh produce to Atlanta’s food insecure, and help care for the animals at Full Circle and Farm of the Free Animal Sanctuary.
He also organizes a group called Community Documentary Night, where he brings diverse people together online and in person to watch and discuss documentaries on a range of topics. He partnered with APEX for Special Virtual Documentary Nights in 2024, 2023, and 2022, and continues to support our work today.
Chris Galindo (she/her/ella)
Veggie Mijas-
Chris Galindo is a first-generation Mexican and Guatemalan vegan queer femme, born and raised in Los Angeles. Her path into food justice and animal liberation is deeply informed by her lived experience in a working-class immigrant community, where access to nutritious food was limited and the impacts of environmental racism were daily realities. In 2017, she embraced an intersectional vegan practice rooted in collective care, ancestral foodways, and resistance to systemic harm. With a background in dance, culinary arts, and the natural food industry, Chris has supported the growth of plant-based brands and movements that prioritize cultural relevance and justice.
She currently serves as Managing Director at Veggie Mijas, a national collective centering the Global Majority in plant-based education and advocacy. There, she helps shape strategy, lead partnerships, and support community-led programming that uplifts food sovereignty and joy. Chris is proud to support Apex Advocacy’s mission and deeply values being in community with others committed to liberation for all. Whether organizing, cooking, or traveling with her spouse and pup, she is always seeking new ways to reclaim plant-based living as a tool for cultural preservation and collective power.
Our Reducetarian Fellow
Since 2022, APEX Advocacy has partnered annually with the Reducetarian Foundation and its initiative called the Reducetarian Fellowship. Designed to foster a more diverse, sustainable, and impactful movement by empowering ambitious young advocates to transform our food system, this exciting program aims to encourage and equip exceptional undergraduate students to pursue a career focused on combating industrial animal agriculture.
The program is intended to be an immersive learning experience that will give fellows firsthand experience with some of the most impactful work in food system reform and innovation. A central goal of the Fellowship is to increase the representation of marginalized groups in the mainstream movement to reform the food system.
Haley Armstrong (she/her)
reducetarian Fellow – Summer 2025-
Haley Armstrong is a junior at American University in Washington, DC, where she is majoring in anthropology and music. With academic interests ranging from world cultures and expressions of social issues through art to animal welfare and environmental justice, Haley has always been passionate about history and the way it connects to the present day, particularly to modern instances of oppression.
Ever-curious and always eager to expand her knowledge, some of Haley’s previous projects include a newsletter to spread awareness about plant-based diets, an ethnographic research report on a community’s grassroots efforts to shut down a coal power plant, archaeological work highlighting the present-day impact of colonization in the Chesapeake region, and performing in an opera highlighting the lived experiences of migrants crossing the southern border of the United States.
Haley was awarded a prestigious Reducetarian Fellowship for the 2024-2025 academic year - an experience that brought the horrors and injustices of our food system, notably the animal farming industry, into sharp relief. This understanding along with her knowledge of the systemic oppression of BIPOC and other marginalized people led to the realization that human and animal oppression are intrinsically connected. Now emboldened to engage in more work that encompasses the liberation of all species, Haley is honored and excited to work as APEX’s newest intern.
She has been a lifelong social justice advocate, with her efforts crossing into the animal rights movement at a young age. She has worked with various animal rights organizations as an educator and grassroots organizer, highlighting the need to understand systemic oppression and the principle of collective liberation as one of the most effective tools to build bridges between movements and work together toward common goals.