Daphna Nachminovitch has worked on countless violent and egregious cases of cruelty to animals, and her office is flooded with calls from across the country every week. This native of Israel, who converses in French and Hebrew as easily as in English, is committed to seeking justice for every one of the animals victimized in these cases. Daphna’s persistence and persuasiveness in arguing the animals’ side have resulted in trials and punishment for countless perpetrators of animal abuse. When a cruelty-to-animals case in Florida was being ignored, Daphna organized a campaign to convince the state attorney to do something about the husky dog who was left to starve to death at the end of her chain. Daphna’s pressure resulted in the maximum sentence for the dog’s owner. She was also instrumental in persuading a judge to hand down the harshest sentence ever for cruelty to animals in the case of Barry Herbeck, who was sentenced to 16 years in jail after obtaining dozens of cats and dogs from “free to a good home” ads and torturing them to death, and her tenacity led a judge in a rural county in Virginia to reverse his decision to return dozens of pit bulls to the dogfighter who chained and abused them for years. Daphna’s expert testimony has resulted in important recommendations from a special state committee appointed to consider standards for animal shelters in North Carolina.

Before moving to Norfolk, Va., where PETA is headquartered, Daphna worked at Chicago’s Anti-Cruelty Society animal shelter and at Head Start centers doing speech therapy with children. She joined PETA in 1997 and has been taking on animal abusers ever since, focusing public attention on the plight of dogs who are chained, beaten, neglected, starved, killed—and too often forgotten by law-enforcement officials.