President and Co-Founder

Bob Isaacson was a civil rights-human rights attorney for twenty-five years, specializing in defending people against the death penalty. He presented and won a landmark case in the Supreme Court of the United States, which limits the power of the police to arrest people without sufficient grounds, when he was 27, the second youngest attorney in history to appear before the nation’s highest court.

Bob Isaacson was drawn to the Buddha’s teachings on the path to the end of suffering 28 years ago and continues to be inspired. Since he began Buddhist practice, Bob has participated in 25 meditation retreats of one month or longer.

Bob currently teaches the Dharma (the Buddha’s teachings), leads two Sanghas (ongoing groups of practitioners), and leads day-long and weekend retreats in the San Diego area, having been trained in Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Community Dharma Leader Program.

It did not take Bob long to realize the disconnect between the Buddha’s teachings of compassion and non-harming toward all sentient beings and the actual practice of Buddhist teachers and followers who continue to eat animals. This disconnect led Bob to join with several friends in 2011 to launch the non-profit organization, Dharma Voices for Animals (DVA).

DVA is the only international Buddhist animal rights/animal advocacy organization in the world. DVA relies on the Buddha’s teachings to engage Buddhist centers and communities around the world, especially in Asia where over 98% of Buddhists live.

Operations Director

Andrea Diaz is an animal rights advocate raised on a farm in South Phoenix, Arizona. She has a Master of Global Animal Law from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a Bachelor of Criminal Justice from Arizona State University. Her interest was fueled by why so many people she grew up with got caught up in the judicial system.

She became vegan overnight after coming across chicken slaughterhouse footage online in 2016. She immediately wanted to take action to end the suffering of animals.

Andrea’s passion for justice and equality has led her to organize hundreds of campaigns, protests, and educational events for multiple animal rights organizations. She has worked as an investigator of factory farms and slaughterhouses in several countries.

Andrea Diaz has recently been drawn to the teachings of the Buddha, has a meditation practice, and has started attending Buddhist retreats.

Katie Nolan’s love for animals and the environment started when she was very young in her own backyard with amphibians and insects. Katie came to Buddhism through her undergraduate studies at Northland College, majoring in Religious Studies with an emphasis on Tibetan and Zen Buddhism. 

Katie seeks to help people connect their devotion to religious practice with compassion for animals and is excited to support DVA by helping to raise awareness of the important work being done and fostering engagement with members and supporters to advance the mission of compassionate living. 

Katie also has a Master’s degree in Environmental Law and Policy from Vermont Law and Graduate School, and her varied experience includes direct animal care, legislative work, and running animal advocacy campaigns.

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo was raised in London. In 1964, aged 20, she traveled to India to pursue her spiritual path and met her guru, His Eminence the 8^th Khamtrul Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist Lama. She became one of the first Westerners to ordain as a Tibetan Buddhist nun. The inspiring story of her life, including 12 years of a secluded retreat in a Himalayan cave, is the subject of the biography, Cave in the Snow. A popular Buddhist teacher, she presents the Dharma in an accessible manner to audiences across the world.

Jetsunma is Founder and Abbess of Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery in Himachel Pradesh, Northern India, where some 100 young women, from the Himalayan region receive monastic training. A select few of these nuns remain in long term retreat undergoing the rigorous yogic training of the Drukpa Kagyu tradition, thus re-instating the Togdenma lineage within this school of Buddhism. In 2008 Tenzin Palmo was given the title of Jetsunma, which means Venerable Master, by His Holiness the Twelfth Gyalwang Drukpa, Head of her lineage.

Tara Brach is an internationally known meditation teacher and author of bestselling Radical Acceptance and True Refuge. She is founder and senior teacher of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC, offers a popular weekly podcast and teaches meditation workshops and retreats in the United States and Europe. Tara and her colleague Jack Kornfield have created a Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Certification Program that is currently serving participants from 49 countries. Tara is also active in bringing meditation into DC area schools, prisons and to underserved populations. To learn more about Tara and her work, visit her website.

