Laura Lee Cascada is an environmental advocate, strategist, and investigative researcher with a master’s degree in environmental science and policy from Johns Hopkins University and more than 15 years of experience advancing evidence-based food system change. She founded the Aquaculture Accountability Project to expose misleading sustainability narratives driving the expansion of industrial fish farming and to translate this research into actionable guidance for universities, NGOs, and sustainability professionals.

Laura has helped cities like San Diego and Austin shift procurement toward more plant-forward meals and helped secure climate-friendly food offerings from companies such as Starbucks and Nestlé. She has also led initiatives to protect marine life, including a public awareness campaign that curbed demand for wild-caught hermit crabs taken from fragile coastal ecosystems and an investigation into Hawaii’s only octopus farm, whose greenwashing masked efforts to pioneer farming of the Hawaiian day octopus for consumption. Her reporting, which was covered by outlets like NPR and Vice News, helped catalyze broader scrutiny and contributed to state action that ultimately shut the facility down—blocking the launch of a new industrial aquaculture frontier in the U.S.

Laura has written two books, Dellie’s Run and The Dog Who Wooed at the World. She is the founder of the Every Animal Project, a blog that invites readers to step into the lives of animals from insects to elephants. Laura’s writing has also appeared in The Ecologist, Countercurrents, One Green Planet, and other outlets. A freediver and lifelong ocean lover, Laura is driven by a vision for a food system that supports a truly sustainable future for our oceans.