S5. E7: Amanda Hearst: A Better World for All Beings
“Because we're told of so many problems and issues around the world, we get overwhelmed. And if you tell someone, okay, this is what's going on and this is what you can do. That's a bit different, people are like, okay, that's actionable.”
- Amanda Hearst
Amanda Hearst is co-founder of Well Beings, an organization that unites animal welfare and environmental protection throughout the globe - from closing down puppy mills in the American South to stopping deforestation in South America.
Their most recent campaign is to stop the fires in the Bolivian Amazon; and because of COVID-19, they’ve also been campaigning to stop the next pandemic by preventing wildlife trafficking in the rainforests - which has been linked to the spread of similar coronaviruses.
Amanda is also co-founder of the luxury, sustainable, fashion retailer Maison de Mode. Check out their cruelty-free edit– it’s absolutely stunning.
I hope you enjoy this conversation with Amanda as much as I did – she’s insightful, inspiring, and has a huge heart.
Learn More About Well Beings
Shop Maison de Mode
Follow Amanda on Instagram
Transcript:
Amanda: [00:00:00] Because we're told of so many problems and issues around the world, we just get overwhelmed. If you tell someone, OK, this is what's going on and this is what you can do, that's a bit different. People are like, OK, that's actionable.
Elizabeth: [00:00:22] Hi, I'm Elizabeth Novogratz, this is Species Unite. We have a favor to ask if you like today's episode and you have a spare minute, could you please rate and review Species Unite on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts? It really helps people to find the show. Today's conversation is with Amanda Hearst. Amanda is co-founder of Well Beings, an organization that unites animal welfare and environmental protection throughout the globe. From closing down puppy mills in the American South to stopping deforestation in South America. She's also co-founder of the luxury sustainable fashion retailer Maison De Mode. They've recently launched a cruelty free edit that everyone should check out. Amanda, thank you so much for being here today.
Amanda: [00:01:27] Oh, thank you for having me, Beth.
Elizabeth: [00:01:29] Of course, I would love to start, go back and talk about your life growing up. Were there animals in it and what was your relationship to them? How did this path begin and when?
Amanda: [00:01:42] Yeah, it's funny because I was born and raised in Manhattan, which is not known for animals or the environment. You know, it's very much a hard city. But I grew up with a mother who loved animals, and so we always were adopting pets. She'd take me to the country a lot, and when I was 14, she bought a farm in Long Island. So from that age onward, we had a farm growing up. We would always adopt animals like goats and alpacas. Yeah, so it's a fun place to visit. You should come one time for sure.
Elizabeth: [00:02:18] I'd love to, yeah. Are there still a lot of animals there?
Amanda: [00:02:21] Yeah, there's always a rotation. My mom is a Big Bird person, so we have a lot of different types of chickens and ducks and geese. Then we also have alpacas, different types of goats and then, of course, dogs and cats. Growing up on that farm was sort of the beginning of a charitable, empathetic look at animals.
Elizabeth: [00:02:42] And then later, as an adult, when did you first start your work as an activist for animal rights?
Amanda: [00:02:48] About 10 years ago, I started working in New York. I was twenty five and I was working at a magazine called Marie Claire, and I had just bought my dog Finn from a pet store. I knew a bit about this issue of puppy mills, which are essentially illegal breeding facilities in America, where most of the dogs at pet stores come from. So at these puppy mills, they have breeding dogs that they'll breed to death or usually not treat well. Then they have litter after litter, after litter and the puppies get sold for a lot of money. Since I knew that most dogs from pet stores were from puppy mills, I was not planning on getting a dog from a pet store, but I kept seeing this dog in the window. Little chihuahua looking dog and I went in and I asked them all these questions. I was like, OK, so where do you get your dogs? They're like, No, no, no. We only work with reputable breeders like, Here's this family tree. They gave me all this information and links and stuff. So I was like, OK this sounds legit, I'm going to get him. So I got my dog, Finn.
Elizabeth: [00:04:03] When was this?
