Pro-Animal Meetup

This week’s guest speaker, Steven Rouk, is the founder of Connect For Animals, a platform for people who want to help end factory farming that has over 2,000 users across the country. Increasingly, he is also working on increasing AI literacy and adoption within the animal advocacy movement, as well as special AI projects for advocacy. He recently used AI to build a web app that can be used to automatically monitor restaurant menus for foie gras, and he also used AI to analyze the 130,000 word H.R.1 bill ("Big Beautiful Bill") for its impacts on farmed animals.

Before Connect For Animals and his current AI work, he was involved in animal advocacy for the last decade working on research, strategy, community building, and grassroots activism. He has a background in data engineering and data science and loves all things related to math and programming.

When not working on Connect For Animals or obsessing about the latest developments in AI, Steven enjoys reading nonfiction, drinking coffee, climbing, and running.

Pro-Animal Meetup: Join your fellow animal lovers and DC Animal Protection to discuss what’s happening in the animal advocacy scene in DC! This series is a weekly meetup, with guest speakers from all of the major animals rights orgs. We’ll host non-profits such as Pro-Animal Future, International Council for Animal Welfare, DC Voters for Animals, The Humane League, Mercy for Animals and Direct Action Everywhere as well as local grassroots groups like the DC Coalition Against Foie Gras and sanctuaries. We’ll also have special sessions related to health, nutrition and mindfulness!

We encourage anyone who is interested in helping animals to attend- no need to be vegan! Come learn about our rich variety of local activism. With protests, outreach, wheat-pasting, signature collecting, leafletting, lobbying, tabling etc. there’s something to match everyone’s comfort level and skill set.

Coffee, bagels and community will be provided! Feel free to bring any extra treats to share (no animal products please.) Hope to see you soon! :)

Note: Unfortunately, animals are not allowed at our venue. Please leave your fury friends at home.