Victoria Moran
2024 Vegan Hall of Fame Award
The Compassion Consortium is proud to announce that our own Victoria Moran has been recognized by the North American Vegetarian Society (NAVS) as their 2024 inductee to their Vegan Hall of Fame. As an inductee, Victoria shares the honor with other notables such as Miyoko Schinner, Howard Lyman, Jay and Freya Dinshah, and Mahatma Gandhi.
For more than half a century, Victoria has been a passionate, powerful, and articulate champion for veganism, animal rights, and the practice of ahimsa. Through her books, her speeches, her podcasts, and her everyday actions, she’s shown us how to live a life of compassion and caring for non-human animals, for the earth, for ourselves, and for each other.
Congratulations on your Vegan Hall of Fame award, Victoria. All of us in the Compassion Consortium are so happy for you, and so pleased to see you recognized for your lifetime work of advocating for all animals.
You can view a video of the presentation ceremony by clicking this button:
The text version of the ceremony is included below:
Editor’s note: with the exception of a few edits and paraphrasing, this is the speech, given by Maribeth Abrams on July 11 as she presented the 2024 Vegan Hall of Fame Award to Victorian Moran. Victoria’s acceptance speech follows the presentation speech.
Victoria was born in 1950 in Kansas City, Missouri. Both of her parents worked, and since daycares didn't really exist back then, her parents hired a grandmother-type nanny called Adeline DeSoto. Victoria would call her DeDe.
Victoria was baptized Roman Catholic, but DeDe introduced her to spiritual teachings from all over the world. When Victoria was five, DeDe mentioned the word “vegetarian” in one of their conversations and Victoria felt a spark. She knew there was something in it for her, but at that young age, she just didn't quite know why.
Victoria refers to DeDe as her first guru. Victoria cared deeply for animals. So much so that when she was 13, she went vegetarian. But the only thing that she knew to eat was cottage cheese and fruit. So it only lasted for a few months, but that's a very good try at the age of 13. When she was in 10th grade, her biology class assigned an animal dissection and she was furious.
She ended up getting transferred out of the class, but not before her teacher said something very interesting to her. He said, “but you do eat animals, don't you?” To which Victoria paused and replied, “I do, but I won't always.” And then he said, “you know what? I believe you.”
As a teenager in the 1960s, Victoria wrote for teen magazines and she got a press pass for a dollar from Teen Life magazine.
It got her into a Beatles press conference when she was 14, and another one when she was 15, and then when she was 16 and about to go to her third Beatles press conference, it was canceled at the last minute. So there she was alone in Chicago, with no plans. Her dad came out and they checked into a hotel, the one that Victoria knew that the Beatles were staying in.
As Victoria has shared many times, she and her dad went into the hotel elevator and Victoria recognized someone in there as a Beatles roadie, Mal Evans. Mal Evans was over by the elevator buttons, and he said to Victoria, “what floor are you on?”
And she said, “I'm on 11, but I'd rather go to 22.” Because you see, Victoria knew that the Beatles were staying on 22. He didn’t let her go up to the 22nd floor, but he did have dinner with her and her dad that night and they all became friends. A year later when Victoria and her dad were in London, they met up with him at a club called Bag of Nails.
And Mal Evans said to them, “there's somebody that I would like you to meet.” He led them to the back of the restaurant and there was Paul McCartney, who ordered drinks for everyone at the table, including Victoria. And she drank it. She was 17.
That same year, Victoria started doing yoga, but she didn't just do yoga poses. She read several books about yogic philosophy, including Yoga, Youth and Reincarnation by Jess Stern. With all this reading, she came to the conclusion that if you're going to be serious about yoga, you have to become vegetarian.
About a year later, she moved to London to attend the Lucy Clayton School of Fashion, and she delved deeper into yoga. She stopped eating land animals, and when school ended and she went back to the United States, she stopped eating fish. Also, right around this same time, she became a freelance writer for natural food stores and health magazines and vegetarian magazines.
In her early 20s, Victoria got active with animal rights in Kansas City, and she was completely sold on veganism. She wasn't really vegan, or at least not more than a few days at a time.
Because you see, this entire time, Victoria was struggling with a compulsive eating disorder. And as Victoria has said in interviews, when you're on a binge, you don't read labels.
Vegan junk food didn't even exist back then, except for granola, which didn't really cut it. In 1970, Victoria moved to Wheaton, Illinois, to live and work at the headquarters of the Theosophical Society. She met someone there who would become a lifelong friend, Nathaniel Altman. All the meals at the Theosophical Society were vegetarian, but she and Nathaniel got involved with working to transition the meals to vegan.