Amanda: [00:04:04] So he's 12, so that would be two thousand eight. I got him. I loved him. Then simultaneously, I was thinking, OK, I also want to start collaborating with an animal welfare charity. I was starting to research, and then the Humane Society reached out to me and they were like, someone mentioned your name. It was very serendipitous. They were like, you know, we want to do our first event in New York and someone mentioned your name, and you're a big animal lover. We'd love to talk with you more. In the process of talking about their first event in New York, I gave them the paperwork that I got in from the pet store and I was like, Do you mind just tracing this and letting me know for sure? He's from a legit breeder. And they did, and he was from this horrible puppy mill in Tennessee and they've been trying to close it forever, and it's been on the radar of all these nonprofits. I was like, Oh my God, so I even asked the right questions, and they lied to me and I love my dog and he's great and he's safe. But his mother and father probably are not. It was at that point that when I was talking to the Humane Society, that issue was at the forefront of my mind. So we started working together to raise money and awareness to end puppy mills in America.
Elizabeth: [00:05:14] Did you go see any puppy mills while you were doing this?
Amanda: [00:05:17] Yeah, I went to about six in total, which was interesting, very traumatic. I'm definitely the type of person that's going to like, cry the whole time.
Elizabeth: [00:05:26] Like, can you just go?
Amanda: [00:05:28] Not really. So I don't know if they, like, pulled some strings. I don't think it's always the safest of places, especially where, like, the way that you raid a puppy mill, it's a little bit like trespassing. So technically someone could pull a gun out. And especially, you know, it was like North Carolina, Mississippi, Arizona. It's definitely hardcore environments. I actually went with my co-founder of Well Beings, Brianna on one of them. Also, what eventually happened was I started Friends of Finn. Friends of Finn was a group within the Humane Society of the United States dedicated to ending puppy mills within the United States. So we were able to go on these puppy mill raids.
Elizabeth: [00:06:10] What was it like the first time? What did you see?
Amanda: [00:06:12] So the first time that I went to a puppy mill, it was in North Carolina and I actually went with my friend Georgina Bloomberg, who is also a huge animal lover and a much stronger person than I am emotionally, at least. We took an early flight to get to North Carolina and it was a private residence and first of all, in the residence, it was a couple that were grandparents and they lived with their granddaughter, who is like 15. We went into the house, they weren't there. We were with the police and the Humane Society and the smell of urine, like ammonia, blinded me first of all. I was like, How are these people living here in this house? And then the first dog I see is chained to a chair, and it can't even stand because the chain is so short. Then there are just all these other dogs running around in the living room, the bedroom doors are closed and they have a newspaper shoved under the door so that they don't smell the urine when they're sleeping. The living conditions were really odd.
Elizabeth: [00:07:20] Oh my god.
Amanda: [00:07:20] Yeah. In their backyard, they had three sections and it was divided by breed. So there was a Chihuahua section, a dachshund section and then maybe a Pomeranian or something else. The dogs were in really horrible conditions, and I remember one dog had a twig which was stuck in what you call the roof of your mouth, and it had been there for three years. The vet judged just living with this thing, stuck in the throat and totally malnourished eye conditions, teeth conditions. We sort of helped the vet team do their assessments. Which ones have to go to the emergency vet, which ones can stay the night in this temporary shelter. I'm bawling, crying, trying to help these people, and Georgina is like ready to fight the people that are in the house. I'm like, Oh my god, this is so emotional I want to take all these animals. There were like over a hundred animals and then the man of the house, he came back. He was so pissed. He's yelling at all of us. The weird thing was that they had named every animal. Which also confused me, because in this weird way, I do think you like them, but you're also treating them so poorly. It was like this weird, weird situation where on one hand, I hated them, but on the other hand, I kind of had this understanding that they couldn't have lived in poorer conditions and this was a way that they found to make money. I do think at the root of it they do love animals, but that has spiraled. And that can happen where according to, for example, it comes from one place, but then it happens when the money gets into play and you get more and more animals and you can't take care of those animals and you lack the education to know how to take care of animals. It can get to that situation. It was hard to see that, but it was also encouraging to know that all the animals were taken out. Then I went on a few other runs.
Elizabeth: [00:09:19] Which must have been hard to keep going after. I'm sure it was traumatizing the first time to go back and go back. Right?
Amanda: [00:09:26] Yeah, I don't know how individuals do this type of thing for a living rescue work. It is so intense to deal with so much pain and emotion on such a level and of course, not all the animals survived. It's not a happy thing to do or see, but it is always good to know that at least in the ones that I was involved in, that all the animals got out and that most of them survived and found homes.
Elizabeth: [00:09:49] I think as a society, we really know now, like puppy mills are bad and dogs that cost four thousand or six thousand dollars usually come from a puppy mill. Or, you know, the pet store, three thousand French bulldogs, probably comes from a puppy mill. But there's still a disconnect and I think there's even a disconnect for people to actually really know what a puppy mill is. They just know puppy mills are bad. You know, there's something that people don't want to see.
