Laurelee Blanchard, Founder and President of Leilani Farm Sanctuary, left a lucrative career as senior vice president at the national firm of Lee & Associates Commercial Real Estate Services to devote her life to animal protection and humane education. In 1999, she cashed out her life savings and moved from Orange County, California, to Haiku, Maui. There she acquired an eight-acre parcel of land on which she created a farm sanctuary—a refuge where animals would be protected from neglect, abuse, and slaughter.

Leilani Farm Sanctuary, an all-volunteer, nonprofit organization, is now home to nearly three hundred rescued animals, including goats, chickens, rabbits, ducks, donkeys, geese, deer, cats, pigs, sheep, turkeys, guinea pigs, tortoises, and a cow. The sanctuary provides educational programs for school groups and special needs visitors; it also offers tours to the general public.

Since the mid-1990s, Ms. Blanchard has focused her attention on the protection of farm animals. She served as a pro bono communications director for Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), a national nonprofit that devotes its efforts to bringing to an end the practice of using living, sentient beings for food.

She also worked for three years as campaign consultant to Farm Sanctuary, the nation’s largest farm-animal-protection organization. In 2010, Laurelee was hired as consultant to the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), specifically in its campaign to end the long-distance transport of live farm animals from the US mainland to Hawaii. She successfully negotiated with the Foodland and Times Supermarket chains to implement policies against purchasing pork from pigs shipped to Hawaii, thereby reducing the number of pigs transported and slaughtered by approximately seventy-five thousand per year.

Laurelee served as director of the Vegetarian Society of Hawaii on Maui for ten years. She contributed to the organization’s newsletter and facilitated monthly lectures presented by highly credentialed speakers.

In 2012 Laurelee was presented the Vegan of the Year in North America commendation for her outstanding animal activist work, and in 2015 she received a national award and grant from the Godiva Company for embodying the attributes of Lady Godiva through selflessness, generosity, leadership, and the spirit of giving back to the community.

Laurelee currently resides in Haiku, Maui, with her family of rescued animals.