Dawn Scott is a graduate of Insight Meditation Society’s teacher training program, a co-principal teacher of Marin Sangha, a core teacher of Spirit Rock’s Advanced Practitioner Program, and served as the Family Program Coordinator at Spirit Rock Meditation Center for eight years. She is a co-teacher of Love & Liberation, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and Insight Meditation’s joint year-long program, slated to start in early 2022. Dawn has a deep love of long retreat practice and the Buddha’s liberative teachings.

Stephanie Swann, PhD, LCSW, is the Director of the Atlanta Mindfulness Institute and one of the two founding teachers of the Atlanta Insight Meditation Community. She is a certified MBSR instructor through the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine, Center for Mindfulness.

Stephanie has been a dedicated Vipassana practitioner since 2008 and was a member of the Community Dharma Leaders program (CDL6) at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. As a consultant, Stephanie trains mental health professionals in the practice of mindfulness-based psychotherapy.

Currently Stephanie holds an adjunct faculty appointment with the Georgia State University School of Social Work where she works on an NIH grant using mindfulness to support smoking cessation.  She has been a vegetarian since her early 20s and is fully committed to a vegan way of life now.

Thanissara is Anglo-Irish and from London. She became Vegetarian at 14 years old, and Vegan in 2017. Thanissara started Buddhist practice in the U Ba Khin Burmese school in 1975. She was inspired to ordain after meeting Ajahn Chah and spent 12 years as a Buddhist nun in the Thai Forest School where she was a founding member of Chithurst Monastery and Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in the UK.

She has facilitated meditation retreats internationally the last 30 years and has an MA in Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy Practice from Middlesex University & the Karuna Institute in the UK.In 1994, with Kittisaro, her husband and teaching partner, they accepted an invitation to teach Dharma in South Africa where they became legal residents in 1995.

In 2000 they co-founded Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat and helped initiate and support a number of HIV/Aids response and community development projects in South Africa. They continue to be deeply involved in the work of supporting Dharma and Community Outreach in Southern Africa.

Since 2017 they have been resident in California where together they founded Sacred Mountain Sangha Non Profit and more recently Sacred Sangha Online, which runs trainings, classes and events.

Thanissara has written several books, including two poetry books. Her latest book is Time To Stand Up, An Engaged Buddhist Manifesto for Our Earth. Thanissara is a member of the Spirit Rock Teacher Council, CA., and a core teacher at Insight Meditation Society MA.

Venerable Geshe Thupten Phelgye was born in 1956 and escaped the invasion and occupation of his homeland, Tibet, by the Chinese army in 1961. He became a monk in 1973 at Seraje College of Sera Monastic University and finished his Geshe degree (Ph.D.) in 1991. He meditated in the Himalayan mountains for a period of five years. In 2001 he was elected as a member of the Tibetan Parliament in Exile to represent the Gelug tradition of Buddhism and served in the Parliament for ten years.

His teacher and mentor has been his Holiness the Dalai Lama who blessed Geshe-la’s Universal Compassion Foundation organization. In 2012, 2013, and 2015, Geshe-la has given teachings throughout California and the USA on practicing the Dharma as a vegetarian. His teaching tour, sponsored in large part by DVA, is called, “Compassion for all Beings.” Geshe-la currently works as a professor at Eastern Washington University.

Venerable Thich Thanh Huan, the Director of DVA’s Vietnam Project, has been a monk for thirty-three years and lives in the Buddhist country of Vietnam in Hanoi, its capital. He was taught at Lang Mai (Plum Village) in France by Thich Nhat Hanh, who designated him a Buddhist teacher in 2003. Venerable Thich Thanh Huan was born in 1967 to a Buddhist priest family with all six siblings becoming monastics. In 1984 he ordained at Quán Sứ Pagoda, the headquarters of the Vietnamese Buddhist Sangha (VBS).