Amanda: [00:10:16] I think another thing when there's that disconnect is because when people see animals in pet stores, sometimes they think they're rescuing the animal from the pet store. So that can be a little confusing because they're like, well, if I don't adopt it, then then no one's going to adopt it and then what happens? And it's like, Yeah, but the problem is, if you support pet stores, then they're going to keep sourcing these dogs from the puppy mill. So you're supporting that industry. There's so many dogs in shelters. So the solution really should be that pet stores don't exist or that they only sell dogs that are rescues.
Elizabeth: [00:10:54] Absolutely. They do look so pathetic in those windows and it looks hot and they're like paper in the window and it just happened in New York. It's not legal anymore. That's really recent.
Amanda: [00:11:06] I know, and it's exciting, but it took a while.
Elizabeth: [00:11:09] Took a really long time. You're doing this with the Humane Society and you meet Brianna. So how did you guys decide, OK, we're going to do Finn2Finn?
Amanda: [00:11:18] We picked the name Finn2Finn Alliance because my dog was named Finn and her first dog that she ever had was named Finn also. So we picked that name and the first campaign was equine welfare. What we learned is that one hundred and thirty thousand horses are slaughtered every year, so it's illegal in America. But we ship the horses to Canada and Mexico, and then around one hundred and thirty thousand horses are slaughtered for dog food or human food. That was our first campaign.
Elizabeth: [00:11:50] Well, and the horse issue too, anyone outside of the horse world has no idea that these horses are being put on trucks, jammed in there for days at a time.
Amanda: [00:11:59] And that they're often healthy horses, that could have a purpose. They could provide animal therapy for war vets. All these programs in America where they could have a function. But it's just the system isn't in place and people don't know about it. The second year, we're still figuring out ourselves and we're like, OK, well, we kind of want when we talk we're realizing it's not just animals that we're really talking about anymore. We’re talking about animals, the environment and humans. We're really broadening our scope of work. So it was really that idea of interconnection. How animal welfare affects human health, affects the planet, affects animal welfare. In 2019, when we officially came out as Well Beings, because we thought that that was a more inclusive name for, you know, caring about the well-being of all life on Earth and celebrating the interconnection of that life. In 2019, the campaign was the human animal bond.
Elizabeth: [00:13:05] What was the campaign?
Amanda: [00:13:06] We started to come across all these programs where they're called animal assisted interventions. So yeah, so it's like animal therapy, humane education, any sort of programming that uses animals in a way to help humans. We identified four charities that we wanted to partner with and support their work. Two were animal assisted therapy programs. One was called SquirrelWood Equine Sanctuary. So that was horses and war vets. Tony La Russa Our Foundation, which is in San Francisco, that was rescue dogs and war vets. Then we had a humane education program called Heart. Then you URI Palace Program, which is one of the most unknown programs and that was keeping victims of domestic violence with their pets.
Elizabeth: [00:13:56] Usually, do they end up like having to leave and then they're in a shelter and the shelter won't take the pet?
Amanda: [00:14:03] Yeah. So in cases of domestic abuse in the United States, only three percent of domestic abuse shelters allow pets.
Elizabeth: [00:14:17] Oh my god, that's nuts.
Amanda: [00:14:18] I know it's crazy. So what happens is normally women, but these individuals stay in the situation of abuse longer than they should, because they don't want to leave their pets.
Elizabeth: [00:14:26] Especially with an abuser, right?
Amanda: [00:14:28] Right, exactly. Because then, you know, the pet is being abused or is going to be abused as well. So you stay in that situation longer than you should. So this program, URI Palace, is setting up shelters where you can take your pets.
Elizabeth: [00:14:45] Oh, that's awesome.
Amanda: [00:14:46] I think that that's revolutionary and something that really should be highlighted so that people know there are places you can take your pets and you can get out of those situations. So for 2019, nineteen those were our four charity partners
Elizabeth: [00:14:57] This year, your campaign for 2020, this wonderful year we're having.
Amanda: [00:15:03] The craziest year of our lives, known as 2020. Our Well Being campaign is protecting the Amazon in Bolivia. The deforestation campaign. The Amazon is incredibly important on the planet and something that can very clearly be explained to impact animals, humans and climate change.
Elizabeth: [00:15:26] The Amazon everywhere is in really bad shape, but what's happening in Bolivia?
