Sleepy Hollow's Alene Anello Receives Animal Legal Defense Fund Scholarship

Sleepy Hollow native Alene Anello was recently awarded the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s Advancement of Animal Law Scholarship. 

The scholarships are awarded to law student members of our student chapters based upon demonstrated commitment to ALDF’s mission, “to advance the interests and protect the lives of animals through the legal system.”

Anello enrolled in Harvard Law School to acquire legal tools to protect animals used for food. Before law school, Alene worked at PETA for three years, where she created positive news events—such as PETA’s Person of the Year awards given to Bill Clinton, Russell Simmons, and Anjelica Huston—that show Americans how simple choices can help animals.

As a first-year law student, Alene serves on the board of her Harvard Law School SALDF chapter. In this capacity Alene has organized three pro-animal talks which drew large audiences from the Harvard Law School community, a phone-banking volunteer day to protect mother pigs, and multiple SALDF outreach days for her law school. She also coordinated a day’s worth of free vegan meals for the 200 attendees of a conference on industrial agriculture, and transitioned her SALDF chapter to serving all-vegan food at events. As a SALDF board member, Alene applies for funding and collects donations, obtains press coverage for the group, and helps maintain the group’s website, email list, and Facebook page. In addition to her work with her SALDF chapter this academic year, Alene has conducted volunteer legal research for ALDF, taken an Animal Law course, and participated in an “Eating Animals?” reading group.

As freshman at Harvard College, Alene helped convince the school to switch to using cage-free eggs about half the time (Harvard College later went 100% cage-free). After this success Alene helped start the Harvard College Vegetarian Society and served as co-president. Alene invited vegetarian authors to speak at Harvard, showed films about animal protection, and served free vegan meals. As an undergraduate, Alene interned for the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) Farm Animal Welfare division. This summer, Alene returns to HSUS to join the Animal Protection Litigation department. After law school, Alene plans to combine legislative advocacy and litigation to fight the abuse of animals on factory farms.