They even invited Jay Dinshaw, founder of the American Vegan Society, to speak there. Also during this time, Victoria helped Nathaniel write his book, Eating for Life, a book about vegetarianism. Victoria ended up developing a friendship with Jay, and she credits him for helping her through some very hard times.
When he spearheaded the World Vegetarian Congress in 1975, Victoria was there.
She went to the Children's Center talking to kids about being kind, and she was the MC of the Fashion Compassion Show.
This World Congress evolved into what we now call the Vegan Summer Fest. This was a pretty big deal that Victoria was there 50 years ago. Way to go, Victoria. In her late 20s, Victoria attended North Central College. in Naperville, Illinois, majoring in Religious Studies. She earned a Richter Fellowship for Foreign Study and traveled back to the UK to research and write her undergraduate thesis, which was published several years later as her first book, Compassion, the Ultimate Ethic.
It was the first book on vegan philosophy in the United States to be published by a major publisher, and it was groundbreaking. She earned a degree in Comparative Religions. In 1977, Victoria married Patrick Moran, and six years later, their daughter, Adair, was born. Victoria was still struggling this entire time with a compulsive eating disorder, but she wanted to raise Adair vegan, and she knew that the only way that that would work is if she was vegan too—for real.
They participated in street activism as a family until very sadly Patrick died. Ten years later, her book, The Love Powered Diet, came out, telling the story of how she stopped compulsive eating with Overeaters Anonymous, and she wrote about the spiritual growth that resulted from the combination of the 12-step program and veganism.
From there, she went on to write more books. Victoria wrote Get the Fat Out and Shelter for the Spirit, Creating a Charmed Life, Lit from Within, Fit from Within, Younger by the Day, Fat, Broke, and Lonely No More, and Living a Charmed Life. She was now an internationally recognized self-help guru, specializing in well-being, spirituality, and healing.
Along the way, she married William Melton, a retired attorney who became vegan when he met Victoria, and who's now an ordained interfaith minister and animal chaplain.
In 2012, Main Street Vegan was published, co-authored with her daughter, Adair. It's a complete guide on how to become vegan and has been hailed by VegNews as the Vegan Bible New Testament.
An interesting side note here, and some of you may have heard this story from Victoria. She always liked the title Main Street Vegan, but her publisher didn't like it. They did not want to use it. So back before the book was published, she ran into documentarian Michael Moore in New York City, and she told him about the conflict.
Well, he liked the title so much that he reached out to her publisher and persuaded them to go with it. Victoria calls this a vegan miracle.
Thank you, Michael Moore.
VegNews went on to vote Main Street Vegan as one of the top 12 vegan books of 2012. As this time, Victoria was a full-time writer, But the internet was starting to replace books and she knew she needed a backup plan. That's when she got the idea to create a school, an academy for vegans who want to expand the effectiveness of their outreach.
I'll bet there's people in this room that are vegans who want to expand the effectiveness of their outreach. This would be a school where people could be trained and certified as vegan coaches and educators, and she worked on it. So the same year that the book Main Street Vegan, came out, Victoria launched the Main Street Vegan Academy, the first and only school that offers the credentials Certified Vegan Lifestyle Coach and Educator, or VLCE.
The Academy is personalized, professional and based on a commitment to excellence in plant-based training and education with top vegan luminary instructors and an in-depth curriculum that covers vegan principles, communication principles, and business principles. Graduates include coaches, entrepreneurs, people who work for animal rights organizations, health organizations, authors and podcasters, public speakers, social media influencers, and many of them use their new vegan credentials as an extension of their already established professions, such as psychologists, fitness instructors, nutritionists, yoga teachers, and healthcare providers.
Past students include Kat Mendenhall of Cruelty Free Western Wear, and author and consultant J. L. Fields, Michaela Grob who is the founder of the vegan cheese company called Riverdale Cheese, Diane Wentz of the ChickVegan blog, and the founder of Bright Life Foods. Forbes wrote that the Main Street Vegan Academy inspires entrepreneurs and scientists and seeds vegan business endeavors of every sort. The curriculum is solid, the faculty top notch, and the immersion experience and after graduation support is incomparable. In 2015, The Good Karma Diet came out emphasizing a high green, high raw, high energy vegan lifestyle. It explains that when we align our eating with our ethics, we eat healthier, and we feel better about ourselves.