Amanda: [00:15:32] Brianna and I flew down to Bolivia in February of this year. right before everything shut down. What's happening in Bolivia is what's happening in Brazil. So Brazil gets a ton of attention as it should. It's a bigger country. Most of the Amazons are there, but deforestation and the rampant fires are also happening in Bolivia at arguably a faster rate and for the same reasons, which is primarily the cattle industry. They cut down the trees to create plots of land for cattle and other agriculture that can often lead to fires. It's a sad cycle that ultimately affects the locals, animals and people, and then affects climate change around the world. So what we did was visit a few animal sanctuaries down there and a few indigenous communities to learn the animal part, as well as the social part.
Elizabeth: [00:16:24] What did you learn from?
Amanda: [00:16:26] From the Indigenous communities we learned that the entrepreneurship that they have has to do with using resources from the land, but in a sustainable way. So it's not just cutting down trees, for instance, the community we visited, they were taking out a resin from the trees and making some beauty products from it, but then also protecting the forest. So it was a sustainable situation that was giving them revenue, but also protecting the local Amazon. So we wanted to encourage that. So that was one partner called AB KOB that we eventually partnered with. So it's supporting indigenous farmers and communities and then the sanctuaries. The sanctuary that we ended up partnering with is called Sunda Verde, and they're the biggest sanctuary in Bolivia. They have over eight hundred animals, and it was unlike any sanctuary or shelter that I've ever been to because it's built around like the forest in Amazon, and it's built in a way so that actually, it sounds kind of weird, but where humans are kind of in the cages and the animals are free.
Elizabeth: [00:17:30] Wow. Oh my god, that's amazing.
Amanda: [00:17:31] Yeah, it was. It was weird and also revolutionary because it's just basically we're walking through these kinds of tunneled pathways made of fencing.
Elizabeth: [00:17:30] Cased enclosures, kind of.
Amanda: [00:17:31] Yeah and you're walking through these paths and then the animals have these huge open spaces. A lot of them are not enclosed at all, like the monkeys are pretty free reign. They just noticed that the birds and the monkeys they all just know to stay nearby at this point, because that's where the food is. The Jaguars and the Pumas were totally enclosed. It was amazing to see those animals and to understand the local animal welfare issues because most of the animals that are honestly were from habitat loss because of the fires and then also wildlife trafficking.
Elizabeth: [00:18:14] For all these animals extinction is not far away for a lot of them. Did that fire you guys up?
Amanda: [00:18:21] Whenever you see an issue firsthand, you always care more and you feel more invested in it and that's why we went on that trip. Even though it was so hard to get to. It was like five flights and they were taking these like scary little planes across the country that are, I don't know from the sixties and have never been repaired, I'm like, if I die, I guess you think, is this a good story? I don't know. It was for a good cause and we learned so much. So I think that it certainly brought the issue of Amazonian deforestation home for us. Then our challenge once we got home was how do we tell this story so that people care?
Elizabeth: [00:18:57] Yeah, absolutely, so how do you?
Amanda: [00:19:00] When COVID happened first we were like, do we change our campaign? Like, What do we do? But then we realized that actually our campaign tied into the issues related to COVID because as many people probably know, COVID jumped from an animal to a human in China, they believe. So that has to do with wildlife trafficking and that's also a huge issue in Bolivia. A lot of deforestation is also to capture animals. Then also what we originally wanted to talk about, which is still a main focus, is climate change. While the Amazon consumes carbon, they store carbon and when we're cutting these trees down, we're just losing that ally to combat climate change and the excess of carbon in the atmosphere. We're losing the Amazon at a rate so fast that if we lose five percent more, they're saying that the Amazon will start converting into a savanna and it won't be able to sustain itself. That's sort of the end of our fight against climate change. If we lose the Amazon, we lose our fight against climate change.
Elizabeth: [00:20:01] Yeah, pandemics happen mostly because of how we treat animals.
Amanda: [00:20:05] And I think the second part of that is because we're told of so many problems and issues around the world like we just get overwhelmed. If you tell someone, OK, this is what's going on and this is what you can do, that's a bit different. People are like, OK, that's actionable. We were saying, eat less red meat, OK, we'll stop supporting the cattle industry. Switch to a more vegetarian diet, if you can. These are brands we like. These are ways we like to do it. Just giving people a positive, actionable approach to these issues. Instead of being like, this is terrible, it's on fire or being as depressed as we are. That is never helpful.
