Zoe Weil

Co-founder and President of the Institute for Humane Education, Zoe Weil has been a pioneer in the humane education movement, which works to create a peaceful, healthy and just world for all people, animals, and the environment. She has taught tens of thousands of people of all ages, and her Institute trains people to be effective, inspiring humane educators through its graduate programs, workshops, and resources.

Weil is the author of seven books including, The World Becomes What We Teach: Educating a Generation of Solutionaries; Nautilus Silver Medal-winner Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life; Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times; and Moonbeam Gold Medal-winner for juvenile fiction, Claude and Medea.

Weil has served as a consultant on humane education to people and organizations around the world (including Nigeria, Cote D'Ivoire, South Africa, Kenya, Brazil, France, England, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Sweden, Australia, and Japan), and has served on the boards of the Heroic Imagination Project and HEART. She created her Institute's online M.Ed., M.A., and graduate certificate programs as well as its acclaimed workshops. She earned both a Master's in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and a Master's in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. She was awarded an honorary doctorate from Valparaiso University.

Weil speaks regularly at conferences, universities, and schools across the U.S. and around the world. She is a frequent keynote speaker, including at international teachers' conferences in China and Mexico. In 2010, Weil gave her first of six TEDx talks, The World Becomes What You Teach, which became one of the 50 top-rated TEDx talks within a year.

She speaks on education, creating the #SolutionaryGeneration, sustainable and humane living, creating a just, healthy, and compassionate world, becoming a solutionary, and leading a life of value, purpose, and meaning. 

Weil received the Women in Environmental Leadership Award from Unite College; was named one of Maine Magazine's leaders in Maine and Good Housekeeping's Women over 50 changing the world. She was the 2019 Distinguished Alumnae Achievement award-winner from the Nightingale-Bamford School, and her portrait was painted for the Americans Who Tell the Truth series. She was also inducted into the Animal Rights Hall of Fame.