Vegan Posse

Welcome to Week 3 of the Vegan Posse Tennessee Series! If  you don’t tend to think of Nashville, Tennessee, as a hotbed of vegan awareness, you might want to think again. This week you’ll get to meet Lou Comfort, a yoga and meditation teacher who unfortunately discovered the healing power of a plant-based diet too late to save her cancer-stricken husband. But Lou went on to found the School Marath...

It's Week 2 of the Vegan Posse Tennessee Series! Native Tennesseean and longtime vegan Kara Carden is a homeschooling mother and community organizer. Daughter of chart-topping country music star Ronnie McDowell, Kara grew up touring the country and occasionally selling merch for her dad. She went on to become a freelance journalist and travel writer and, later, a homeschooling mom. In 2010, sh...

Who better to kick off our Tennessee series than Tennessee-born-and-raised Robby Cox and his business partner AND life partner, Ananya, founders of vegan meal prep company SUNstenance? Ananya has been practicing and working in the field of holistic wellness since her teenage years. In East Harlem, Ananya worked for Soluna Holistic Spa teaching yoga classes and developing the juice bar and vegan ea...

How does a person go from Burger King to vegan in two hours? A pre-screening of the classic animal rights film Earthlings did it for Carlos Garcia over two decades ago! Carlos has been playing drums since he was a kid in New York City. He grew up in a large, music-loving family listening to salsa and Latin music every day. Carlos is constantly recording and creating music with many diverse artists...

Why is listening to each other so rare - and so hard? And how do we find balance in this chaotic world? SIa Hurst, founder of 6D Living, has a few ideas! Sia is a graduate of the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies, completing the Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate. She also received a qualification in Nutrition and Healthy Living from eCornell. She has studied BioMedicine at the College...

Derrick Broze is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, and public speaker. He is the founder of The Conscious Resistance Network and the author of many books, including The Conscious Resistance Trilogy , The Holistic Self-Assessment , and How to Opt Out of the Technocratic State . Fully vegan for almost 15 years, thanks in part to a feline "teacher" named Jimmy, Derrick...

What happens when you leave everything and everyone you know behind, take a one-way flight across the ocean, and continue by foot, train, bus, rickshaw, motorbike, and ferry, until you’ve circled the Earth? That’s what Lucas Spiegel decided to find out in early 2016. What started out as an ambitious plan to travel the world for 22 months became a transformative exploration of our relationship with...

Vicki Brett-Gach is a Plant-Based Culinary Instructor, Certified Personal Chef, Master-Certified Vegan Lifestyle Coach, and author of " The Plant-Based for Life Cookbook: Deliciously Simple Recipes to Nourish, Comfort, Energize and Renew ”. Vicki's focus is always on making eating healthy EASY. She is Forks Over Knives Plant-Based Certified, trained in Dietary Therapy for Reversing Common...

Geoff Palmer, a 61-year old, 39-year vegan, is a Natural Bodybuilding and Natural Physique Masters Champion, the Owner of Clean Machine Plant-Based Fitness Nutrition, author, national lecturer, vegan patent holder, and 2 Time NEXTY Winner for “Best Supplement of the Year” in 2016 and 2018. Geoff was named one of the “Top 100 Most Influential Vegans” by Plant-Based News. Geoff created the first 100...

Anita Lupp's vegan journey spans several countries and continents! Originally from the U.K., Anita lives with her family in the northwest suburbs of Chicago in Wauconda, Illinois (not be be confused with the fictional kingdom of Wakanda from the Marvel movies). Anita made the vegan leap after 17 years of being a non-vegan vegetarian. Get the scoop on her ensuing journey of self-discovery, her...

Even for docs, losing weight isn't easy! Scott Harrington, D.O., is a board-certified Family Medicine physician with over 17 years of experience. He started his medical career using standard treatment methodologies. Then, in 2012, Dr. Harrington personally adopted a plant-based diet and saw dramatic health improvements in his energy level, athletic endurance, and recovery time. His weight, blo...

Working as a microbiologist with a global pharmaceutical company in the early 1990s, JoAnn Farb toured lab animal testing facilities, pharmaceutical manufacturing plants, and factory farms and came face-to-face with the fact it was her own (and all of our) food choices that were driving the horrific experiments being conducted on non-human animals. She went vegan in 1991, without ever having met a...

