Viveca Morris

Viveca Morris is the Executive Director of the Law, Ethics & Animals Program (LEAP) at Yale Law School, and a Research Scholar and Lecturer at Yale Law School. Morris investigates the impacts of big businesses on the environment. Her recent research focuses on the role of multinational agribusinesses in the climate crisis, strategies to hold agribusinesses and associated actors accountable for their environmental impacts and externalized costs, and how emerging technologies and policy reforms can make agriculture more sustainable, humane, and resilient.

Morris founded Yale's Law, Ethics & Animals Program, a multidisciplinary initiative dedicated to addressing large-scale industrial abuses of animals and their impacts on the planet, in partnership with Faculty Co-Directors Doug Kysar and Jonathan Lovvorn. At Yale, she has spearheaded multiple initiatives, including LEAP’s Climate Change & Animal Agriculture Accountability Initiative, which focuses on assessing climate change litigation strategies related to animal agriculture emissions; the Yale Big Ag & Antitrust conference, the first major conference of its kind focused on the role of antitrust laws and competition policy in shaping and transforming the global food system; and the Yale Bird-Friendly Building Initiative, a university research initiative that aims to reduce bird collisions and accelerate the adoption of bird-friendly building design. Morris co-hosts and produces the Yale University podcast “When We Talk About Animals,” which features in-depth interviews with leading thinkers about animals and the big questions that animals raise about what it means to be human.

She previously worked for one of the nation’s top early-stage venture capital firms. Morris received B.A., M.E.M. (Master of Environmental Management), and M.B.A. degrees from Yale University. Her writing on business and the environment has been published by The Los Angeles Times, The Hill, Politico, and other publications.