He has received a Ph.D. in both Buddhist studies in Taiwan and philosophy in Vietnam. Venerable Thich Thanh Huan is the abbot of the famous 1,000-year-old Pháp Vân Pagoda in Hanoi, Vietnam. The Venerable is also a member of the influential Standing Committee of the Vietnamese Buddhist Sangha (VBS), which is the home to 50,000 monastics, 15,000 Buddhist temples, and tens of millions of followers. The Venerable practices non-harming and compassion by not eating or otherwise using animal products, teaches numerous classes on vegetarianism and promotes a plant-based diet, and, as a member of the Advisory Council of DVA, helps connect DVA with Vietnam.

Bhante Anandajoti is an English Monk resident in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Thailand since 1987. He was fully ordained in the Theravāda tradition in Sri Lanka in 1996 and is currently advisor to the International Buddhist College in south Thailand. Since ordination he has been involved in many Dharma works and teachings, working both as a writer, teacher and photographer, and as webmaster on various sites for his own and others’ works. Bhante has been vegetarian since early childhood and is now vegan. He also does whatever he can to promote human rights, animal rights, and a better understanding of our shared lives on this planet.

Patti Breitman has been meditating since 1973 and practicing Vipassana since 1991. She completed the first Mindfulness Yoga training offered at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and participated in the Dedicated Practitioner Program there, where she has been a member of the Friday morning Sangha for well over 20 years. She also is a long time member of the Sunday night Marin Sangha, started by Spirit Rock teacher Phillip Moffitt. Patti is the co-author of How to Eat Like a Vegetarian, Even If You Never Want To Be One and of Never Too Late to Go Vegan. She is the co-founder and director of The Marin Vegetarian Education Group. Patti is a DVA co-founder and past secretary.

Dr. Will Tuttle, a Dharma Master in the Korean Zen tradition and former Zen monk, has been practicing Zen for over 35 years, and has also studied in the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. Author of the acclaimed best-seller, The World Peace Diet, he is a recipient of the Courage of Conscience Award, and has created eight CD albums of uplifting original piano music. His Ph.D. from U.C., Berkeley, focused on educating intuition and altruism and was nominated for the best dissertation award. A vegan since 1980, he presents 150 lectures, workshops, and concerts annually throughout North America and Europe.

Dr. Chamith Nanayakkara has a Bachelor of Veterinary Science degree from the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, where he graduated with honors as a Veterinary Surgeon in 2000 and ‎currently serves as a faculty member of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science. In the 1970’s the Sri Lankan Government started killing 100,000 dogs per year by gassing them to death in an attempt to eradicate rabies in Sri Lanka. Soon after graduation, Dr. Nanayakkara started his campaign to stop these massive killings of dogs as a badly guided solution to eradicate rabies in Sri Lanka.

As the Managing Director of Vets for Future, he has been working with the Sri Lankan Government on humanely controlling the dog population by planning the vaccinations of 70% of the dogs. Chamith’s efforts were successful when the Government in 2005 announced a No Kill Policy so that humane methods could take effect. Working in cooperation with the Sri Lankan Government, Chamith and Vets for Future, a large organization of veterinarian surgeons and support staff, have spayed and neutered over 900,000 dogs so far! The government program, however, does not treat dogs who are sick and injured, have complications from surgery, or have cancer or cataracts.

In his role as the Managing Director of Vets for Future, Chamith and his group of surgeons have donated 10% of their salaries since 2008 to fund free treatment for sick and injured dogs. Dr. Nanayakkara has performed over 60,000 surgeries. He has been conducting free clinics, treating over 120 dogs per day on full moon days, a holiday in Sri Lanka, in ‎Kundasale on the outskirts of Kandy. 

Albert Mah is a former vice-president of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia and a former treasurer of Hayagriva Buddhist Centre in Perth, Australia. He is currently a dharma teacher at the Buddhist Society of Western Australia giving lessons to the senior school class. He is a vegan, plays an active role in animal advocacy, the vegan way of living and social justice. He lives with a greyhound who was discarded by the racing industry after his racing career ended. Albert believes that when one contemplates suffering deeply one realizes that a life of minimum harm has to incorporate abstention from eating animal flesh and consuming animal products. He is the Chapter Leader of DVA’s Perth, Australia Chapter.