Elizabeth: [00:20:40] It doesn't work and eating less meat is something people can do every day like it's something you are really in control of and have power over. Our diets are destroying the world. So it's really, you know, it's personal. So you're busy because you're also the co-founder and chief brand officer of the luxury ethical fashion retailer Maison De Mode. Well, you talk about that a little bit and how that started, and it's awesome. It's just beautiful. Yeah, I spent a lot of time on there this week, so.
Amanda: [00:21:11] I appreciate that. When I started working and I started working with the Humane Society, I was writing a page for Marie Claire about responsible fashion, which wasn't like a huge topic at that time. I connected with a friend who had a sustainable luxury line, and we started doing these pop ups with the concept of showcasing our favorite sustainable fashion brands. So the first one, we only had six brands, but we had a bit of success. We kept doing it for a few years and then we decided to launch the website. So that's where we are today. We have over 80 different brands and it's an exciting moment because I feel like especially in the fashion industry, everyone is talking about sustainability.
Elizabeth: [00:21:54] I think some people are confused because sustainable has been a weird word for a long time and people have kind of used it when they shouldn't be. What does it take to be one of the 80 that you guys have?
Amanda: [00:22:05] Yeah. So how I define sustainable fashion is fashion that takes into account the environment and takes into account the people that are making the clothes. So there's the environmental component and then the social component and so on Maison De Mode. What we do is we have a system of icons and we apply the icons to brands. So you know what kind of sustainability we're talking about. The cruelty free edit has been of great interest to a lot of people.
Elizabeth: [00:22:36] Have you noticed since you started there's been more and more demand for sustainable and for cruelty free?
Amanda: [00:22:41] Definitely, in the past two years especially has been this growth in interest for sustainable fashion. But actually, we started the website in two thousand fifteen, one of the most searched terms on our website was vegan. That it did kind of make sense to me because when it comes to especially animal welfare issues, people that dress cruelty free, they really care about that and are looking for that and are not going to compromise on that. So when we realize there is this community of people that are trying to dress that way, we took note of it. That's why this year we finally launched this edit when we felt like there were enough brands that were were strong and in that cruelty free space,
Elizabeth: [00:23:22] That's really new too right. The cruelty free fashion world has been a little limited,
Amanda: [00:23:28] To say the least.
Elizabeth: [00:23:31] And so tell me about some other new brands and what you're excited about.
Amanda: [00:23:35] Shoes are the trickiest for an evening where there's a brand called AERA and they're great for heels and boots and evening wear shoes or day wear. A boot brand called Allison Wittels. We're partnering with them, Well Beings, and we're going to actually design a style specific to Well Beings. Then for bags. Rothy's, I don't know if you know that shoe brand.
Elizabeth: [00:23:59] Yeah, I know Rothy’s.
Amanda: [00:24:01] They’ve launched bags just now, and they're really cute. Then the faux furs and also because of cashmere, wool, silk are all by-products of animals. So we also have good alternatives to those that incorporate Peace silk and things of that nature.
Elizabeth: [00:24:13] And are those worlds growing in terms of brands starting to do more with alternatives to wool?
Amanda: [00:24:20] Honestly, I think that the innovations in alternative leathers like pineapple leather and mushroom leather and all these, that's where we've really seen development, but not as much with wool and cashmere. So, you know, but again, it's a process, and I think ultimately what's developed in a lab will probably have better performance, be more cost efficient for brands than using animals. So I think that that is just the direction that brands will all go at the end of the day.
Elizabeth: [00:24:51] And that's coming soon. I mean, we're not that far from scaling that stuff.
Amanda: [00:24:54] Yeah, I mean, they're growing fur in labs now. So I think that the future is now and it's just a matter of getting these products to market.
Elizabeth: [00:25:04] Amanda, thank you.
Amanda: [00:25:05] Thank you for having me.
Elizabeth: [00:25:15] To learn more about Amanda, about Well Beings and about Maison De Mode, go to our website SpeciesUnite.com. We will have links to everything we are on Facebook and Instagram, @SpeciesUnite. If you have a spare minute and could do us a favor, we'd greatly appreciate it, please rate and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps people to find the show. If you'd like to support the podcast, we'd greatly appreciate that too. We're on Patreon, it's Patreon.com/SpeciesUnite. I would like to thank everyone at Species Unite, including Gary Knudsen, Natalie Martin, Caitlin Pearce, Amy Jones, Paul Healey, Santana Polky, Gabriela Sibilska and Anna Conner, who wrote and performed today's music. Thank you for listening and have a wonderful day.
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