This was followed by the Main Street Vegan Academy Cookbook, written with graduate J. L. Fields. It's a cookbook, obviously, but it's also a complete guide on how to go vegan, including all the different aspects of veganism, including the social landscape.
Before we get to the next thing, I have to share something with you. In the community where I'm from, Glastonbury, Connecticut, there's a couple of churches. In our town that do this wonderful annual thing called “service for the animals” and they pray for animals and people talk about their animals and some of them bring their animals to the service and it's very beautiful and people feel wonderful as they pray for the animals.
I think it takes place on St. Francis of Assisi's name day, who was a saint that loved animals and it's all very beautiful. Except for the fact that everybody goes home and eats animals for lunch. Have any of you out there ever felt like your religion or your spiritual group just does not reflect your compassion for animals?
That’s why Victoria and her husband, William Melton, and the Reverend Sarah Bowen, founded the Compassion Consortium. This is an interfaith spiritual center for animal advocates. It's for people who desire a spiritual community based on compassion, including for animals.
It fills the gap where one's own religion or spiritual group leaves a hole. And I think that we all know that that can be a pretty, pretty, pretty big hole. The Compassion Consortium offers a monthly Zoom service, and events, and classes, and pastoral counseling, and grief counseling for people who lose their animals, and even animal reiki.
Plus, they offer training. They offer training in animal chaplaincy, which involves teaching people how to minister to animals, and to people with companion animals, to animal care providers, and to communities affected by wildlife conflicts. Last year, the Compassion Consortium traveled to the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago.
Victoria has said in interviews that the vegan presence at the conference was inspiring. She's mentioned the big, beautiful vegan meal prepared and served by the Sikh community. (Well, all vegan except for the yogurt.) And she says that it was absolutely magical.
Victoria is a producer for the 2019 film, A Prayer for Compassion. It's a full-length documentary that inspires and encourages people who are already on a religious or spiritual path to expand their circle of compassion, to embrace all life, regardless of species, and to make choices that are in alignment with this value. In this film, vegans from all faiths of the world talk about how the root of their faith is love, compassion, and oneness, and how living without harming others by being vegan is a grace.
Miss Liberty is a film in pre-production about a fictional cow who escapes from a slaughterhouse and the human drama that ensues. It's a family film with a surprise ending, and it was conceived by Victoria's husband William, who also wrote the original screenplay. Victoria and William are now co-writing and co-producing the film, and Gene Bauer of Farm Sanctuary is the associate producer.
Miss Liberty got started with critical funding from the Taiwanese Buddhist leader Supreme Master Ching Hai as well as VegGood Films and an anonymous investor. But fundraising continues in order to keep it all moving forward. This is going to be a big deal film people. Some of the actors who have expressed interest in being in it include an Academy Award nominee, a Golden Globe and Drama Desk Award winner, a sports legend, and a veteran of over 50 films. In other words, famous people want to be in this film and it will be a mainstream movie, or should I say a “main street” movie.
And now we begin the wind down. Get ready for this because the wind down is almost kind of a wind up before it winds down. Victoria has written for or been referred to in Vegetarian Times, Mothering Magazine, Natural Health, Yoga Journal, Woman's Day, Oprah magazine, Allure, Glamour, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, and a bunch of other publications.
She's got podcasts and shows including the Main Street Vegan Podcast, Meetings with Remarkable Women, the Main Street Vegan Salon on Unchained TV, and she hosted the program Your Charmed Life on the Martha Stewart Channel on Sirius Radio. She appears on other people's podcasts, too, and operates the Main Street Vegan blog, and her speaking engagement calendar is packed.
She's been on Good Morning America, and Supreme Master Television and on Oprah, twice. She's a New York Times bestselling author, a celebrity coach for the PCRM Vegan Kickstart, and she performs an autobiographical one woman show.
She received a Vegan of the Year award and her Main Street Vegan blog has been listed among the top 100 vegan blogs. VegNews calls her one of the top 10 contemporary vegetarian authors, PETA named her the Sexiest Vegan Woman over 50 in 2016, and she's been called the fairy godmother of the vegan movement in the USA.
Her books have been praised by Ellen DeGeneres, Michael Moore, Moby, Dean Ornish, Dr. Neil Barnard, Marianne Williamson, Mariel Hemingway, and Bill Clinton.
About ten years ago, Victoria took up aerial yoga, following in her daughter's footsteps. Adair is an aerialist and a stunt performer. At the age of 70, she completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training course and got certified as a Raja yoga instructor.
