Student Convention – 2026

As the director of the Animal Law Education and Scholarship Program at the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), Stacy and her team work with law schools, students, and faculty to strengthen and expand animal law education nationwide. She is also responsible for fostering scholarship that advances animal protection and supports ALDF’s mission. 

Stacy earned her B.S. in Psychology from Kutztown University and her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Connecticut. While a graduate student, she helped lead a campaign that shut down the university’s only primate lab. 

She previously served as a tenured full professor of psychology and administrator at Marymount University. During her 22-year academic career, she developed and taught courses on primate psychology, animal activism and advocacy, and food ethics, led study abroad programs to primate sanctuaries in Kenya and Spain, and won various teaching awards. 

Her scholarship focuses on documenting the psychological and behavioral consequences of exploitation on nonhuman primates and dogs in laboratories. She has also researched public attitudes toward animal experimentation, alternatives to animal use in psychology education, and burnout in the animal protection movement. She has published in peer-reviewed journals, presented at national and international conferences, and served as a journal editor and reviewer. 

She has served as an advisor to animal protection organizations, provided expert comments for lawsuits, testified before lawmakers, lobbied on behalf of animal-related legislation, and spoken in congress on the use of dogs and cats in federally funded research. She has written opinion pieces for outlets including The Hill, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, and has been interviewed by national and international media on her research and other animal issues.

Jeremy Cohen is the founder of Boston Dog Lawyers, the first office in Massachusetts devoted exclusively to pet law. For more than a decade, he has represented pet owners in matters involving pet custody disputes, dangerous dog hearings, and the wrongful injury or death of companion animals.  Boston Dog Lawyers is also a “teaching law firm” committed to providing robust internship opportunities to students and attorneys. 

After earlier work in insurance claims and debt collection, a personal legal battle over his “step-dog,” Jesse, inspired him to launch a full-time practice for pet owners in 2016.  Cohen advocates for greater legal recognition of the value of companion animals and the bond between pets and their families.  In 2024, he successfully argued at the MA Appeals Court to initiate and expand the recognition of pet custody agreements among unmarried couples.  The work of Boston Dog Lawyers has persuaded the Appeals Court to also begin encouraging the consideration of the best interests of the pet.  After fielding 7,000 calls, Boston Dog Lawyers is now the subject of a book and reality show pitch and is working to expand to NYC.

As strategic legislative affairs manager at the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), Alicia Prygoski works to develop and advance the organization’s legislative campaigns at the local, state, and federal levels.  

Before joining ALDF, Alicia worked as a public policy coordinator for farmed animal protection at the Humane Society of the United States and as a policy associate at Animal Welfare Institute. At both organizations, she worked to enhance legal protections for farmed animals across the country and contributed to passing a ballot initiative in Massachusetts and legislation in Rhode Island banning the extreme confinement of animals in factory farming operations.  

Alicia has a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Policy from the University of Michigan and a law degree from Western Michigan University-Cooley where she founded and ran the school’s ALDF student chapter.  

Ashley Ridgway began her legal career working on litigation to advance the interests of animals and activists. Now, she is a policy advisor and staff attorney for the Animal Welfare Institute’s animals in laboratories program where she works to advance legal, policy, and administrative measures to protect animals in laboratories across the country. Ashley earned her JD from the University of Virginia School of Law where she helped lead the school’s Student Animal Legal Defense Fund chapter. 

Delcianna J. Winders is an associate professor of law and Director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School. Professor Winders previously taught at Lewis & Clark Law School, where she directed the world’s first law school clinic dedicated to farmed animal advocacy. She served as vice president and deputy general counsel at the PETA Foundation, was the first academic fellow of the Harvard Animal Law & Policy Program and was a visiting scholar at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University. Her primary interests are animal law and administrative law. She has also taught animal law at Tulane University School of Law and Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. 

Her work has appeared in the Denver Law Review, Florida State Law Review, Ohio State Law Journal, NYU Law Review, and the Animal Law Review. Winders has also published extensively in the popular press, including The Hill, National Geographic, Newsweek, New York Daily News, Salon, U.S.A. Today, and numerous other outlets. 

Winders received her BA in legal studies with highest honors from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she was named a Regents’ scholar and received the dean’s award for outstanding achievement in social sciences, and her JD from NYU School of Law, where she was awarded the Vanderbilt medal for outstanding contributions to the law school, named as a Robert McKay scholar, and served as the senior notes editor of the NYU Law Review. Following law school, Winders clerked for the Hon. Martha Craig Daughtrey on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and practiced animal law in a variety of settings. 

Alyssa Crowell is a senior staff attorney at the Animal Legal Defense Fund. Alysssa works in the Transparency and Regulatory Affairs Program (TRAP) and the Animal Law Education & Scholarship Program (ALESP). She works on behalf of animals in laboratories, puppy mills, the entertainment industry, and factory farms through data gathering and analysis, strategic litigation support, and regulatory advancement. Alyssa has a Bachelor of Arts in Law & Social Thought and Political Science from the University of Toledo and a law degree from Lewis & Clark Law School. While at Lewis & Clark, she was part of her Student Animal Law Defense Fund Chapter, a member of the Animal Law Review, and participated in the International Environmental Law Project Clinic, which focuses on international wildlife issues. Alyssa also teaches wildlife law at Cleveland State University College of Law.

Andrea Rodricks serves as Pro Bono Managing Attorney for the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF). In this role she works with ALDF’s pro bono network to enhance animal protection. Prior to joining ALDF, she served as a senior program attorney for the District of Columbia Bar in their Communities Office where she managed programmatic content across twenty different practice areas as well as developed and implemented department wide programs. She helped launch a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Initiative, where she oversaw project groups working on improving aspects of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in the legal profession.  

Andrea holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from the University of Arizona as well as a Juris Doctor degree, with a Certificate in Environmental Law, from the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University and a Master of Business Administration degree, with a concentration in International Business, from the Pace University Lubin School of Business.  Andrea attended law school to pursue a career in environmental and animal law, with the aim of leveraging her legal expertise to support nonprofit organizations and advance legal protections for the environment and its human and non-human inhabitants. She credits her former black lab mix, Chapin, for being her inspiration to fight for stronger animal protections.