Helaine Lerner

New York socialite Helaine Lerner is the founder and current board chair of the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE), which publishes pamphlets instructing readers on how to "confront" livestock farmers and prevent them from doing business in particular neighborhoods. A longtime environmental and animal rights activist, Lerner established GRACE in 1996. She has also worked on Henri Spira's campaigns to improve the treatment of lab and farm animals; supported Colorado State University' research pertaining to the same issue; and helped start the Center for a Livable Future (CLF) at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Lerner is the primary funder of CLF, which works to end modern, efficient, livestock agriculture by trying to convince restaurants and grocery chains to abandon their meat suppliers. In conjunction with CLF, GRACE also operates an anti-industrial livestock farming program inside the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Lerner heads the Helaine Heilbrunn Lerner Fund, which in 2000 gave the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health over $546,000 - earmarked for CLF. That same year, the Lerner Fund also gave more than $1.4 million to GRACE. Between 1997 and 2000, Lerner wrote personal checks to GRACE totaling $2.6 million. More than 80 percent of GRACE's operating budget is financed by Lerner.