Professor Heidi M. Hurd has been elected to the elite, seven-member Board of Directors of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, a national non-profit organization that works to increase the legal protection of animals in the United States. With hundreds of thousands of members, the ALDF accomplishes this mission by filing high-impact lawsuits to protect animals from harm, providing free legal assistance and training to prosecutors to assure that animal abusers are punished for their crimes, supporting tough animal protection legislation and fighting legislation harmful to animals, and providing resources and opportunities to law students, legal academics, and other legal professionals to advance the emerging field of animal law.