Risa Branch is a jazz and blues singer, Reiki Master, and professional cat-sitter based in New York City. She’s also a dedicated, longtime vegan, having adopted the lifestyle as a teenager, and she’s been advocating for animals and veganism for all of her adult life. Risa has recorded two albums, and she’s been featured in a variety of media as a vegan music artist. Resources: Website:  http://Ris...

Rey Ortega is bulidng a vegan cookie empire! With over 30 years' of baking experience, Rey is a pioneer in the plant-based sector. In 1994, he founded the Alternative Baking Company, one of the first vegan cookie brands on the market, which generated $1 million in sales in 1995. In 1997, he founded Sun Flour Baking Co. to create new flavors, tastes, textures, and nutrition products with a long...

Shen Kenner has been a professional guitarist for over three decades, dazzling audiences in Casablanca, San Francisco,  Greece, Finland, New York City, and many points in between. Shan is also a licensed realtor. He authored his own book SK Real Book , a physical book of two hundred of his own compositions. After living in New Orleans since 2014, in the spring of 2023, Shan relocated to Nashville,...

Funny how easy it is to forget that our minds are in our bodies! But not for vegan psychiatrist Dr. Adam Woods. Adam Woods, M.D., is a private practice "Family Psychiatrist" in the Iowa City area, meaning that he sees "all ages" and "all diagnoses." He holds a Bachelor's Degree from Drake University, a Master's Degree from Princeton University, and a medical d...

Robert Cheeke grew up on a farm in Corvallis, Oregon. He adopted a vegan lifestyle in 1995, at the age of 15, weighing just 120 pounds. He went on to  become the author of many books, including Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness , Shred It! , Plant-Based Muscle , and New York Times bestseller The Plant-Based Athlete . His newest book, The Impactful Vegan , will be released on June 25, 2024 – check o...

Peggy Young grew up in northern Wisconsin where a picnic is not a picnic without hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill and a jelly mold of marshmallows for dessert. Becoming vegan was foreign territory. Peggy was diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer in 2010 at the tender age of 53 - far too young to say goodbye to her two daughters and her new husband. Her research revealed that a whole-food food...

Looking for a living example of initiative and self-determination? Look no further! In May of 2013, Paul Chatlin was diagnosed with heart disease and presented with two options: bypass surgery or something called "plant-based nutrition." He opted for the latter. The very next day, Paul consulted with Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, who gave him the lowdown on whole-food, plant-based eating. Incr...

For many of us, 2023 was messy, gritty, and all too real -and boy, does Dr. Jen Howk get real about her own challenges and "growth opportunities" over this past year. Never one to rest on her laurels, Jen continues to push new limits. In this, her epic encore appearance on the Posse, Jen lays it all out on the table, including her tumultuous 2023; her new podcast, The Face of the Deep; h...

Chef AJ has been devoted to a plant-exclusive diet for over 46 years. She was the host of Healthy Living with CHEF AJ on Foody TV. She's the author of three bestselling books, The Secrets to Ultimate Weight Loss , Own Your Health, and The 10th Anniversary Edition of Unprocessed. Chef AJ was the Executive Pastry Chef at Santé Restaurant in Los Angeles where she was famous for her sugar-, oil-,...

SoCal native and longtime vegan Rich Rees started his music career as a professional drummer and  concert producer. He went on to become a successful booking agent, working \with such artists as Colin Hay, Wynonna Judd, Michael McDonald, Alan Parsons, Human League, English Beat, Dave Davies, and many more. Rich was the assistant to the music director for President Bill Clinton's Arkansas Ball...

Harold Brown is a former beef and dairy farmer. He was born on a cattle farm in Michigan and spent over half his life in agriculture. After a personal health crisis forced him to confront the incidence of heart disease in his family, Harold began eating a plant-exclusive diet. Living in great health as an herbivore and seeing his triglycerides plummet led him to reexamine all of his previous assum...

The holidays can be tricky for us vegans! In this special holiday episode, I share my top seven LUCKY Tips for navigating the holidays with ease, grace, and plain old vegan fun. Resources: Gingerbread cake - FYI I find it easiest to order gingerbread spice online since grocery stores may not have it, or you can make your own: https://thevegan8.com/vegan-gingerbread-cake/ Pumpkin cornbread (FYI, I...

Lee Hall has been vegan for almost 40 years! Lee worked for many years as a legal officer, a board member for several nonprofits, and an adjunct animal law and environmental law professor at Rutgers Law School and Widener-Delaware Law School. Lee even wrote the entry for the Encyclopedia for the UN Sustainable Development Goals titled "Nonhuman Rights and Human Sustainability." A frequen...