Meet our Board

Amanda Sorvino (President) is a mother, animal advocate, actress and screenwriter. She lobbied in Washington DC to stop horse slaughter with father, actor Paul Sorvino, and co-starred with him in the reality TV show pilot, “The Goodfather.” In 2008 she went undercover and exposed shocking cruelty at a New Jersey horse slaughterhouse. Sorvino was able to get the last 10 slaughterhouse horse residents out alive. The slaughterhouse survivor, “In Your Prayers” AKA Buttercup became world famous as she battled a rare form of skin cancer but triumphed and outlived the vet’s prognosis for 4 wonderful years. But Sorvino’s sympathy for animals did not stop at horses — over the course of the last decade she has been rescuing dairy cows and calves from unconscionable conditions and additionally provided undercover tape that led to the arrest of a cow abuser at a livestock auction. She began saving infant (hours old) dairy calves, discarded by the dairy industry and destined for a calf slaughterhouse. Back in the summer of 2017 Sorvino joined efforts with her dear childhood friend, Himani Ashleman (also a lover of animals) to launch My Speckled Calf Rescue.  They brought in Himani’s daughter, Karena Amy, a film student at Columbia College of Arts to create a short film about the auction rescue of My Speckled Calf’s most recent dairy calf infant, Baby Peaches. It is Sorvino and Ashleman’s hope that the film will put the spotlight on the tragic plight of American dairy calves and encourage qualified cow lovers to seek vegan alternatives to dairy products and adopt rescue calves.  But their new rescue has a colorful variety of available rescued animals ... “Sympathy knows no species,” says Sorvino. “There is a large variety of animals for qualified adopters to choose from.  From horses to calves to ducks to low content wolf hybrids.”