And she continues to write. Her newest book, Age Like a Yogi, comes out this winter. It will be her 14th book and it's about the practical wisdom of yoga, the youth preserving secrets of Ayurveda, and the life enhancing power of nonviolence and living gently.
So much of Victoria's life's work focuses on teaching others how to take the very best care of themselves, body, mind, and spirit. But she has said many times that her deepest motivation comes from compassion for animals, and veganism as a moral imperative.
Her activism is based on the idea that when we take the best care of ourselves, body, mind, and spirit, including having compassion for ourselves and compassion for our home, this planet, when we do all of this, we help draw those around us to us and therefore to our veganism. It's all interconnected. When we are the light, others are drawn to us, and they want to know what we're doing.
Patty Brightman was Victoria's longtime literary agent. She's retired now, but many of you might actually know Patty as having been a highly regarded literary agent in the field of veganism. Patty says that her career became what it was because of Victoria. She said that it was Victoria that helped her believe that her dream was even possible.
And it was Victoria that supported her emotionally and gave her the support and the belief of what it took to actually get there. She says that because of Victoria, her big career became more fulfilling that she could have ever imagined. Victoria's lifelong friend Nathaniel from the Theosophical Society says that Victoria's innate humility, kindness, loyalty, and desire to help others are hallmarks of how she lives her life every single day. He says that she exemplifies a life grounded in respect. and compassion toward ourselves and to other living beings.
NAVS is honored to have included Victoria in our Summerfest family since our very first conference 50 years ago. And tonight, we are ecstatic to induct her into our Hall of Fame. Victoria Moran, please come on up.
Victoria, on behalf of the North American Vegetarian Society, we would like to provide you with this, this clock, this beautiful plaque. We appreciate you, and the world is a better place because you're in it.
Victoria’s acceptance speech
I'm not usually speechless. I needed a clock. Thank you. This is really something. I'm old enough to remember an old TV show called, this is your life. And I never thought I would ever see my life, you know, of the best parts, all played back. So thank you so much. I'm really humbled by this honor because it took me a long time to get from vegetarian to vegan.
And I just think there are so many people that are more perfect, but I think sometimes we imperfect people can impact the world too. I just want to thank, well, first Freya and Jay, because they believed in me when I couldn't believe in myself and I would try so hard to be vegan and I'd be vegan, you know, a few weeks, even a few months, it's like, I'm vegan, I'm vegan, and I would fall off the wagon.
And never once did either one of these amazing people say to me, “Oh, for heaven's sakes, you know, you're just never going to make this to stop, you know, wasting our time.” They always believed in me and they always saw me as a vegan. And that's one thing that I try to do in activism and talking with people is everybody who's not vegan, well, they're a pre-gan. If they've got almond milk in the refrigerator—good job, great. This is so, so wonderful. Because that's what Jay and Freya did for me. They believed in me until I could believe in myself. And I also want to thank my daughter, Adair, and I'll tell you about her Instagram, cause it's so good. It's @Adair Stunts because she's a stunt person.
I went vegan finally because I looked at this little baby in this crib and I mean, she has to be vegan. I don't want to raise an animal eater, but I knew, of course, that I had to be vegan. And so, as was described with that combination of what I learned in Overeaters Anonymous to get past my eating disorder and the great tutelage for all that time from Freya and Jay and others, I'm just so grateful.
I'm grateful for this incredible honor tonight. And I'm extremely grateful for getting this message when I did and I feel that it's given me three tremendous privileges. One is good health because for me the weight fell off and being pre-diabetic I left way back in my twenties and early thirties. All the things, the diseases that my family got, I haven't gotten yet. I'll get something someday because everybody does, but I feel really grateful for that.
I feel grateful for what I just think of as good karma, that I've been given the privilege to live in a way that respects others and helps others and has maybe hopefully saved animals.
And, you know, I didn't deserve that. It was given to me and it was given to me really by this woman down here and her wonderful husband that I don't even want to say that he's late, because he's so very much alive and present and making a difference in this world to this day.
And then that's really the third thing.
It's the good people. You know, all of you here, even those of you that I don't know really well, and we don't, you know, hang out and talk about our problems or whatever, but I see you and you see me. And I think for a lot of people, the year kind of goes around their birthday or January 1st or something. For me, it's Summer Fest.
It's like, “how's your year going? What have you accomplished? What have you done? What can you do better next year?” And it's July to July to July for 50 years and hopefully for some to come. So humbly, gratefully, thank you all so very much. Thanks to Mary Beth and Sharon and Brian and all of it.
Thank you.