Aja Nikiya Reimagines Leadership & Animal Rescue with Compassion Kind

Whether responding to a disaster, rescuing an animal from the street, advocating for systemic change, or reimagining leadership through scholarship, Aja Nikiya holds true to her conviction that compassion should include all species. That's why she founded Compassion Kind and is pursuing a doctorate in Embodied Interspecies Inclusion. Join our fascinating conversation with Aja to discover more! Register for free to join live or get the replay: https://www.idausa.org/VeganSpirituality About Aja: Aja Nikiya is an animal advocate, humanitarian, storyteller, and founder of Compassion Kind, an international nonprofit dedicated to protecting vulnerable animals and communities through rescue, disaster response, veterinary care, spay-and-neuter initiatives, humane education, and long-term community programs. For nearly a decade, Aja’s work has taken her from disaster zones and underserved communities in the United States to the Caribbean and Africa, where she has worked alongside local rescuers and communities to address animal suffering, access to veterinary care, human-animal conflict, and the systemic conditions that leave both human and nonhuman lives vulnerable. Through Compassion Kind, she has helped provide assistance to more than 21,000 animals and has developed initiatives ranging from international animal rescue and sterilization campaigns to humanitarian and community health projects. Through storytelling, advocacy, and film, Aja uses media as a tool for advocacy, challenging the ways society determines whose lives are worthy of protection, compassion, and justice. A vegan for more than 20 years, her commitment to animals extends beyond rescue to a broader belief that compassion must include all sentient beings. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Leadership and Change at Antioch University, where her doctoral work explores the exclusion of nonhuman animals from traditional understandings of leadership and social justice. Her emerging framework, Embodied Interspecies Inclusion, examines how leadership, ethical responsibility, and social change can expand beyond exclusively human communities to recognize our relationships and responsibilities across species. At the heart of Aja’s work is a simple conviction: compassion should not stop at the boundary of our own species. Whether responding to a disaster, rescuing an animal from the street, advocating for systemic change, or reimagining leadership through scholarship, her work asks what becomes possible when we choose to see other beings not as resources, nuisances, or afterthoughts, but as lives worthy of consideration, dignity, and care.